The Fairy and the Goddess: Lady Audley and Clara Talboys as Competing Models of Femininity

Author: Lam, Navya L.

Year: 2026

Degree: Other

Advisor: Gilmore, Dehn

Committee Member: None, None

Option: English

Abstract

[Introduction] While Lady Audley and Clara Talboys—in contrast to the novel’s passive men—both propel the sensational plot of Mary Elizabeth Braddon’s Lady Audley’s Secret, Braddon casts these two women as opposing models of femininity. The novel associates Lady Audley with individualism, modernity, social mobility, foreignness, and impermanence within the existing social structure; Clara, by contrast, embodies antiquity, English propriety, and stability in the current social framework. Braddon’s novel frames both forms of femininity in terms of its utility to the project of British masculinity. The two women come to triangulate the men of the novel, exerting opposing influences that either propel the men toward socially sanctioned masculinity or divert them from it...