ENGL 362: Spring 2004 Dr. Helen Bittel Study Guide #13: Lady Audley Part II Instructions: Complete any 4 of the following question clusters. Use your best judgment to choose the clusters that seem most likely to enhance your understanding of the text and to best address your own interests and expertise. FYI, the "smaller" questions within each cluster are intended as prompts or suggestions and not as a definitive outline. You are not expected to answer each systematically (or to cover as much ground as the prompts themselves), but only to provide substantive and well-supported responses to the stories, responses that goes beyond "what" (i.e. plot, setting, characters) and into "why it matters." In answering these questions, you may draw on any part of the novel that you've read thus far. 1. Follow Up. Look back to the answers you prepared for the previous study guide. Are there any "new developments" in the areas that you responded to last time that you would like to return to and explore more deeply? Have your ideas and understandings changed based on the events of the second half of the novel? 2. Heroine, Protagonist, or Something Else? Delve more deeply into the question we began exploring in class on Tuesday. Whose story is this? How might we describe the title character's role in it? To really answer this question well, you'll need to come up with and justify a definition of what a heroine is or does. Is she simply the female equivalent of "hero," or must she be something else entirely? 3. New Technologies. In what ways does the novel engage with the rise of new technologies in the mid C19? Where is technology (and modernity more generally) seen as positive and enabling? Where is it portrayed as dangerous? What, in light of all of this, do you make of the "medieval" qualities assigned to Audley Court? 4. Grrrl power? Critics often disagree as to whether this novel can be described as feminist. Where do you stand and why? Does the narrative logic, by which the deviant woman is contained and punished, render a feminist reading impossible or unlikely? Or are the other subversive elements of the text sufficient to overpower or override the narrative logic? 5. Happily ever after? To what degree is (or isn't) this a satisfying ending? Where does Braddon meet the expectations of her readers, where does she thwart them, and what are the effects on the reader? Why might Braddon have decided to place the "capture" of the villain about fifty pages before the end of the novel? What is gained and what is lost or risked by this maneuver? 6. Potpourri. Is there any else that you think might be important in understanding how the story works that we have not covered above? What and why? Contact the English Department at: 570-348-6219. E-mail: English@marywood.edu.

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Last update August 12, 2004
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