The World's Popular Classics
15 primary works
Book 34
Book 35
Book 36
Book 37
Book 37
Book 38
Book 38
Book 39
Book 39
Book 40
Book 41
Book 42
Book 43
Book 44
Book 45
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.
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