At the beginning of the novel Lady Audley was portrayed as a pretty, sweet face, and it was in her, “amiable and gentle nature always to be light- hearted, happy and contented under any circumstances”(10). The reader was given no insight into her internal feelings and was only told of her charming affectation. The book title hinted that Lady Audley was hiding something. The author exaggerated her secret and made the reader wait until it was uncovered completely. As the plot progressed, there was underlying foreshadowing that Lady Audley was not who she claimed to be. Many view Lady Audley’s deception as her taking control of the direction of her own life. In Lady Audley’s Secret , women are portrayed as strong and forceful, which was against the norm during the victorian era. I lost sympathy for Lady Audley mid way through reading the book when she started to hint at the secret she had been concealing all this time, thus making the plot suspenseful. I wanted her to reveal her secret so the story could move on but it was getting drawn out. Robert Audley was speaking to Lady Audley trying to delve deeper into her past. The more he finds out the more he realizes how much she is keeping from everyone. However, Lady Audley believes that she is still deceiving Robert and everyone else. He see’s through her, “triumphant smile… a smile plainly said, ‘It is coming- it is coming; I can twist him which way I like. I can put black before him, and if I say it is white, he will believe me”(240). She try’s to manipulate Sir Michael Audley and it becomes very apparent of her motive in this quote and in the rest of the novel, making it hard to sympathize with her.