Aurora Floyd

With Lady Audley's Secret, Mary Elizabeth Braddon had established herself, alongside Wilkie Collins and Mrs Henry Wood, as one of the ruling triumvirate of 'sensation novelists'. Aurora Floyd (1862-3), following hot on its heels, achieved almost equal popularity and notoriety. Like Lady Audley, Aurora is a beautiful young woman bigamously married and threatened with exposure by a blackmailer. But in Aurora Floyd, and in many of the novels written in imitation of it, bigamy is little more than a euphemism, a device to enable the heroine, and vicariously the reader, to enjoy the forbidden sweets of adultery without adulterous intentions. Passionate, sometimes violent, Aurora does succeed in enjoying them, her desires scarcely chastened by her disastrous first marriage. She represents a challenge to the mid-Victorian sexual code, and particularly to the feminine ideal of simpering, angelic young ladyhood. P. D. Edward's introduction evaluates the novel's leading place among 'bigamy-novels' and Braddon's treatment of the power struggle between the sexes, as well as considering the similarities between the author and her heroine.

ISBN 0199555168   Weight (grammes) 359 ISBN13 9780199555161 (What's this?)   Published in Oxford Publisher Oxford University Press   Series title Oxford World's Classics Imprint Oxford University Press   Previous ISBN 9780192837271 Format Paperback   Height (mm) 196 Publication date 11 Dec 2008   Width (mm) 128 DEWEY 823.8   Spine width (mm) 25 DEWEY edition DC21   Academic level General Pages 512

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