Monomania and Same-Sex Desires in Braddon's Lady Audley's Secret (1862)

Abstract

Mary Elizabeth Braddon’s Lady Audley’s Secret (1862) diagnoses Robert Audley as a monomaniac. With interest in psychiatry rising in nineteenth-century Britain, “monomania” was used to describe those who went against the norm. More specifically, it was used to describe those who had an obsessive interest in one subject. Robert’s monomaniacal nature arises from the homoerotic feelings he feels for his friend, George Talboys. After meeting George years later after their time at Eton College, a school that encouraged male love, Robert undergoes a journey to understand his homoerotic desire after George goes missing. By looking at the works of John Barlow, Jean-Étienne Dominique Esquirol, and James Cowles Prichard, I show how Braddon’s knowledge and usage of psychiatry can be seen and examined in her novel about marriage and desire In addition, I argue that Braddon demonstrates how Victorian ideas of masculinity and biblical manhood are intertwined within definitions of monomania and that these gendered concepts affect Robert as much as his psychological diagnosis.