Born the daughter of an unfaithful sports writer, Mary Elizabeth Braddon began writing for the magazines herself at the age of twenty-one to help support her struggling family (Sutherland “Braddon” 80). However, Braddon’s first big success came with the publication of Lady Audley’s Secret. The novel was originally serialized in 1861 in the magazine Robin Goodfellow, owned and published by the Irishman John Maxwell, with whom Braddon had an illegitimate relationship. However, the novel was not completed until 1862, when it was republished in Sixpenny Magazine and later in a three-volume set (Sutherland “Lady Audley’s Secret” 360).
Nineteenth century British literature was known as the “age of the sensation novel,” and according to fellow-author Henry James, Braddon capitalized on this interest to “make a hit, to catch the public ear” (593). Braddon’s success at “catching the public ear” is clearly demonstrated in an 1862 newspaper review of the novel, which describes it as “the novel which everybody is just now reading” (“Lady Audley’s Secret” 4). While Braddon’s success was not necessarily based on her use of original plot (the newspaper review acknowledges that Braddon “has got her hands upon some well-known materials”), this same article also claims that she has “turned them to such good account that… [we]take little note of what is new and what is hackneyed” (4). Indeed, although the genre of sensation fiction was by no means a new one, Braddon’s novel was popular enough to win her a spot among the likes of Wilkie Collins and the other leading sensationalists of the day.
The widespread and enduring popularity of Braddon’s Lady Audley’s Secret is most attributable to the skill with which she incorporates and utilizes the elements of sensation fiction. In his 1982 article “What is ‘Sensational’ about the ‘Sensation Novel’?” author Patrick Brantlinger describes the historical, structural, and psychological elements of sensation fiction. Of these elements, Braddon shines in her ability to juxtapose the grotesque and horrible with the domestic and beautiful. According to Brantlinger, sensation novels “imply by their very structures that domestic tranquility conceals heinous desires and deeds” (3). In the novel, Lady Audley’s blend of beauty and idyllic domesticity with her self-centered and murderous disposition suggests that the safety of a Victorian hearth and home might itself conceal heinous crimes.
In addition to its subversion of the Victorian concept of the home, Lady Audley’s Secret is also notable for its subversion of the Victorian ideals of domesticity, masculinity, and proper gender relationships. Although the novel seems to uphold the values of traditional patriarchy, Herbert Klein argues that Lady Audley’s Secret actually reverses typical gender relations by portraying strong-willed women and domesticized, weak-willed men (170). In comparison, however, Andrew King claims that Braddon’s supposed protest against the carceral position of women in society is in fact a limited one (61). In addition to reversed heterosexual relationships, Lady Audley’s Secret also offers commentary on homosocial male relationships. Richard Nemesvari argues that Lady Audley’s Secret was written specifically to expose the pretence and denial masking male homosocial relationships among the aristocracy (516). Thus, overall, the secret behind the success of Lady Audley’s Secret lies ultimately in its ambiguities and the questions it raises about traditional Victorian ideals of home, domesticity, and masculinity.