Introduction

86
Vanessa Mangione
Through his presence and the attention he pays her, Isabel quickly recovers. She is
well aware of her feelings for him. Even more, the Byronic power has such an
effect on her that she starts to feel like a young and happy girl again:
She did not dare to analyse her feelings, but she was conscious that all the
fresh emotions of her youth had come again. The blue sky seemed as of the
sweetest sapphire, the green fields and the waving trees were of an emerald
brightness, the perfume of the flowers was more fragrant than any perfume
had yet seemed. She knew that the sky, that the grassy plains, the leafy trees,
the brilliant flowers were but as they ever had been … and she knew that
the change, the sensation of ecstasy, was in her own heart. No wonder that
she shrank from self-examination.
The change from listless languor to her present feelings brought the
hue and contour of health to her face far sooner than anything else could
have done. (209)
In case of Lady Isabel, the appearance of the Byronic hero does not only generate
repressed sexual passion, which she does not feel for her husband, but it simultaneously
seems to save her life. Where she did not improve under her husband’s
care, the mere presence of Sir Levison heals her.
For Isabel, Carlyle and Levison are representatives of the symbolic and semiotic;
her compliance with the symbolic almost led to her death. Repressed desire,
idleness, powerlessness, helplessness turn her into a mere shadow, a decorative
object, a child-like woman. Her inability to withstand Cornelia’s tyranny add to
her fading away. Wood obviously uses Isabel as an example of what happens to
women if they are too weak and incapable to defend themselves in an oppressive
patriarchal system; they turn into shadowy victims. Thus, the encounter with the
semiotic immediately revives Isabel’s will to live. However, Isabel is not yet willing
to give into the semiotic and to leave the symbolic; on the contrary, she tries to
fight it:
She knew – and she could not stifle the knowledge, however she might
wish to do so – that it was not the place or the sea-air which had renovated
her heart and her countenance. But she clasped her husband’s arm the
closer, and inwardly prayed for strength and power to thrust away from her
this dangerous foe, that was creeping on in guise so insidious. (210)
Wood obviously criticises the idea of the angel in the house and demonstrates
how impossible it is to fulfil this role. Through the example of Isabel, Wood reveals
the dangers if women are not allowed or not able to express themselves.
Isabel had married without love, because there was no other choice for a woman
in her position. As a married woman, she suffers not only from jealousy, but also
from isolation, boredom, lack of money, and powerlessness. “Her frustration and