On The Unity Between The Themes And Narrative Strategies In Lady Audley’s Secret

Mary Elizabeth Braddon is one of the prominent British writers of the sensationnovel. Her masterpiece Lady Audley’s Secret (1862) depicts a beautiful womantransforming into a member of the upper class committing murder and arson to coverher past and is eventually debunked. Based on narratology theory, this paper exploreshow the themes and narrative strategies in Lady Audley’s Secret are united. In otherwords, how certain narrative strategies are adopted to express the themes.The paper is divided into five parts. The initial introduction mainly introducesthe author Mary Elizabeth Braddon and her novel Lady Audley’s Secret, as well as thecurrent research at home and abroad, and meanwhile briefly and concisely presentsthe methodology, the research argument and the due significance. The first chapteranalyzes different focalizations and transformation of story space to show thecharacters’ identity change, revealing the social mobility in the process ofurbanization as well as people’s disorientation in the Victorian period. The secondchapter studies personified third person narrator, direct and indirect definition and thechange of time order to question the Victorian moral requirements and show the moralnature of the coexistence of good and evil. The third chapter analyzes the predicamentof Lady Audley to manifest Victorian women’s subordinate position in the family andsociety. Moreover, it shows how the narrative strategies of characterization,homodiegetic narrator and heterodiegetic narrator serve the female theme. Theconclusion summarizes and restates the views of this thesis.