Important:
No AI writing.
No plagiarism.
MLA format.
2 pages with two credible sources.
The introduction is only three sentences, and
the rest focuses on the topic.
A wicked villain or oppressed ambitious:
Isabel Sleaford in The Doctor’s wife By Braddon
–
The Doctor’s Wife by Mary Elizabeth Braddon is oddly lacking in the
most dramatic elements of sensational novels.
–
Isabel Sleaford lives in a dream world where
people from Dickens, Scott, and Thackeray’s books live. She wants to leave her
tedious job as a governor for kids and live the exciting life of one of the
main characters in the books she loves. When parish doctor George Gilbert asks
her to marry him, she says yes. However, she soon realizes her marriage
isn’t giving her the excitement and drama she hopes for. Nothing close
enough to the amazing passionate love stories and novels she has been obsessed
with. She wanted a hero or a real Byronic hero to save her and fall
in love passionately with. And to live in an aristocratic home. George is a good man, but Isabel thinks he’s
dull because he’s realistic and down-to-earth. She is even more unhappy after meeting Roland Lansdell, Mordred Priory’s owner. Roland is passionate,
artistic, and creative, which is to say that he is everything George
isn’t. The main point of The Doctor’s Wife is how Isabel Gilbert changes from a
dreamy girl with her head in the clouds to a reasonable, grown-up woman. She
was childish and foolish, wishing she would get sick or have something bad
happen to her just to have some excitement in her life. However, as
several other characters pointed out, she wasn’t a bad person, just silly
and immature. Sadly, her love ideas and goals were getting in the way
of her happiness.
–
Due to Isabel’s reading, almost every page references characters
and events from other books, plays, and poems, most of which I haven’t read. I
kept having to look at the notes at the back of the book until I decided I
could follow the story without understanding all the references to Edith Dombey
and Ernest Maltravers.
–
She fell deeply in love with Roland Landsell, so she emotionally gave him all her heart and mind. However, she said she didn’t
cheat on her husband and repeatedly said, “he is good to me.” So is she
just ambitious, selfish, or immature and foolish, or is she a wicked wife?
The Doctor’s Wife is a radical departure from
the type of fiction Miss Braddon had previously written. It has temptation
instead of crime, psychological analysis instead of suspense, and, more
remarkably, atmosphere, nostalgia, and sentiment. George Moore called this
novel “a derivative of Madame Bovary,” found in its heroine Emma
Bovary in ready-made English dress, and several aspects of his own novel which
have till now been taken as borrowings from Flaubert, derive in fact from Miss Braddon.
( Heywood Article)