Female Self-determination in Victorian Britain: Finding the parellels between Mary Elizabeth Braddon's Lady Audley's Secret (1862) and Dante Gabriel Rossetti's Proserpine (1874) by Sez Maxted

The gender history of nineteenth-century Britain can be seen as a gradual but determined female challenge against an overarching patriarchal model with the period witnessing changes in ideas respecting gender relations towards a more modern notion of gender equality. With male power enforcing female dependency, and parliamentary franchise withheld from women, the right to non-discrimination on the grounds of gender was far from achieved. However, there were some positive changes in both knowledge and practice. This essay will first suggest that Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s Proserpine, 1874 (figure 1), and Mary Elizabeth Braddon’s novel Lady Audley’s Secret, serialised in Sixpenny Magazine, and published in three volumes in 1862, reflected the changing attitudes. It will further explore the strong parallels between Proserpine and Lady Audley, both of whom are linked through their challenge of the deeply held Victorian belief in the sanctity of the home and domestic peace, capitalising on the contemporary anxieties about femininity.