« Taming the Shrew » : Mélodrame et représentation du désir dans Lady Audley’s Secret et Aurora Floyd par M. E. Braddon
The aim of this paper is to examine the question of the representation of desire and its symptoms in two melodramatic novels, namely Lady Audley’s Secret and Aurora Floyd by Mary Elizabeth Braddon, so as to highlight their generic specificity.Both novels spectacularly display desire in its highly vi...
Saved in:
| Main Author: | |
|---|---|
| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Presses Universitaires de la Méditerranée
2004-04-01
|
| Series: | Cahiers Victoriens et Edouardiens |
| Online Access: | https://journals.openedition.org/cve/16446 |
| Tags: |
Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
|
| Summary: | The aim of this paper is to examine the question of the representation of desire and its symptoms in two melodramatic novels, namely Lady Audley’s Secret and Aurora Floyd by Mary Elizabeth Braddon, so as to highlight their generic specificity.Both novels spectacularly display desire in its highly visual manifestations and in its realisations under the form of the challenge and transgression of the current moral and social rules. We shall thus focus on the privileged treatment of theatre and of stage-management in connection with the depiction of desire. Desire undoubtedly stands as a vehicle of dynamism and vitality which, taken to their climax, will lead us to consider the notions—potentially destructive for society—of excess and overflowing.The threat posed by desire is however circumscribed and mastered, and society ridden of its dangerous excesses, thanks to devices that are specific to the melodramatic genre. Although it is true that melodrama tends to favour the spectacular and the hyperbolic, it certainly privileges what may capture gazes, at the risk of remaining on the surface of things and beings. Besides, the constrained requisites of the genre, with its taste for stereotypes and conventional effects, seem to leave little space to the expression of a desire freed from its bonds, all the more so as the representation of desire is systematically played down through the technique of indirection and the use of mirror effects which put into perspective and keep at bay the symptoms of a newly tamed sexuality. |
|---|---|
| ISSN: | 0220-5610 2271-6149 |