ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on Isabel and Archibald Carlyle's marriage, which is blown apart by crowding, elopement and infidelity. In order to examine the principal marriage in East Lynne, a brief appreciation of Archibald's courtship of Isabel is essential to an understanding of their dysfunctional, crowded and fractured union. Ellen Wood's narrative moves quickly through an unconventionally short courtship, engagement and marriage to honeymoon. Archibald Carlyle, an upwardly mobile, middle-class and provincial lawyer buys a small estate from the Earl of Mount Severn, Lady Isabel Vane's father. Barbara Hare and Francis Levison are the romantic rivals who overcrowd the Carlyle marriage. The role of female jealousy introduces another tension into the Carlyle marriage. The reason Ellen Wood is so clever with the thread of discord in the crowded Carlyle marriage is the way in which she uses below stairs gossip to reinforce her message.
