East Lynne

Wood chooses not to depict the immediate aftermath of Isabel’s elopement but rather jumps ahead nearly a year. This allows her to focus on a time when regret and grief have fully set in for Isabel. Given the scandalousness of Isabel’s behavior by Victorian standards, it was important that Wood’s novel in no way appear to endorse Isabel’s actions, and the narrator uses direct address to provide a vehement warning to readers (who are presumed to be women): “Oh, reader, believe me! Lady—wife—mother! Should you ever be tempted to abandon your home, so will you waken!” (334). The plot of the novel, especially at this juncture, functions almost as a parable, warning other women of the unhappiness that lies in wait should they breach social and moral conventions.

Isabel doesn’t just suffer the emotional torment of regret but also financial and legal precarity, developing the theme of The Anxieties and Opportunities of Unstable Social Positions. Francis reveals his villainous nature by withholding the information that the divorce has been finalized and then by outright refusing to marry her; these decisions disenfranchise both Isabel and their infant son, who will now be subject to the social stigma of illegitimacy. When Isabel breaches her marriage contract, she forfeits the social, legal, and financial protection that marriage afforded a woman in the Victorian era. Her vulnerability is heightened because of the limited employment options available; when Lord Mount Severn comes to see her in France, he refers anxiously to his desire to “to take care—so far as I can—that you do not lapse lower” (335), alluding to the specter of Isabel resorting to sex work to sustain herself and her child. As a “fallen woman” who has born a child out of wedlock, sex work would be the only category of activity more stigmatized than what she has already done, but there might genuinely be no other way for her to support herself. Isabel’s refusal to take money from Francis and her declaration, “I will earn my own living” (361), reflect a new independence and resolve in her character, revealing that she will no longer tolerate being subject to men who can renege on their promises.

The train accident that allows Isabel to assume a new identity reflects the presence of modern technology in sensation fiction. The expansion of railway networks in the latter half of the 19th century made it possible to travel much more rapidly, but serious accidents were not uncommon (Charles Dickens was injured and traumatized after he was involved in a serious train accident in 1865). The accident symbolizes the threats of modernity and rapidly change, particularly as they relate to anonymity and the breakdown of communal ties in an increasingly urbanized and industrialized world. The community of West Lynne is small and close-knit, and the histories of those who live there are well-known. Madame Vine can infiltrate the community as a stranger and pass unrecognized because of her changed appearance—a direct consequence of the accident. At the same time, her changed appearance symbolizes how individuals may always be hiding secrets, even from those nearest to them. Isabel’s identity becomes unrecognizable because her emotions and experiences were once likewise hidden and invisible.

Meanwhile, Isabel’s apparent death creates the opportunity for her greatest fear to unfold: Barbara takes her place as Archibald’s wife and stepmother to Isabel’s children. This development lends an ironic twist to the novel’s depiction of False Perceptions of Innocence and Guilt and interrogates what such categories even mean in the context of a society that permits divorce. Archibald pursues a divorce as soon as Isabel leaves him, and he is legally able to remarry as soon as that divorce is granted. However, Archibald’s refusal to do so reflects the complex and ambiguous status of divorced individuals in this time period: He chooses to abide by a moral and religious statute rather than a legal one, refusing to marry so long as (to his knowledge) Isabel is alive. These events allow Wood to incorporate a plotline that flirts with bigamy. Since Isabel is not actually dead, Archibald would consider his second marriage to Barbara morally invalid even though it is legally sound. Bigamy (often due to mistaken identities or characters faking their own deaths) was a plot device often used to add melodrama to sensation novels; for example, in Lady Audley’s Secret by Mary Elizabeth Braddon, the protagonist does in fact find herself married to two men at the same time.

In contrast to Isabel’s repentant suffering and Barbara’s blissful new marriage, this section also introduces Afy, who functions as a counterpoint to both of them and a different model of Victorian femininity. Afy’s full name, “Aphrodite,” references the Greek goddess of love and thus alludes to her status as a flirt and an object of desire to many men. Her sexual transgressiveness goes hand in hand with an independent streak that was seen as unfeminine at the time. Despite being willing to juggle multiple suitors, Afy seems to genuinely thrive as a single woman, proclaiming “catch me marrying […] I like my liberty too well” (383). In addition to her frank sense of sexual agency, Afy occupies a liminal class position, relying on employment to earn a living but outfitting herself ostentatiously in the latest fashions. Her refusal to fit neatly into the Victorian social hierarchy foreshadows the class ambiguity associated with the figure of the governess in general and with Madame Vine in particular.