"Lady Audley's Secret" by Mary Elizabeth Braddon - Is Lady Audley mad?"Lady Audley's Secret" by Mary Elizabeth Braddon was published in 1861 and was a great success: a best-seller that sold over a million copies in book form. The protagonist, Helen Maldon - also known as Helen Talboys, Lucy Graham and Lady Audley - is a poor, beautiful young woman when she marries the dragoon George Talboys, but her money only lasts one year of luxury. When he can no longer offer her the life she has always wanted - and to which he has now become accustomed - she becomes angry and depressed, and George Talboys leaves the country to search for gold so he can make his young wife with his newborn baby. the child is happy again. Not long after her husband sets sail for Australia, Helen Talboys decides that she has had enough of the boring life she leads with her father and son and wants to try to find the things she misses on her own. She sees an opportunity to start over and seizes it: she leaves her daughter, changes her name and leaves as a governess. When the wealthy Sir Michael Audley proposes to her, she accepts and moves from the life of a governess to that of a Lady. The Lady Audley we know is a woman who is sure of what she wants and who doesn't let anyone stop her, which in the book is described as the acts of a madwoman. But is Lady Audley really crazy or simply too ambitious and self-confident for the Victorian era? Was “Madness” simply the label society attached to female achievement, ambition, self-interest, and indignation? To discuss the issue of Lady Audley's madness, we must first understand Victorian ideas and beliefs regarding madness. Insanity was believed to be more common among women than men, and doctors and psychiatrists debated why. A common view was that women were more vulnerable to madness than men due to the "instability of their reproductive system" (Showalter, p 55), which interfered with their emotional control. It was a common belief that female madness was linked to biological crises in the female life cycle - puberty, pregnancy, childbirth and menopause - during which the female mind was weakened and symptoms of madness could emerge (Showalter, p 55). It should be noted that medical professions were strictly reserved for men and undoubtedly all these theories were invented by men, with little experience of menstruation, pregnancy or menopause.