In The Woman in White the main villains use insanity to discredit the main female victim and to conceal her true identity. In Lady Audley’s Secret insanity doesn’t become a factor until Lady Audley’s crimes are discovered. At that point she pulls the insanity card.
So insanity went from a weapon which male villains used against female victims in The Woman in White to a defense used by a female villain to stave off punishment in Lady Audley’s Secret.
This possibility of manipulating the system with an insanity plea is another difference in Lady Audley’s Secret. If Lady Audley is using her mother’s illness to manipulate the system, then it is easy to see why that would cause concern, particularly because women already typically received lighter punishments than men for similar crimes: "men were more often convicted of assault than women, and, when they were, received heavier penalties" (Farrall, 699).
Lady Audley’s quiet committal to an insane asylum highlights this disparity in punishments. In the asylum—despite her long list of crimes, including one resulting in the death of her former maid’s husband—Lady Audley receives almost everything she wants until her supposed death.
I personally think she is still alive.
Contrasted with Collins' uses insanity in The Woman in White, in which insanity is a weapon used by men against women to take advantage of their wealth, Lady Audley’s Secret's version of insanity was suddenly a very dangerous concept. In The Woman in White those who committed the crimes all died horrible deaths while Lady Audley escapes from any significant consequence.
Unsettling.
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