The Doctor’s Wife by Mary Elizabeth Braddon

This is one of the Victorian “Sensationist” Mary Elizabeth Braddon’s many novels (best known among them: “Lady Audley’s Secret”). It is extremely well written, fluid, humorous and, in places, self-mocking: one of the main characters is a Sensation Author. The motifs of the-woman-with-a-secret, adultery, and death are classic “sensationist” material. Yet this is also a self-consciously serious work of literature, taking on various social themes of the day. Specifically, Braddon presents the psychological struggle and cognitive dissonance which are the inevitable plight of the married middle-class woman with a strong sense of self, who is essentially constrained to live the life of her husband. In this, it echoes Flaubert’s “Madame Bovary.”The heroine, Isabel Sleaford, was driven early in her childhood to bury herself in, and develop her sense of self through, romantic novels and poetry. She is thus ill-adapted to the conventional, provincial structures and strictures laid upon her when ...

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Episodes

11 - Chapter 11

Saturday Dec 23, 2023

Saturday Dec 23, 2023

12 - Chapter 12

Friday Dec 22, 2023

Friday Dec 22, 2023

13 - Chapter 13

Thursday Dec 21, 2023

Thursday Dec 21, 2023

14 - Chapter 14

Wednesday Dec 20, 2023

Wednesday Dec 20, 2023

15 - Chapter 15

Tuesday Dec 19, 2023

Tuesday Dec 19, 2023

16 - Chapter 16

Monday Dec 18, 2023

Monday Dec 18, 2023

17 - Chapter 17

Sunday Dec 17, 2023

Sunday Dec 17, 2023

18 - Chapter 18

Saturday Dec 16, 2023

Saturday Dec 16, 2023

19 - Chapter 19

Friday Dec 15, 2023

Friday Dec 15, 2023

20 - Chapter 20

Thursday Dec 14, 2023

Thursday Dec 14, 2023

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