Introduction

Lord Byron’s Descendants 89
standings can easily occur. Mangham continues by pointing out that although
Carlyle is “hardly the deceptive tyrant” the “lack of communication between him
and Isabel (as augmented by his professional status) is a significant factor in the
breakdown of his marriage” (136).
Furthermore, A. Kaplan argues that Isabel seeks a “satisfaction of a passionate,
merging feeling” that she experiences a “desire for the loss of the self in the
Other” (38). Carlyle’s calm, distanced and rational character prevent such a kind
of merging. Levison’s seductiveness, on the other hand, and “his own desire to
possess [her] make such a projection easy” (38). As Isabel stands to Carlyle as a
child to a wise and overawing father, she is afraid of telling Carlyle of her attraction
to Levison or of Cornelia’s abuses; she is unable to reveal her secrets:
[His] strong arm of shelter round her; a powerful pillar of protection, him
upon whom she leaned; why did she not confide herself to him as trustingly
as a little child? Simply because her courage failed. Once, twice, the opining
words were upon her lips, but come forth they did not; and then the carriage
stopped at East Lynne, and the opportunity was over. (225)
McCusky comments here that “again and again the failure to speak candidly, even
from the best of motives, ultimately erodes individual trust and leads to disaster”
(372).
Langbauer also notes Carlyle’s shortcomings, although Wood obviously tried
to create the “perfect” male, which she “pieced together by changing emphasis on
old literary clichés of gender”, thus, she “makes him authoritative, say, rather than
overbearing” (240). Although Carlyle fails in the end to live up to the idea of the
‘perfect’ male, Wood’s attempt to create a different character demonstrates the
need to do so: “[The] attempt to transform what may be an inevitable patriarchal
grammar through new inflections reveals the oppressiveness of its categories even
while failing to transform them” (240). Thus, East Lynne implies that Carlyle’s
bourgeois standard of living is the true cause of Isabel’s fall. Pykett comments that
in sensation fiction “men and women are shown as being foreign countries to
each other … In such narratives marriage, the presumed site of union and mutual
understanding, is revealed as, in fact, a state of mutual isolation, secrecy, and misunderstanding”
(50). This notion can obviously be applied to Carlyle’s and Isabel’s
marriage.
4.4 The Byronic Hero as the Seductive Villain
When Isabel finally gives in to her passion for Levison, she is governed by enraged
feelings of jealousy and revenge on seeing Carlyle and Barbara together in
the dark. Levison, who is with Isabel, finally reveals his true colours by supporting
Isabel’s suspicion through lies. He tells her that he saw her husband and Barbara
Hare enjoying a tête-à-tête by moonlight (271). His role as an evil seducer, a vilified