Emotional void and identity fragmentation: madness and narcissism in “Lady Audley's Secret” by Mary Elizabeth Braddon (1862).
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.33919/esnbu.25.1.7Keywords:
Bigamy, Braddon, Fake Identity, Lady Audley’s Secret, Madness, Narcissistic PersonalityAbstract
This research aims at investigating the psychological dimension of the protagonist Lady Audley on the grounds of the dialectic of alleged madness and assumed narcissistic personality disorder related to psychoanalytic literary methodology and criticism. In the light of the first Freudian studies of the first decade of the twentieth century and the subsequent outcomes, we attempt the hypothesis of female identity construction onto typically narcissistic features, in the perspective of Freud’s unconscious anticipated by Mary Elizabeth Braddon in her prose generating not only a sensation novel but also an innovative psychological plot depicting the double nature of Victorian society from the perspective of a woman labeled as insane.
References
Alami, S. (2016). Madness in the female character of Mrs Audley in Lady Audley's Secret by Elizabeth Braddon. University of Debrecen.
American Psychiatric Association. (2013). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (5th edition). https://doi.org/10.1176/appi.books.9780890425596 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1176/appi.books.9780890425596
Braddon, M, E. 1997. Lady Audley’s Secret. Wordsworth Classics.
Carver, S. (2020). ‘Let them be quiet’: Patriarchy and rebellion in Lady Audley’s Secret. Wordsworth Editions. https://www.academia.edu/61833691
County Asylums. (n.d.). The History of the Asylum. https://www.countyasylums.co.uk/history
Ennis, E. (2012). The Construction of Women from a Gendered Perspective: Pre-Cinematic Victorian Representations and the Male Scopophilic Gaze. MP Journal, 3(5), 82-97.
Eros, M. C. (2010). Ladies’ maids, governesses, and companions: serving women in the great houses of sensation literature. University of Delaware.
Giordano, G. (2021). Lady Audley’s Secret and the portrayal of a criminal mind. Advances in Literary Study, 9(3), 127-134. https://doi.org/10.4236/als.2021.93014 DOI: https://doi.org/10.4236/als.2021.93014
Hatter, J. (2015). Childhood Disrupted: Mary Elizabeth Braddon’s Unfinished Autobiography ‘Before the Knowledge of Evil’. Peer English: the journal of new critical thinking, 10, 11-25. https://hull-repository.worktribe.com/output/379147
Kernberg, O. (1975). Borderline conditions and pathological narcissism. Jason Aronson.
Lee, L. (2011). “Lady Audley’s Secret: How does she do It? Sensation fiction’s technologically minded villainesses”. A companion to sensation fiction. Blackwell Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781444342239.ch10 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/9781444342239.ch10
Lowen, A. (1984). Narcissism: Denial of the true self. Macmillan Publishing.
Naz, B. A. (2016). Victorian murderesses: The politics of female violence. Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
Razumovskaya, O. (2012). Victorian drama in gothic setting ("Lady Audley's Secret" by Mary Elizabeth Braddon). RUDN University.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2025 Paolo Lantieri
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
All published articles in the ESNBU are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0). This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work non-commercially, and although their new works must also acknowledge you and be non-commercial, they don't have to license their derivative works on the same terms.
In other words, under the CC BY-NC 4.0 license users are free to:
Share - copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format
Adapt - remix, transform, and build upon the material
Under the following terms:
Attribution (by) - All CC licenses require that others who use your work in any way must give you credit the way you request, but not in a way that suggests you endorse them or their use. If they want to use your work without giving you credit or for endorsement purposes, they must get your permission first.
NonCommercial (nc) - You let others copy, distribute, display, perform, and modify and use your work for any purpose other than commercially unless they get your permission first.
If the article is to be used for commercial purposes, we suggest authors be contacted by email.
If the law requires that the article be published in the public domain, authors will notify ESNBU at the time of submission, and in such cases the article shall be released under the Creative Commons 1 Public Domain Dedication waiver CC0 1.0 Universal.
Copyright
Copyright for articles published in ESNBU are retained by the authors, with first publication rights granted to the journal. Authors retain full publishing rights and are encouraged to upload their work to institutional repositories, social academic networking sites, etc. ESNBU is not responsible for subsequent uses of the work. It is the author's responsibility to bring an infringement action if so desired by the author.
Exceptions to copyright policy
Occasionally ESNBU may co-publish articles jointly with other publishers, and different licensing conditions may then apply.
