Okay, so here goes the first post (spoilers may follow for Lady Audley's Secret):
As I've read Georgette Heyer's works (notably "These Old Shades" and "Frederica" among others), I find that Robert Audley really resembles some of the heroes in them. He's very laid-back and unassuming, until he gets his dander up and the cogs in his brain start to turn. Upon further research, it's interesting to find that "Lady Audley's Secret" came out in 1862 as opposed to Heyer's novels published in the 1920s-1970s. So it would seem that Braddon may have influenced Heyer's portrayals of male protagonists.
Further away from research, I'm struck by this dilemma: just how much of Lady Audley's behavior is perfectly merited? I won't explicitly reveal anything for those of you who haven't finished the book, but it was a question that I kept thinking about while reading it through to the end. A woman like her can't have had an easy time of it, and taken in light of some of the things women do today to climb the social ladder, her behavior is not at all "unusual." I would say she is opportunistic, but not that word that others in the novel have called her. How much of it is simply circumstance, the cultural norms of the Victorian period passing down judgment and confining her actions? How much of it is really premeditated cruelty?
