A Life Sentence
A Victorian Domestic Suspense of Family Secrecy, Social Judgment, Private Guilt, and Emotional EnduranceBy Adeline Sergeant
Length16h 18m
About this audiobook
Adeline Sergeant's *A Life Sentence* is a late-Victorian novel of crime, conscience, and social judgment, examining how a single transgression can impose a lasting burden upon both the individual and those connected with him. Its title operates literally and metaphorically: legal punishment is set against the more pervasive sentences created by secrecy, shame, memory, and public opinion. Sergeant combines the narrative momentum of popular romance with the ethical seriousness of the problem novel, moving between domestic feeling, psychological conflict, and moral debate. The work belongs to a period increasingly concerned with prisons, rehabilitation, inherited guilt, and the restrictive codes governing respectable life, while its emphasis on emotional consequence gives it the intimate intensity of Victorian domestic fiction. Adeline Sergeant (1851–1904) was a remarkably prolific English novelist whose fiction repeatedly addressed religious doubt, social responsibility, gendered expectations, and the difficult relation between private motives and public conduct. Writing during a period when women novelists were expanding the possibilities of popular fiction, she used accessible plots to explore questions of conscience and moral agency. Her interest in the pressures exerted by family, reputation, and conventional morality helps explain the sustained ethical and psychological focus of this novel. Readers interested in Victorian social fiction, women's writing, and the literary treatment of crime and punishment will find *A Life Sentence* particularly rewarding. It offers both the narrative appeal of suspenseful domestic fiction and a thoughtful study of how society constructs guilt, responsibility, and redemption.
Audiobook details
GenreLiterary Classics, Mystery and Thriller
Length16 hrs 18 mins
Narrated byListen with 1,000+ voices
FormateBook with Audio
Publish dateNov 30, 2023
LanguageEnglish
Table of contents
1Elster's Folly
26CHAPTER XXV.
2CHAPTER I.
27CHAPTER XXVI.
3CHAPTER II.
28CHAPTER XXVII.
4CHAPTER III.
29CHAPTER XXVIII.
5CHAPTER IV.
30CHAPTER XXIX.
Show all chaptersShow less
6CHAPTER V.
31CHAPTER XXX.
7CHAPTER VI.
32CHAPTER XXXI.
8CHAPTER VII.
33CHAPTER XXXII.
9CHAPTER VIII.
34CHAPTER XXXIII.
10CHAPTER IX.
35CHAPTER XXXIV.
11CHAPTER X.
36CHAPTER XXXV.
12CHAPTER XI.
37CHAPTER XXXVI.
13CHAPTER XII.
38CHAPTER XXXVII.
14CHAPTER XIII.
39CHAPTER XXXVIII.
15CHAPTER XIV.
40CHAPTER XXXIX.
16CHAPTER XV.
41CHAPTER XL.
17CHAPTER XVI.
42CHAPTER XLI.
18CHAPTER XVII.
43CHAPTER XLII.
19CHAPTER XVIII.
44CHAPTER XLIII.
20CHAPTER XIX.
45CHAPTER XLIV.
21CHAPTER XX.
46CHAPTER XLV.
22CHAPTER XXI.
47CHAPTER XLVI.
23CHAPTER XXII.
48CHAPTER XLVII.
24CHAPTER XXIII.
49CHAPTER XLVIII.
25CHAPTER XXIV.
50CHAPTER XLIX.
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