ABSTRACT
In The Law and the Lady, Collins continues his critique of woman’s commodification, going even further this time in his flirtation with the Gothic. Although there is no echo of the motif of the double in Armadale, female shadows haunt The Law and the Lady, turning the heroine’s investigation into her husband’s past into a Radcliffean quest into femininity. If Mrs. Milroy figured as a grotesque picture of the commodified woman in Armadale, in The Law and the Lady a plain female character anxious about her personal appearance lays the foundations of the plot. Interestingly, Collins strongly relies on stereotypical Gothic imagery and gives a morbid tinge to the ideal complexion of the Victorian angel. Like Bluebeard’s wives, Collins’s female characters experience male cruelty and strive to transform themselves to please men—even when the remedies are lethal. While the novel’s main secret lies in a dead woman’s toilet case among her cosmetics, the deciphering of the enigma involves decoding the signs of femininity as so many incriminating clues paving the way for the truth.
