Introduction

Lord Byron’s Descendants 81
Strange – strange that she should make the acquaintance of those two men
in the same day, almost in the same hour: the two, of all the human race,
who were to exercise so powerful an influence over her future life! (15)
Accordingly, she is confronted from the very beginning with the temptation of the
semiotic but is still too firmly positioned within the symbolic to act on it.
In the first part of the novel, she is presented as the lucky, successful heroine,
who is at the heart of love and domesticity. Carlyle meets Lady Isabel Vane for the
first time when he visits her father, Lord Mount Severn, in order to enquire about
the opportunity to buy his country estate East Lynne. His first impression of Lady
Isabel is described as follows:
Who – what – was it? Mr Carlyle looked, not quite sure whether it was a
human being: he almost thought it more like an angel.
A light, graceful, girlish form, a face of surpassing beauty, beauty that
is rarely seen, save from the imagination of a painter, dark shining curls falling
on her neck and shoulders smooth as a child’s, fair delicate arms decorated
with pearls, and a flowing dress of costly white lace. Altogether, the
vision did indeed look to the lawyer as one from a fairer world than this …
Mr Carlyle had not deemed himself a particular admirer of woman’s beauty,
but the extraordinary loveliness of the young girl before him nearly took
away his senses and his self-possession. (11)
Representing the perfect, delicate, fragile attributes of femininity, Isabel is already
depicted as a dependant, childlike woman. She is the embodiment of the ideal
notion of femininity. Immediately after her meeting with Mr Carlyle, she sets out
to visit old Mrs Levison, where she is introduced to Captain Francis Levison. He
is described as a “young and elegant man” (14). The narrator continues:
He was deemed handsome, with his clearly-cut features, his dark eyes, his
raven hair, and his white teeth: but, to a keen observer, those features had
not an attractive expression, and the dark eyes had a great knack of looking
away while he spoke to you …
Few men were so fascinating in manners (at times and seasons), in
face, and in form, few men won so completely upon their hearer’s ear, and
few were so heartless in their heart of hearts. The world courted him, and
society humoured him: for, though he was a graceless spendthrift, and it
was known that he was, he was the presumptive heir to the old and rich Sir
Peter Levison. (14-15)
While the outward characteristics, as the dark hair and eyes, and his masculine
features are still depicted as attractive and mesmerising, the repugnance and dangerousness
of this character is instantly established. Isabel cannot elude his charm.
A. Kaplan comments that a Christian undertone is used to demonstrate her dilemma;
thus, Isabel is linked to “the figure of Eve in the Garden of Eden and