IMPERIAL ATTITUDES IN LADY AUDLEY’S SECRET

Abstract

Since 1970s, feminist scholars have interpreted Lady Audley's Secret as censuring horrors of women's domestic lives by treating title character as subversive.1 The problem with these feminist readings of Braddon's novel is that, in re-envisioning Lady Audley as sympathetic character, scholars suggest that Lady Audley' s actions are praiseworthy2 and that her primary antagonist, step-nephew Robert Audley, embodies oppressive circumstances she resists. This kind of interpretation oversimplifies complexity of patriarchy by assuming that patriarchal victim cannot also commit reprehensible crimes and that man who benefits by and defends patriarchal norms does not also suffer from them. A more complex critique of patriarchy in Lady Audley's Secret emerges through combining feminist and postcolonial theories. Lillian Nayder employs such combination by identifying 1 857 Indian mutiny as backdrop for Braddon's novel.3 However, her application of postcolonial theory serves only to re-vilify Lady Audley in wake of too enthusiastic feminist scholarship. Instead of viewing Lady Audley and Robert Audley as either good or evil, we can use postcolonial theory to see more accurately power structures that so warp their characters.Because, as Frantz Fanon indicates, All forms of exploitation resemble one another,4 examining combination of discourses regarding power can greatly improve our understanding of how various forms of power operate. In Lady Audley 's Secret, Braddon uses imperialist discourse to highlight structural inequalities, particularly oppression experienced by Lady Audley and indoctrination of Robert Audley into classist British patriarchy. Although this hierarchy of critiques - use of an imperialist critique to focus on other aspects of English culture - is Eurocentric because it relegates actual imperialism to periphery of discussion,5 study of this technique contributes not only to our knowledge of Braddon's particular literary moment but also to our better understanding of interrelationship among forms of exploitation.According to Edward Said, 'imperialism' means practice, theory, and attitudes of dominating metropolitan centre ruling distant territory. Therefore, imperialism is philosophy that permits colonization or the implanting of settlements on distant territory.6 Because of practice of this philosophy over time, nations and their citizens possess a considerable material in such beliefs.7 Maintaining this investment necessitates an objectifying attitude toward colonized peoples; as Fanon writes, since none may enslave, rob or kill his fellow-man without committing crime, [our soldiers] lay down principle that native is not one of our fellow-men.8 Without imagining colonized people as objects, colonizers would experience moral difficulty in continuing to oppress them for material gain. This imperialistic attitude dehumanizes colonizers as well as colonized.9These theories regarding psychology of colonization can be applied to Lady Audley's Secret because novel itself gestures toward colonial issues. The most prominent of such gestures is use of Australia, an English penal colony, as unrepresented location of George Talboys' successful gold mining. As Said discusses in Culture and Imperialism, colonized periphery does not figure as setting in Victorian novels until after middle of century. Rather, outlying territories are available for use, at will, at novelist's discretion, usually for relatively simple purposes such as immigration, fortune, or exile.10 The periphery becomes distant site where restless English characters can make their fortunes.11 Similarly, products from colonies and other exotic places like Crimea where Britain had an economic or political role appear as details in Braddon's novel, reminding readers about existence of colonial periphery on which Empire depends. …