Advisory Committee Chair
Daniel Siegel
Advisory Committee Members
Gale Temple
Margaret Jessee
Document Type
Thesis
Date of Award
1-1-2025
Degree Name by School
Master of Arts (MA) College of Arts and Sciences
Abstract
Just a few years after England experienced major societal shifts, both domestically in the passage of revolutionary women’s rights legislation and internationally in the Indian Mutiny, Mary Elizabeth Braddon’s Lady Audley’s Secret (1862) offered Victorian readers a way to confront their anxieties and uncertainties about the nation’s future. The traditional power structures of British imperialism and patriarchy faced growing resistance as Indian rebels and women’s rights reformers challenged their assumed natural authority. Past scholarship contextualizes the novel within these major historical events, viewing them in relation to each other in which the struggles of Indian colonial subjects equate to those of Victorian wives. My analysis expands on this scholarship by investigating the novel’s broader treatment of otherness, especially as it pertains to its titular character, Lucy Audley. Applying the critical framework of Edward Said’s theory of Orientalism and Simone de Beauvoir’s concept of the Other, I argue that the novel portrays Indian colonial subjects and English women as the racial and female Other to unveil that the patriarchal British Empire both constructs and mirrors these marginalized identities to reveal that the very flaws projected onto the oppressed exist within the ruling class.
Recommended Citation
Rastegar, Kaylie, "Unveiling the Other: Feminine and Colonial Subjugation in Mary Elizabeth Braddon's England" (2025). All ETDs from UAB. 6884.
https://digitalcommons.library.uab.edu/etd-collection/6884
Comments
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