Lady Audley and a Doll: Close Reading of a Passage

Pg. 225 of 2012 Oxford Edition

“‘He is in love with my stop-mother’s wax-doll beauty,’ thought Alicia, ‘and it is for her sake he has become such a disconsolate object. . . . That slow lump of torpidity he calls his heart can beat, I suppose, once in a quarter of a century: but it seems that nothing but a blue-eyed wax-doll can set it going. I should have given him up long ago if I’d known that his ideal of beauty was to be found in a toy-shop.’”

In this passage, Alicia Audley describes Lady Audley as a “wax-doll” whose beauty could be “found in a toy-shop.” There are different ways to look at this passage. One way to look at this is that by comparing Lady Audley’s beauty to that of a doll’s, it can be said that Alicia is saying Lady Audley’s beauty is unreal; the woman’s beauty is fake just as the doll’s is. Another way to look at this is that Alicia thinks that Lady Audley is only good for her beauty. One of a doll’s main purposes is to look pretty on a shelf (at least when they are the expensive kind). By comparing Lady Audley to a doll, Alicia is stating that Lady Audley is good for standing there and looking pretty.

What I find most interesting about the comparison is that dolls don’t have feelings; they are emotionless. They may have a smile on their face but it is fake, only put there for the owner’s sake. It can be argued that Lady Audley does not have sympathetic or empathetic capabilities. Just like a doll, Lady Audley will put on a fake smile but will not actually feel any emotions toward someone unless that person threatens her own happiness. Lady Audley does have emotions but they are very much watered down when it comes to having any feelings for others. Lady Audley is like a doll in the sense that she does not feel for others just as a doll does not feel at all.  

Alicia Audley, in saying that Lady Audley has a doll like beauty, has given Lady Audley the biggest insult.