Merry Wanderer of the Night [Search results for mary elizabeth braddon] 

I was introduced to the lovely Mary Elizabeth Braddon when I read her novel Lady Audley's Secret last semester. I was interested in her first novel that I decided to take a classic all about sensation fiction just so I could read more books by her. And I'm glad I did, because I found Aurora Floyd to be vastly superior to Braddon's first novel. While Lady Audley's Secret is fabulous because of its strange characters and intense plot, Aurora Floyd won for me because of its concentration on minor characters. I also felt the plot wasn't wrapped up as quickly as the plot in Lady Audley's Secret. Aurora Floyd is about a woman whose name is, you guessed it Aurora Floyd. She pursues and is pursued by a clean soldier, but after she is rejected by him for her inability to share a dark secret she moves on and finds a new love interest. While this is simple enough, Aurora is still haunted by her secret which she refuses to share with anyone.

Aurora is a complicated character. She is beautiful, though not conventional. She is honest, but secretive. She is charitable and caring, which makes it difficult for the reader to suspect her of any wrongdoing. But then, what is her secret? She also has a love for gambling and horses, which makes her challenging as a Victorian woman. So basically, Aurora is a woman to love. And I fell in love with her very quickly. My love for her pushed me to the end of novel, because obviously I had to find out what her secret was. A word of caution, DON'T read the back of the book if you get the Oxford World's Classics version. It will ruin it for you.

Another aspect of this novel I loved was the used of, as mentioned before, minor characters. This novel truly plays with servants and makes them threatening to the seemingly powerful masters. I loved how Braddon made this characters evil yet somewhat understandable... similar to Lucy Audley in Lady Audley's Secret. They might have bad motives, but they're basically just a product of their environment. Check out this passage:

"Why is it that the dependants in a household are so feverishly inquisitive about the doings and sayings, the manners and customs, the joys and sorrows, of those who employ them? Is it that, having abnegated for themselves all active share in life, they take an unhealthy interest in those who are in the thick of the strife? Is it because, being cut off in a great measure by the nature of their employment from family ties and family pleasures, they feel a malicious delight in all family trials and vexations, and the ever-recurring breezes which disturb the domestic atmosphere? Remember this, husands and wives, fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, brothers and sisters, when you quarrel. Your servants enjoy the fun." (177)

This novel earned an A.

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Well I've been spending a lot of time buying textbooks recently, which is always frustrating for me because textbooks suck a lot of my funds. One day my bank account is overflowing and the next it's maxed. I look in there and think, "Oh my God! Someone stole my money!" Then I remember, oh yeah, I'm a college student. I love to buy books, but it's a lot more fun to buy books when someone isn't telling you you have to buy them. I'm actually only taking ONE English class this semester, which is almost the opposite of last semester. I only took English classes last semester. You see, I'm taking more history classes now, which is nerve racking for me because I was really bad at history when I was a kid. But I'm more interested in history now. So wish me luck on that...

The English class I am taking is about sensation fiction and the authors in focus are Wilkie Collins and Mary Elizabeth Braddon. I'm reading Armadale (Collins), Wyllard's Weird (Braddon), The Woman in White (Collins), The Moonstone (Collins), and Lady Audley's Secret (Braddon), which I read last semester for a different class. For my other classes I'm taking American History since the Civil War, Art History since 1400, Civilizations of Asia, and Nonprofit Organizational Management (woohoo, betcha want to hear about the book for that class).

Honestly though, I complain about buying books but English major's have a pretty sweet deal going. My boyfriend spends twice as much as I do on books. Even though he can sell most of them back it's still a chunk of change that is gone, and if he can't sell the book back he will probably never look at it again. With me, I keep most of my books and would probably have bought them at some point anyway. So being an English major is kind of fun! Sometimes...

Oh the papers will be coming soon...

Thanks to J. Kaye's Book Blog I'm going to start posting what I'm reading this week and what I've recently finished.

Finished

North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell is a classic novel that I read for my Prose By Women Writers class. This is the kind of book I typically enjoy though (I'm a Jane Eyre fanatic) so it was more fun than work for me. My favorite aspect of the book is that it allowed the working class to speak for themselves, a rarity in Victorian literature.
Emma: A Victorian Romance Volume One by Kaoru Mori is a great graphic novel that I found out about last week. I promptly purchased Volumes One and Three from Daydream Comics in Iowa City, they unfortunately didn't have Volume Two. The graphic novel is based in Victorian London and is about a romance between a male of the gentry and a maid. Mori does an amazing job capturing several aspects of Victorian society, I will be posting a review this week.

And Only to Deceive by Tasha Alexander is a mystery novel that I could not put down, although to be fair I was reading it during Dewey's Readathon. It is a Victorian mystery about a woman who falls in love with her husband after his death... or is he really dead? I will be posting a review this week.

Currently Reading
Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters by Jane Austen and Ben H. Winters. I just finished Sense and Sensibility for class so I'm excited for this modern spin.

Lady Audley's Secret by Mary Elizabeth Braddon is a Victorian sensation novel

And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie is a mystery I'm reading for Barnes and Noble's Literature By Women Book Club.

Mary Elizabeth Braddon's Lady Audley's Secret

is a fascinating look into the world of madness. The novel was written in 1861. A biographical note: Braddon lived with publisher John Maxwell and his children but they could not get married because his wife was still alive and in an insane asylum. It's like the real life Jane Eyre

!

George Talboys has been in Australia working to make money for his wife back home in England. They are newly married and he wants to provide a good life for her because he felt she seemed unhappy with the small amount of money they had. He left in the middle of the night without giving his wife anything but a note saying where he was going. His thoughts have been filled with his wife and he is excited to get home to her, but when he arrives he finds out that his wife, Helen Talboys, is dead.

George and his friend Robert spend a great amount of time together after his arrival and Robert sees how depressed George has become. They visit the deceased wife's father and their child she left behind. George does not take the child. Eventually George is nowhere to be found and Robert declares that he is dead, and possibly murdered. When George disappears they are at Audley Court, Robert's uncle's residence.

Robert's uncle, Sir Michael Audley has recently taken a very young wife, Lucy Audley. She is the same age as his tomboy daughter, Alicia, and has no history. She is childlike, with blonde hair and blue eyes, but there is something in her personality that people seem to pull away from. Alicia especially dislikes her.

I will admit that the plot was pretty easy to figure out in the first few chapters which isn't necessarily a good thing in a "murder mystery" but it really is quite good. It's one of my favorite books I've read this semester and if you like murder stories or Victorian literature it is definitely a must read.

I am an Amazon Affiliate. If you make a purchase using one of my links I will earn a small percentage which will then go back into this blog.

Yesterday I went to Northside Book Market in Iowa City, otherwise known as the Haunted Book Shop. It was a spur of the moment stop-in but I'm so glad I went there! I got a nice stack of book, five for $20.

Included in my list is Tess of the D'Ubervilles by Thomas Hardy, Romola by George Eliot (which is impossible to find), Rotten Reviews Edited by Bill Henderson, The Bronte Sisters Quiz and Puzzle Book by Maggie Lane, and a copy of Jane Eyre from 1943 which I could not resist because it has fabulous illustrations. It's missing the dust cover, but you will see that you hardly need the dust cover when I show the what is on the cover of this book.

If you have read Jane Eyre then you will know that this is a representation of Lowood school, where Jane lives before she moves to Thornfield Hall. There are several other fabulous illustrations in this book and the type is double column rather than full page.

So if you couldn't tell already, I am super excited about this book because I am such a Jane Eyre lover. Thanks for listening, I think the book is pretty cool even if you don't like Jane Eyre. The illustrations are super creepy and I wonder if Dame Darcy looked at this book at all when she was making The Illustrated Jane Eyre, which I also own. I see a lot of similarities in the illustrations.

This week I posted reviews of The Jungle and Blue Bloods and a video about The Very Hungry Caterpillar. I asked a few questions about class presentations and posted a link to a funny post on Stereotyping Readers By Author. And since today is the last day of February I am going to post a list of all the books I read in February. I'm including one that I haven't finished yet, but will finish today or tomorrow so I basically read the whole book in February.

1. Love Letters of Great Women edited by Ursula Doyle (A)
2. The Secret History of the Pink Carnation by Lauren Willig (D)
3. The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins (B)
4. The Jungle by Upton Sinclair (B)
5. Blue Bloods by Melissa de la Cruz (C)
6. Ophelia Joined The Group Maidens Don't Float: Classic Lit Signs on to Facebook by Sarah Schmelling (A)
7. Lady Audley's Secret by Mary Elizabeth Braddon (A)
8. Now and Then by Jacqueline Sheehan

So far I have read 18 books in 2010, I wanted to get to 20 this month but February is a short month. I know I'll make it up during a light month. Tomorrow is my job interview, wish me luck!

The winner of of the Strand NYC bag is Lisa from Lit and Life. Congratulations Lisa and thanks to everyone else who entered! This bag is part of a giveaway from my trip to New York City.

Today's post is going to be short and sweet because I'm still recovering from my amazing Saturday. What made it so amazing? Here is a quick summary for you: Coffee with my friend Hanna, blogger at The Art Blotter. The fabulous Eula Biss reading (and cheese fries). Sharing Chinese food with the boyfriend. Camera Obscura concert! And finally, The Real Face of Jesus on the History Channel. Best. Day. Ever.

Here are the books I read in the amazing (reading wise) month of March.
1. Aurora Floyd by Mary Elizabeth Braddon (A)
2. Emma Volume Three by Kaoru Mori (A)
3. Dawn of the Dreadfuls by Steve Hockensmith (B)
4. The Creation of Eve by Lynn Cullen (A)
5. The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath (A)
6. Shortcomings by Adrian Tomine (A)
7. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou (A)
8. Proof by Seduction by Courtney Milan (B)
9. How to Read Literature Like a Professor by Thomas C. Foster (B)

Nine books! I was pretty happy with that. My favorite book was definitely The Creation of Eve with a close second being The Bell Jar. My least favorite was probably How to Read Literature Like a Professor, which I had high hopes for and they weren't quite fulfilled. Honestly though, I didn't dislike any book I read in March and I would recommend all of them!

Teaser Tuesdays is hosted by Should Be Reading.

This week's teaser is from Aurora Floyd by Mary Elizabeth Braddon. I'm about a fourth of the way into this book right now and I am quickly becoming obsessed with it. I've enjoyed the first part of the book even more than I enjoyed Lady Audley's Secret so I'm excited to see how the rest of the novel progresses!

"He could not help it! He loved her; not because he thought her better, or wiser, or lovelier, or more suited to him, than many other women,-indeed he had grave doubts upon every one of these points,-but because it was his destiny, he loved her." (75)

Teaser Tuesdays is hosted by Should Be Reading.

This week I'm rereading Lady Audley's Secret by Mary Elizabeth Braddon for my Sensation Fiction class. I love this book! Honestly I like it more than The Woman in White although I think most people would disagree with that opinion.

"We hear every day of murders committed in the country. Brutal and treacherous murders; slow, protracted agonies from poisons administered by some kindred hand; sudden and violent deaths by cruel blows, inflicted with a stake cut from some spreading oak, whose very shadow promised- peace." (54)

One of my favorite experiences as a reader is when everything you are reading starts to overlap. I had this experience this morning while reading And Only to Deceive by Tasha Alexander (which I'm loving now, it started a little slow). The main character, Emily Ashton, has been reading mostly Homer but randomly on one page she mentions that she is taking Lady Audley's Secret by Mary Elizabeth Braddon with her on her trip. I am also reading Lady Audley's Secret right now, so it was an exciting moment for me.

This was also very interesting for me because yesterday my professor was talking about sensation fiction, which is what Lady Audley's Secret is and how it was the first pulp fiction. There were stands at train stations where people could buy novels for entertainment, much like we do now at airports with books and trashy magazines. It was also considered dangerous for women to read these sorts of novels by many people because they thought it would cause too many "sensations." Sensation fiction is usually about murder, scandal, sex and the like. Since the Emily Ashton is a female character this made her reading Lady Audley's Secret even more interesting to me. Sometimes it's good be an English major.