Ochocientas ochenta y ocho páginas tiene mi edición de “La dama de blanco” y en ningún momento el libro me aburre o deja de mantener el suspenso de todo lo que sucede alrededor de esta impresionante novela escrita tan magistralmente por Wilkie Collins.
Son pocos los autores que pueden darse el lujo de lograr lo que Collins genera en sus novelas. Muchos aseguran que es una de las cinco mejores novelas de misterio jamás escrita y de hecho aseguran que su otra obra maestra, “La piedra lunar” la acompaña.
Wilkie Collins, un maestro de la novela de suspenso, dramaturgo y ensayista y además socio literario de otro gigante, Charles Dickens, logró fama y éxito a partir de "La piedra lunar" y se transformó en uno de los principales referentes de un género que hoy se sigue leyendo en todo el mundo y que adquiere adeptos en forma constante y sostenida.
La trama argumental de la novela es clara y aparentemente simple: “El joven profesor de dibujo Walter Hartright viaja a Cumberland para dar clases a dos jóvenes y ricas herederas, las hermanas Laura y Marian Fairlie. Laura se enamora de el pero los agradables días en Limmeridge House acaban con la llegada del prometido de Laura, Sir Percival Glyde. Este alberga la intención de arrebatarle toda su herencia y cuenta con la ayuda del siniestro conde Fosco para llevar a cabo sus planes. Solo se interpone en su camino una misteriosa dama vestida de blanco que, al parecer, ha escapado de un sanatorio mental..."
Narrada de forma similar a "La piedra lunar" a partir de testimonios, cartas, diarios y notas, el argumento de "La dama de blanco" gira alrededor de cinco personajes bien determinados: la hermosa Laura Fairlie, posteriormente lady Glyde, de su marido, el inescrupuloso y taimado sir Percival Glyde, del conde Fosco, un oscuro y tenebroso conde italiano que influencia a Percival y lo controla todo. Estos dos harán lo imposible para quedarse con la fortuna de Laura, pero ella no estará sola y tendrá quienes la ayuden y defiendan ante la injusticia: su hermana Marian Halcombe y el profesor de dibujo Walter Hartright, de quien a principios de la novela Laura se enamora.
Un toque más de maestría introduce Wilkie Collins en todo este entramado de misterio y es la aparición de Anne Catherick, una supuesta mujer escapada de un sanatorio mental que dice posee un secreto que puede desenmascarar el pasado de si Percival Glyde. El sólo hecho de incluir este elemento prácticamente al principio de la novela lo cambia todo y a partir de allí logrará que el lector se mantenga atento a todo lo que surja más adelante. Nunca, en ningún capítulo del libro ese interés decae, porque otros factores argumentales también influyen para mantener la intriga de cómo puede terminar todo.
Cuando parece que ya está la verdad a la vista surgen otros inconvenientes que le dan la vuelta de tuerca a la trama y eso es lo que pasa en las últimas cien páginas del libro.
Todo el desarrollo de la novela está centrado en tres lugares bien definidos que son la localidad de Limmeridge, en la mansión donde comienza a narrar la historia Walter Hartright, luego en Blackwater Park donde transcurren gran parte de los sucesos más importantes y también en la localidad de Cumberland, sede de distintos "descubrimientos" que Walter y Marian Halcombe realizan.
Cabe destacar que Wilkie Collins sabe cómo meterse en la piel de cada personaje. Puede ser un tipo inescrupuloso y despiadado como sir Percival Glyde, peligroso y ventajero como el conde Fosco pero también dulce y sensible tal es el caso de Laura Fairie o meterse dentro de la piel combativa de una mujer con todas las letras: Marian Halcombe.
Y por supuesto, Anne Catherick, la dama de blanco que le da el nombre a la novela, que es el personaje clave de todo este embrollo y que será quien haga encajar todas las piezas de un rompecabezas muy complejo ideado por el autor. Cada una de sus aperciones fantasmales harán que toda la escena cambie, alimentarán la intriga y provocarán una giro en la narración que no estaba contemplado.
Párrafo aparte para la encendida defensa que Collins hace de la mujer y de sus derechos ya en el año 1850 y de cómo, sin utilizar el término "feminismo" deja bien en claro lo que representan en este mundo las mujeres. Eso es algo a lo que presté mucha atención durante la lectura de muchos pasajes del libro.
Wilkie Collins escribió una excelente novela, tal vez, un peldaño por debajo de "La piedra lunar", pero no por ellos menos intrigante.
Repito, no es fácil sostener un suspense de casi novecientas páginas. Genialidades como ésta solo están destinadas a escritores tan únicos como Wilkie Collins.

‘La mujer de blanco’ sale por fin de mis libros pendientes caminando firme y elegante sobre una alfombra roja para dirigirse directo a mi lista de clásicos favoritos.
 
Escrita en 1895, esta larga novela tiene un papel muy especial dentro de la historia de la literatura puesto que se la considera una de las precursoras de las novelas de misterio y detectivescas. Y… es genial ver cómo a pesar de todo lo que se ha escrito desde entonces y todas las películas que hemos visto de detectives, los sucesos que narra aquí Wilkie Collins consiguen no solo tenerte pegada a sus cientos de páginas si no también sorprenderte.
 
Inspirada en un caso real, la trama se nos va a presentar a través de los testimonios escritos de diferentes personajes que se ven relacionados con un suceso. Cada uno de ellos aportará sus vivencias, narrando en detalle lo que lo recuerda y su percepción. De esta forma, el lector nunca tiene una visión completa de todo… hasta el final.
 
Al haber disfrutado tantísimo de la novela sin saber nada de lo que me iba a encontrar, os animo a hacer lo mismo, pero si os adelanto que encontraréis por supuesto un misterio con tintes góticos, historias de amor y amistad, lealtad incondicional y traiciones, avaricia y mentiras, investigación, muertes, largos viajes… ¡y mucho más! Además, con unos personajes que te harán dudar de todo (particularmente, hay un personaje taaaan perturbador como genial, que para mí sostiene gran parte de la novela). 
 
También puedo adelantaros que, como sucede en muchos clásicos británicos, tendremos como telón de fondo una muestra clara de la situación de indefensión que tenían las mujeres en relación con las herencias y los problemas a los que debían de enfrentarse si los intereses de sus maridos o familiares masculinos, iban por caminos diferentes a los suyos.
 
Una novela atmosférica con un estilo trabajado y elegante, con una trama muy bien construida, que se anima a hacer crítica a ciertas actitudes normalizadas en la época, que se cierra sin dejar ni un cabo suelto y que como decía antes, te lleva por caminos inesperados.

A buddy read on the side with the Non-crunchers – hold the pants.

Hark! This book is over 150 years old, but, still, spoilers be us.



-tSelling English by the pound.

This book has a lot going for it – a well-wrought plot, humor, some of literatures more enduring characters (Marian, Fosco, crazy Uncle Frederick), but it could have been cut down by a third and been one fine-tuned literary machine. I understand the book was serialized and that Wilkie Collins was probably being paid a tuppence-per-word and was best buds with the great Charles Dickens, who was a prodigious author in his own write (heh!), but, sir, you are no Stephen King, you should have trimmed this puppy down.

-tThe woman in white



Although Collins doesn’t give her a lot of page time, her presence permeates the book like that uncle of yours that slathers on Brut. He might be in another room, but you know he’s still on the premises – somewhere.

This book was written as a series of first person entries by a number of characters and divided into three epochs.

-tEpoch the first



Walter Hartright, is a sieve as a character and an artist, who lands a gig teaching art (of all things) to a pair of sisters. He falls in love with the cute, vapid one and despite some of the most achingly emo-boy prose you’ll ever read, has to keep it in his pants, because the cute, vapid one is betrothed to another. So he runs away to Central America where he sends her lots of sketches of what looks like a Honduran anaconda jumping out of a bush.

-tEpoch the second



I love Marian Halcombe, she’s smart, she’s got spunk, she’ll stand up for her family and friends, she’s got a fine bod, but Collins went ahead and gave her a face only a depraved, corpulent, balding, old, sociopathic, Italian Count (Fosco) would love. Plus, she apologizes for being a woman in Victorian society about 1.5 times for page:

If I wasn’t a woman, I’d cut that bitch, Countess Fosco.

If I wasn’t a woman, I’d kick Sir Perceval in the family jewels.

If I wasn’t a woman, I’d get stinking drunk and jump the gardener (or the maid).

-tEpoch the third



This is an olde type book so you won’t find a trail of bodies or Walter Hartright going ninja or a gangsta turf war, but it plays out in satisfactory way. So if you love the classics and haven’t gotten around to this one, I’d recommend it.

O livro " A Mulher de Branco" assim como em "Dràcula" faz uso de vários narradores , cartas e diários para contar uma história de ganância, interesse pessoal e traição. Mostra a insanidade como um meio de exclusão social e traz à tona o assunto da desigualdade e injustiças das leis vitorianas em relação ao matrimônio. A história começa em Hampstead, onde Walter Hartwright encontra uma mulher misteriosa que está vestida de branco. O nome dela é Anne Catherick, que acaba de escapar de um manicômio . Ela também tem uma semelhança impressionante com Laura Fairlie, membro da família Limmeridge em Cumberland, onde Walter vai ensinar desenho.
Walter e Laura se apaixonam, mas Laura cumpre uma promessa feita a seu pai, antes dele morrer , de se casar com Sir Percival Glyde , que na verdade só quer a fortuna de Laura. A partir daí a linda Laura corre perigo. De um lado tentarão protegê-la;sua meia irmã Marian Halcombe,e seu amor Walter Hartwrigh. Por outro lado ela terá um inimigo de peso (literalmente) o conde fosco , além é claro do ganancioso Sir Percival Glyde.
Quem é essa mulher de branco? Que segredo esconde
Sir Percival Glyde e o Conde Fosco. ?

Eis algumas curiosidades sobre o livro e o autor.
1- A heroína de Collins, Marian Halcombe, é um dos personagens mais inteligentes e corajosos da literatura mundial. Ela é respeitada e adorada por todos que a conhecem, ela não é bonita, e nosso vilão está apaixonado por ela.
2 - O livro foi originalmente publicado em uma revista literária semanal chamada All the Year Round, criada por Charles Dickens.
3- Henry James disse: “Ao Sr. Collins pertence o crédito de ter introduzido na ficção os mistérios mais misteriosos, os mistérios que estão à nossa porta”.

Enfim um livro fenomenal que nos prende até a última página.!

I read way too much Victorian stuff when I was little. Girls were always fainting and I would sit in church on Sundays, eyeing the altar boys and deciding which one’s arms I was going to faint into. It seemed such a romantic thing to do. On the other hand, the likelihood of ever fainting seemed poor. I didn’t have a clue how or why one would, let alone time it for when a loved one was standing, arms to the ready.

Subsequently, as an adult, I have done so a couple of times and it is nothing like the books make it out to be. Sigh.

The first time was 1994. I’d got up late morning – 1pm, to be exact and when you are a card playing type that IS still morning – smoked a joint and went to the shower – an over the bath affair. I stood there brushing my teeth and it occurred to me that I was going to pass out. ‘Interesting’, I thought, and went on brushing. I know the obvious thing with this warning would have been to sit down in the bath, or get out, but I’m not very good at the obvious. And I did indeed pass out quite directly. Unfortunately I hit my face on the taps on the way down, with a couple of cuts so deep they almost went right through my cheek. Where was the gallant guy who saves you as you faint? On duty somewhere else, I guess. I shakily got myself up and dressed and went down to my local doctor who sewed me up. Romantic it was not.

The second time was last night. No loved one then either, no chivalrous man to save me from myself. What’s the point of fainting if there is no one to save you? I’m doing something wrong here. My timing is shite. But it’s like I suspected when I was little. It was all very well fantasising about fainting into the arms of the cutest altarboy…but it’s all in the timing and how on earth was I going to get that right?

Bugger it. I’m giving up fainting. Consider it a belated New Year’s Eve resolution.

Loved, loved, LOVED this book. It's definitely in my top 5 for all time! I would love to hear from anyone else who has also read this. Not sure how I've missed knowing about it for so long - and I'm really gonna miss it!

Soooo, it's a 'classic' - written in the greatest time period ever (1850) and comparable to reading a really long Austen novel with a dark, suspenseful twist. Can you beat that?

I would recommend this to anyone who loves to read - savor and enjoy it!

DON'T READ THIS BOOK, unless you've got the patience, stamina, and requisite taste for a quintessential mid-Victorian novel. If you don't, you'll think The Woman in White is terribly overwrought and 500 pages too long. If you like Victorian writing, you'll think this is a well-drawn, balanced novel with characters to root for, characters to despise, a twisting plot that rolls up seamlessly, and narrated ingeniously from multiple points of view. If you're unsure whether you like or dislike Victorian writing, this book is an outstanding introductory choice, and it's one that I recommend unreservedly, to you and to my friends. Some facts in its favor: it was considered the first English sensation novel of the psychological mystery genre, has been continuously in print for 150 years, has a 4+ star rating from over 5700 Goodread reviews, and was written by a guy named Wilkie.

The most prominent, intrinsic hurdle of The Woman in White is the writing. If you haven't had exposure to authors such as Charles Dickens, Henry James, Victor Hugo, the Bronte sisters, Oliver Wendell Holmes, then you haven't been tested by fire with the length and circuitousness of Victorian writing. It could take a page or paragraph to describe how a character moved. It's at once beautiful, savory, complete, and exact. However, readers may complain that it's simply unnecessary verbiage. I'll give you an example:

I waited where I was, to ascertain whether his object was to come to close quarters and speak, on this occasion. To my surprise, he passed on rapidly, without saying a word, without even looking up in my face as he went by. This was such a complete inversion of the course of proceeding which I had every reason to expect on his part, that my curiosity, or rather my suspicion, was aroused, and I determined, on my side, to keep him cautiously in view, and to discover what the business might be on which he was now employed. (p. 503)

This could be easily rewritten as: I waited, but he passed me without a glance. His action surprised me, so I followed him to discover what his intentions were. If this was, in fact, how it was written, then the story would be 200 pages and selling as a cheap, mass-market paperback best read on a beach vacation. No, we read novels like The Woman in White first and foremost because of the writing--the convoluted but balanced thought, the investigation of intent from multiple sides, the uber-descriptive narrative that doesn't rest. If your thoughts tend to regurgitate and grind on situations that occur to you throughout the day, then you understand and enjoy this type of lilting writing that revisits a topic over and over again.

I find myself rereading with amazement and pleasure the skill of word and sentence placement. I think with a smirk what it'd be like today if we talked like this to each other: "Madame, may I question with all appropriate respect, &c, &c, if this book held betwixt my thumb and finger is, surely, the same novel as that penned by the indefatigable Wilkie Collins, esq., for if it is the veritable same, I intend with diligence, and without delay, at least delay on my part, not counting that which I may encounter on my ambulation home, to read immediately the book for which I inquire now, pray tell? Fantastic--not my writing--but the idea that we English speakers once talked like this, and could again if we read nothing but Victorian novels. I'd like to try a couple months with language like this around and about town today.

My favorite character, by a whimper, was Mr. Fairlie. What a pansy. But, written so humorously, each time he entered a scene my reaction was, "Oh geez, what ailment now." Mr. Hartwright was a sleuthing superstar, and since he predates Sherlock Holmes, I see a lot of similarity between the two, and can't help but wonder if Sir Arthur Conan Doyle based his character on Mr Hartwright. The team of Count Fosco and Percival Glyde were deeply written and their greed, bombast, and evil were delectable to the last. If anyone has read Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follet, tell me if I'm wrong to see a striking similarity between Follet's evil duo and Collins' team of Fosco and Glyde. Follet's portrayal of greed and evil fell flat, whereas Collins left you silently rooting for Fosco's escape. There's a few small problems with The Woman in White, but they're perfectly Victorian, yet personal peeves. For example, can a woman swoon from bad news and take months to recover? Can a person die from a broken heart? Small issues in a such a tightly woven story.

The Woman in White is a great mystery that kept me turning pages. I award 5 stars to less than 10% of the books I read, and Wilkie Collins' met that rarified degree. I liked the good characters, disliked the bad ones, and couldn't predict the ending until I got there; it's as simple as that.

Best lines about women:
1. Women can resist a man's love, a man's fame, a man's personal appearance, and a man's money; but they cannot resist a man's tongue, when he knows how to talk to them. Miriam's diary (p. 258)
2. "Human ingenuity, my friend, has hitherto only discovered two ways in which a man can manage a woman. One way is to knock her down--a method largely adopted by the brutal lower orders of the people, but utterly abhorrent to the refined and educated classes above them. The other way (much longer, much more difficult, but, in the end, not less certain) is never to accept a provocation at a woman's hands. It holds with animals, it holds with children, and it holds with women, who are nothing but children grown up." Evil Fosco (p.327)
3. "Where, in the history of the world, has a man of my order ever been found without a woman in the background, self-immolated on the altar of his life?" Evil Fosco (p. 629)

New words: frouzy, trumpery, glutinous

SPOILER ALERT because I'm sick of whiners leaving me comments.

Wow. This is supposed to be a classic mystery? The Woman in White was one of the most boring books I've ever read, and I've read a LOT of Victorian books. The plot is seriously that a woman marries a man she doesn't want to marry, and he stages her death to collect her fortune. YAWN. Am I supposed to be impressed that she followed through with her word to her father and married Sir Percival, even though she loved Walter? Nothing interesting happens for about 400 pages, something slightly interesting happens, and then nothing happens for another hundred pages. In fact, I'd guessed the end of the book before I was even halfway through.

The premise is that Walter Hartright is collecting information about the events from the people who witnessed them - I guess that is a clever way of writing a book, but there is no real purpose to this. He says it's so that he can have an accurate description of events so that he can prove his wife's true identity.

I don't know how things were back in the 1850's, but I have a very hard time believing that two women are SO IDENTICAL that NO ONE can tell that there was a switch.

Also, Collins's treatment of women is horrible. Laura is constantly fainting and having fits and losing her memory and doing things she doesn't want to do and then weeping about it - "dear me, I'm so helpless!" She's a wet rag, talentless, and boring, and I don't know why Hartright is in love with her. Marian is a much stronger character, but still, she's always saying things like, "I know I'm only a woman, but ..." I seriously thought that Marion would end up with Walter at the end. But, she's not very pretty, and I guess looks are more important than brains.

Seriously, I cannot believe I waded through this boring crap for four weeks. And then, I get to the end and there's a letter that was published in the newspaper about how Collins had his dates wrong! And that's what most of the book hinges on! Not to mention the fact that he could have told the story in about 400 fewer pages. Y-A-W-N!

Where I got the book: public domain freebie on Kindle.

This is one of those novels I've been promising myself I'd read for years. I was expecting a really creepy ghost story, but what I got surprised me.

The plot: this is one of those Victorian novels told through a series of documents, with several narrators giving their accounts of the tale. Drawing teacher Walter Hartright has a nighttime encounter with a woman in white, and later learns that she has escaped from an asylum. By an amazing coincidence (in true Victorian fashion, the plot depends on many unlikely coincidences) he is summoned to the north of England to teach drawing to a young woman, Laura, who bears a striking resemblance to the woman in white and who is engaged to a much older man, Sir Percival Glyde. Laura and Walter fall in love, and Walter does the honorable thing and takes himself out of the picture as he is clearly too poor and socially inferior to marry an heiress. Walter's cause is espoused by Laura's half-sister, Marian Halcombe, who later joins Laura and her new husband as they set up house with creepy Italian Count Fosco, whose wife is Laura's aunt. The woman in white remains at large and continues to warn Walter (when he returns from the obligatory Dangerous Overseas Journey), Marian and Laura about Sir Percival's and the Count's evil intentions.

Despite (or because of?) the inevitable Victorian tics of overly long descriptions, melodramatic touches and Amazing Coincidences, I found this to be a cracking good story. I was surprised to detect a feminist side to Collins; he is clearly sympathetic to the plight of the middle-to-upper-class Victorian woman, who either had to marry, often against her own inclination (Laura) or remain a spinster dependent on others for a home (Marian). I do wish, though, that Collins had not been quite so Victorian about the two women; he clearly portrays Laura as the only marriageable one of the two sisters because she is fair, delicate and doll-like where Marian is strong-featured (ugly, thinks Walter when he sees her) and strong-willed and therefore DOOMED to remain unmarried.

Alas, Laura comes across as wishy-washy while Marian is a superb Victorian heroine: resourceful, intelligent, kind and generous. Even though she is ready to take action on Laura's behalf, though, Marian is true to her time in her belief that they can accomplish nothing without the support of a Man of pretty much any description. A bit frustrating for a modern female reader, but there it is. Collins does a much better job than his contemporary and friend Dickens of portraying the sad truth of the female condition; I can't help feeling that (unlike Dickens, who is a thoroughgoing misogynist at heart), Collins really likes women and is keen to portray them well. With the exception of the Count (whose real gloriousness as a villain is, intriguingly, seen mostly through Marian's eyes) the really interesting people in this novel are the women.

I found The Woman in White to be quite a page-turner by the end, with reasonably intricate plotting that never became too convoluted to follow. I'm glad I read it, and wonder why I waited so long.

This is not a whodunit in the true sense - there is no nail-biting suspense and the big reveal at the end. But it is a very atmospheric mystery, eerie and engrossing. To be savoured slowly, like vintage single-malt.

I read The Moonstone and The Woman in White back-to-back recently, with a view to seeing how they struck me now that I have become something of a specialist in Wilkie Collins’s less visited works (Armadale, anyone? Basil? The Law and the Lady? The Dead Secret?) It seemed an interesting exercise to see whether Collins’s most celebrated works were leagues ahead of his near-forgotten backlist, or not.

My reaction in this experiment was interestingly differentiated (interestingly to me, at any rate). I was not particularly impressed by The Moonstone, whose reputation I suspect has survived mainly because it has a good claim to be the founding work of the detective novel genre. That gives it a certain historical interest, and it comes burnished by the recommendation of none other than T. S. Eliot, who described it as ‘the first and best of detective novels’—a claim the basis of which John Sutherland amusingly destroys in his crisp introduction to the Oxford World’s Classics edition.

Claims of historical priority aside, The Moonstone didn’t strike me as vintage Wilkie Collins. It makes good use of Collins’s clever device of having multiple narrators, with different viewpoints and styles, but it is low on standout characters, his great forte. The young lovers, Rachel Verinder and Franklin Blake, are underdeveloped, while the detective, Sergeant Cuff, doesn’t really have enough space to establish himself. I only really woke up, as a reader, in the presence of some of Collins’s signature Victorian misfits: the melancholy, disabled ex-thief and housemaid Rosanna Spearman and the intriguing, mixed-race, opium-addicted doctor’s assistant Ezra Jennings. These figures are only given bit parts, however, and they don’t emerge as fully-fledged characters in the same way as Miserrimus Dexter (The Law and the Lady) or Allan Armadale/Ozias Midwinter (Armadale.)

Where The Moonstone does score is in the interesting way in which it deals with Britain’s imperial heritage, symbolized by the Moonstone of the title—a gaudy, and valuable, gem for the Brits who fight over it, but a sacred, numinous object for the ‘Hindoo’ jugglers-in-disguise who come in search of it. Sutherland’s introduction to the edition I was reading teases out these political implications impeccably.

The Woman in White seemed to me far richer and better-realized than The Moonstone, and I think it would be my recommendation for anyone planning to approach Collins from scratch. The characterization is stronger here. The impecunious young artist, Walter Hartwright, emerges more vividly as romantic lead than Franklin Blake. Correspondingly, the slight insipidity of his love interest, Laura Fairlie, is more than compensated for by her ‘ugly’ but intellectually powerful and dynamic half-sister, Marian Halcombe, who is quite magnificent, especially at the beginning of the novel. It’s hard to think that it’s a pure matter of coincidence that she shares a forename with Marian, or Mary Anne, Evans—George Eliot, in other words.

The Woman in White can also boast surely one of the great villains of all time in Count Fosco. Although Fosco is not physically disabled, like some of Collins’s strongest characters, he shares with Marian a mismatch with gender expectations. Where Marian is characterized initially as ‘virile’ (while also sexy in a fulsome, corsetless way), there is something distinctly feminine about the gargantuan Fosco, with his taste for cakes and his delicate handling of his signature white mice. The interaction between this terrible twosome is what makes The Woman in White succeed so wonderfully—although the intricacy of the plotting also contributes.

My conclusion would be, I suppose, that, even if The Moonstone and The Women in White remain Collins’s best-known works, by a long chalk, they are not necessarily his greatest. I would counsel anyone thinking of starting on Collins to try The Woman in White first, followed by Armadale (I have yet to reread No Name, which I loved first time round). By that time, any reader should have quite a good idea whether this extraordinary novelist is for them.

Beware of spoilers!

What I learned from this book (in no particular order) :

1.tItalians are excitable, dedicated to the opera, and most likely to be involved with organized crime.

2.tBeware of fat, jolly Italian counts with submissive wives and fondness of white mice and canaries.

3.tWatch out if your newly wed husband lives in a stately pile with an abandoned wing full of creepy Elizabethan furniture. If the said ancestral house is surrounded by dark ponds and eerie woods, expect the worst.

4.tA Baronet is not always noble, and his impressive manor and estate might be mortgaged to the hilt. Instead of being the lady of the house, you might be forced to pay HIS debts. Make sure that the marriage settlement is settled in your favor before marrying.

5.tNever marry for convenience or enter into any legal agreement when you are:
a. under age;
b. sentimental and easily persuadable;
c. prone to swooning and fainting.

6.tIntelligent, resourceful women are likely to be mannish, and even actually HAVE a mustache, but are strong and have good figures. They can also be relied on to provide intelligent conversation when your beautiful but fragile wives are too busy swooning.

7.tShutting yourself up in a medieval vestry full of combustible materials with a candle for lighting is NOT advisable. Always have your minions do the dirty work.

8.tBeing ‘feeble in mind’ is enough reason to get you committed into an asylum for the mentally ill. So is knowing some secret that you might accidentally blurt out to strangers.

9.tYou CAN marry someone who is legally dead. Nobody bothered to check the civil registry records in those good old days.

10.tA ménage a trois is fun, but you have to marry at least ONE of them first to preserve Victorian propriety.


Postscript

Lately, I have received several personal messages that accused me, based on point#1 in my review above, of being prejudiced toward Italians --- something which couldn't be further from the truth. For those who hold such view, I would like to point out that my review is a parody which involves humorous, satiric or ironic imitations of the plot, characters or point of views set forth in the novel.The "This is what I learned" heading is a part of the whole exercise, and does not mean that I personally subscribe to the points enumerated therein. Obviously, I don't believe that "intelligent, resourceful women are likely to be mannish, and even actually HAVE a mustache" (point 6) or that "being ‘feeble in mind’ is enough reason to get you committed into an asylum for the mentally ill" (point 8) --- just as I don't believe that "Italians are excitable, dedicated to the opera, and most likely to be involved with organized crime".

I'm aware that my sense of humor is not to everyone's taste, but it has never been my intention to denigrate Italians or any other ethnic groups in this review (or any other review of mine).