The following graph and word clouds show which words Lady Audley uses most frequently in the novel. This research has been carried out on Voyant-tools.org, which is a tool that reads and analyzes digital texts, and on Wordclouds.com, a tool for creating word clouds. In order to simplify the search on Voyant, each chapter has been assigned a number. The following table shows the correspondence between the chapters and the numbers on the abscissa.

Among the words represented in figure 2, the word mad is of particular interest. As the following graph shows more clearly, its frequency starts increasing from chapter XXV. Then it suddenly shoots up towards the end of the novel, more precisely right after chapter XXXV.

It is safe to assume that Lady Audley is either referring to herself or talking about somebody else, whom she depicts as mad. However, these are just raw figures and this graph does not provide any information about the recipient. It is therefore best to take a look at the data and do some close reading. For this purpose, all the instances in which the word mad is used by Lady Audley have been grouped in the following table; such instances will be referred to as concordance lines.

A closer analysis of the concordance lines shows that at the beginning of the novel Lady Audley uses the word mad to refer to other people, e.g. Robert Audley and Phoebe Marks; but as the story progresses, a shift occurs: from chapter XXXIV (concordance line no. 24), Lady Audley starts using the word mad in reference to herself.

Interestingly, at the beginning of the novel, more precisely during the first eight chapters, Lady Audley never mentions the names George and Talboys, which only appear in chapter XI. George Talboys has already gone missing by the time Lady Audley mentions him. This plausibly shows just how far removed from her new life her first husband was.

Another interesting observation is that the word dear is used many times until chapter XXXI; here its frequency falls dramatically and the term is hardly used again in the remaining chapters. Not surprisingly, this is also the part in which Lady Audley’s identity is revealed. This would thus imply that the word dear was part of the facade of kindness Lady Audley had been trying to display up until that point.