Visual Bibliographies and Victorian Legal Evidence: Pinterest and Putting Mary Elizabeth Braddon’s...

VISUAL BIBLIOGRAPHIES & VICTORIAN LEGAL EVIDENCE

PINTEREST & PUTTING MARY ELIZABETH BRADDON’S LADY AUDLEY ON TRIAL

Lisa [email protected] || @lmhager || http://bit.ly/bwwc2016digped

Pronouns: she, her, hers & they, them, theirs

[email protected] || she, her, hers & they, them, theirs || @lmhager


• Explore how Lady Audley's Secret engages with Victorian ideas

of the detective, law, and punishment

• Examine the impact of Victorian gender politics on the genre of

sensation fiction

• Situate the power of the heterosexual family to co-opt challenges

to its centrality in Victorian life

• Consider how to make an argument through a combination of

text and images

• Reflect on the process of translating concepts expressed in

written language into a visual medium

PROJECT GOALS


https://www.pinterest.com/sclark1884/get-persuaded/





https://www.pinterest.com/haleymohler13/lady-audleys-secret-trail-board/





https://www.pinterest.com/ctgmcfly/lady-audleys-secret/

https://www.pinterest.com/ctgmcfly/lady-audleys-secret/


• The relationship between class, gender, sexuality, medicine,

transportation, technology, and media

• How do these concepts shape Lady Audley's crime and Robert

Audley's detection of it?

• Are there ways in which Lady Audley's punishment both just

and unjust (consider especially how she is constrained as a

woman)?

• How might the novel's ambivalent response (via Robert Audley

and narrator) to the Lady Audley and her crime be related to

how Victorian readers responded to the character of Lady Audley

(see the relevant Appendix)?

CONTENT QUESTIONS


Similarly, Harriet Taylor, in her article, “The Enfranchisement of Women,”

clearly describes men’s view of women during the Victorian era, saying, “If

we ask why the existence of one half of the [human] species is merely

ancillary to that of the other...the answer must be that it is because men

like it. It is agreeable to them that men should live for their own sake,

women for the sake of men” (Taylor 618). George, in the same way that

Taylor describes, completely lacks any thought of his wife being on equal

terms with him, able to counsel him and decide with him what course of

action their family should take, but instead, does what he likes, blindly

believing that his wife will do whatever is most convenient for him.

Braddon shows that women are just as human as men are, having their

own thoughts, feelings, and failings. (EK)

STUDENT ANALYSES


A family name was everything and if they had a good one, they were set for

life. In today’s terms, that would be like if I was related to a famous

celebrity, people would think more highly of me. (GW)

Victorian women were deprived of worth and value, and they were forced to

conform into society’s image of what an acceptable woman ought to be.

Ironically enough while Lady Audley was out stealing people’s identities/

using other people’s names, it is almost as if all Victorian woman were

getting wiped of their identities, and were being forced to be the same. (AR)

STUDENT ANALYSES


• How does seeing your pins together alter or inform your understanding of the

text?

• Did certain parts of the novel become more or less important to you? Did you

discover anything?

• How did participating in our class trial alter or inform your understanding of

the text?

• Was there an idea or piece of evidence that you wanted to talk about in the

trial but did not?

• Is there a piece of evidence that you wanted to rebut but were unable to do so?

• How did the participating in the trial and/or creating the board alter your

conceptions of early nineteenth-century literature?

PROCESS QUESTIONS


An idea I had after our trial was that Lady Audley would have faced a

traditional, criminal punishment, if she didn’t have her marriage status.

By having wealth it gives a power, a right or a privilege to hide from the

law. Lady Audley got lucky, because of this upper class she married into.

The insane asylum was a more appropriate option, rather than disgrace

put upon your family. (HM)

Before researching with my group about women’s rights and mental illness

in the Victorian era, I believed Lady Audley deserved a worse punishment

than she received. But after talking with my group about Lady Audley’s

situation, my view was changed. I realized that her husband’s desertion

was very unfair and hard to deal with, especially given her mental illness.

(EK)

STUDENT REFLECTIONS


it was enjoyable, it gave me a chance to reflect on the major themes within

the novel and relate them to pop culture. The assignment also let me

contemplate how themes like individualism vs. society, and progressivism

vs. traditionalism is relevant in many different pieces of pop culture. It

made me think about how pop culture like memes and music can allow for

ideas to be shared in a more concise way (opposed to books) and how this

new trend is aligned with the ever-increasing desire for instant

gratification with each passing generation. (JD)

STUDENT REFLECTIONS


I loved doing this Pinterest project. It was difficult at times but it helped

me understand the book more in a different way. Lady Audley’s Secret was

easier to understand than Persuasion, they had different writing styles but

it was still a little difficult. That’s why I like to do the Pinterest project

because I was able to break down the book and find the important parts

and expand on them. Seeing the pins together let me focus on the main

parts of the story because I couldn’t find a pin for everything that had

happened in the story

. . . The book is the denotative thing, and the making of the Pinterest

board, making one think deeply about scenes in the book, is the

connotative meaning. (GW)

STUDENT REFLECTIONS

Lisa Hager

[email protected] || @lmhager

she, her, hers & they, them, theirs

http://bit.ly/bwwc2016digped

Visual Bibliographies and Victorian Legal Evidence: Pinterest and Putting Mary Elizabeth Braddon’s...

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