EXCERPT: 'In one moment, every drop of blood in my body was brought to a stop... There, as if it had that moment sprung out of the earth, stood the figure of a solitary Woman, dressed from head to foot in white'

ABOUT THIS BOOK: The Woman in White famously opens with Walter Hartright's eerie encounter on a moonlit London road. Engaged as a drawing master to the beautiful Laura Fairlie, Walter becomes embroiled in the sinister intrigues of Sir Percival Glyde and his 'charming' friend Count Fosco, who has a taste for white mice, vanilla bonbons, and poison. Pursuing questions of identity and insanity along the paths and corridors of English country houses and the madhouse, The Woman in White is the first and most influential of the Victorian genre that combined Gothic horror with psychological realism.

MY THOUGHTS: There is some beautifully evocative writing at the start of the book that had me almost salivating. It was promising a deliciously creepy read. . . that never happened.

I believe that The Woman in White was first published as a serial in 1859, which may explain it's interminable length. Yes, I have read longer books, and enjoyed them, but the Woman in White seems even longer than its 672 pages. It could easily do with losing at least one third of its length. There is so much irrelevant information thrown at the reader that I completely missed out on the connection between Laura Fairlie (Lady Glyde) and the ill-fated Anne Catherick until, frustrated at the end (but oh so glad to be there!) I turned to the Internet to search for the information.

The story itself has many narrators, which Collins himself points out in the preface, and so we get multiple versions of the same story to little effect, a little like listening to the witnesses in a court case where they are all determined to present themselves and their motives in the best possible light.

The characters are largely vapid (insipid, uninspired, colourless, uninteresting, feeble, flat, dead, dull, boring, tedious, tired, unexciting, uninspiring, unimaginative, lifeless, zestless, spiritless, sterile, anaemic, tame, bloodless, jejune, vacuous, bland, stale, trite, pallid, wishy-washy, watery, tasteless, milk-and-water, flavourless).

The story itself, when cut down to its bare bones, is rather clever and focuses on the lack of rights of married women at the time. Honestly? I would love to see this rewritten by Stephen King because, other than the first encounter between Walter Hartright and the woman in white, there is no creepiness whatsoever and I fail to understand how this can be classified as Gothic Horror.

Finally! I was able to read a classic after so long! The story is remarkable, and I loved it right from the get-go, but after a certain point, I felt bogged down by the length. I didn’t mind much at first, since I remembered a friend mentioning how the older that she gets, the more she prefers to savor her books. That was a good reminder for me, and I was savoring it for quite a while. It got boring after a certain point. I’m not sure how necessary it was to stretch it out for that long. However, I have read that this book was written in weekly installments. Perhaps that was the reason for the length and all the details.

I loved how there were multiple characters doing the narration. Although I thought that Laura was lacking in depth and character, Marion was hands-down my absolute favorite.

Here are some of my favorite quotes:

“Any woman who is sure of her own wits, is a match, at any time, for a man who is not sure of his own temper.”

“No sensible man ever engages, unprepared, in a fencing match of words with a woman.”

“Silence is safe.”

I bought The Woman in White on the recommendation of my YouTube viewers, I had read The Moonstone by Collins last year and everyone suggested I pick this one up as it is his most known and praised book. I was not disappointed! The book is told through many different perspectives – we start with Walter Hartwright who at the beginning of the book comes across a woman completely dressed in white, she appears to be lost and a little distressed so Walter helps her on her way. Walter then overhears two men speaking with a police officer asking if he has seen a woman clad in white as she has escaped from an insane asylum. Months down the line Walter is in a different part of the country and comes across this woman in white again. The story flicks between various characters who have been effected by this woman in one way or another. We find out who this woman is and whether she was ever meant to be in an insane asylum to begin with. It was a fantastic read, full of suspense and mystery! I would highly recommend to anyone looking for a fun classic to read ★ ★ ★ ★

The Woman in White is a gem of a novel - creepy, dense, menacing, and always intriguing. For a long time, the reader isn't quite sure what is going on, only that it isn't good - and it's to Collins' credit that when the plots are revealed, they are as interesting as anything I was supposing.

Note: The rest of this review has been withdrawn due to the recent changes in Goodreads policy and enforcement. You can read why I came to this decision here.

In the meantime, you can read the entire review at Smorgasbook

4,5

3.5★
“The instant my eyes rested on her, I was struck by the rare beauty of her form, and by the unaffected grace of her attitude. Her figure was tall, yet not too tall; comely and well-developed, yet not fat; her head set on her shoulders with an easy, pliant firmness; her waist, perfection in the eyes of a man, for it occupied its natural place, it filled out its natural circle, it was visibly and delightfully undeformed by stays.”

Lest you get carried away breathlessly by our hero’s first view of this young woman, I will say only that he was viewing her from a distance and from behind. When she turns around and walks towards him, he is appalled! She is swarthy, masculine and ugly, he tells us. What a crass young fellow he is. But he improves and learns to appreciate Marian's brilliance and loyalty. She’s a great character. It’s her half-sister, Laura, who is the swooning, fair (dare I say dull?) heroine we meet later. Silly men.

Wilkie Collins and Charles Dickens were firm friends, and this long, wordy, entertaining book will no doubt appeal to readers of Dickens. Dickens had been publishing his stories as serials in a magazine which folded, so he started his own. He published A Tale of Two Cities as a weekly serial, which captured a readership, and asked his friend Collins for a follow-up. This is it.

I wasn’t aware of that when I began reading, but it’s obvious to me now. It’s considered one of the first mystery novels, and there are many chapters and many voices. Each voice is distinct and tells the person’s part of the story as if reading a diary (some are supposed to be diary extracts) or recounting their version of events. This drags the story out somewhat, as events may be repeated from different points of view.

But it also strings the story together. Something we couldn’t figure out earlier (a chance sighting of a dim figure in the woods) is explained later by another character who happened to be near the woods at the time.

And characters they are. Like Dickens, Collins has a fondness for quirky people. One of my favourite awful people is Laura's uncle, Mr. Fairlie, a reclusive, complaining hypochondriac whom we tolerate because he owns a vast estate where the orphaned Laura and her devoted half-sister Marian can live. He allows only his valet in his rooms and treats him like a piece of furniture, commanding him to stand for long periods, holding things for him to look at. Here he is in his own voice.

“‘Let Lady Glyde's maid come in, Louis. Stop! Do her shoes creak?’ I was obliged to ask the question. Creaking shoes invariably upset me for the day. I was resigned to see the Young Person, but I was NOT resigned to let the Young Person's shoes upset me. There is a limit even to my endurance. Louis affirmed distinctly that her shoes were to be depended upon.
. . .
People in the lower class of life never know when or how to go out of a room. They invariably require to be helped out by their betters. I thought it high time to help the Young Person out. I did it with two judicious words— ‘Good-morning.’

Dreadful fellow. Can’t stand children. He reckons Nature created them only as machines for making noise. And there are excellent true villains, one of whom the fair Laura has been promised to in marriage - oh NO! Poor Laura! Poor Hartright! And what will become of Marian?

It’s quite a romp, really, and now that I’ve read it, I feel I enjoyed it. Much of it was quite funny (if wordy). Here, Hartright has met the heroine’s old nanny and thinks perhaps Nature was asleep at the wheel when creating her.

“A mild, a compliant, an unutterably tranquil and harmless old lady, who never by any chance suggested the idea that she had been actually alive since the hour of her birth. Nature has so much to do in this world, and is engaged in generating such a vast variety of co-existent productions, that she must surely be now and then too flurried and confused to distinguish between the different processes that she is carrying on at the same time. Starting from this point of view, it will always remain my private persuasion that Nature was absorbed in making cabbages when Mrs. Vesey was born, and that the good lady suffered the consequences of a vegetable preoccupation in the mind of the Mother of us all.”

This has all the trappings of its time: nobility, servants, wealth, lower class, carriages, trains, twice-a-day postbags, grand estates and hovels. The mystery has everything too. Jealousy, plots, intrigue, suspicious deaths.

I realise I've said nothing about the plot, but no matter. It's discussed at length widely. Perhaps I’d have enjoyed it more if I’d been looking forward to the next chapters every week rather than wading through it like a novel. And it did feel a bit like wading, I’m afraid. If you’ve read this far, you may feel the same way. But I can’t say I didn’t like it, because I did!

For an interesting discussion about the history and the times, have a look at Jean's review here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

Victorian mystery/thriller; a thickish volume, but an easy read. Different sections narrated by different protagonists - innovative in its day. A rather big coincidence is crucial to the plot (and some lesser ones), but such contrivance is not unusual in the genre. Double doses: 2 heroes, 2 villains, 2 victims, 2 country houses etc and enough twists etc to keep it interesting.

I want to say upfront that I am a fan of Victorian writing. Wordy, in the right hands, works for me. And Wilkie Collins and Charles Dickens have the right hands! Their words unfurl like the petals of a flower, and at the heart you are presented with a gem: an exquisite observation about humanity, or a marvelous witticism. They were true wordsmiths, and I would hotly contest any need to "edit" their works.

Once we passed the exposition and started climbing plot graph mountain toward the climax, I was hooked. This is the second Collins' I have read, and both times I experienced moments when I feared that the plot was going to devolve into simple Gothic melodrama, laughable by our modern standards of mystery. Each time, I was wrong. Sure, the dated nature of the novel is evident in the behavior of some of the characters. They are so innocent--and by innocent, I mean gullible! They are so trusting, and accept everyone at their word; but then, what choice did they really have? How would you go about checking someone's credentials back then, especially on a moment's notice? There were times, though, when I did roll my eyes--the villain assures a character that he is nice, so the character smiles and relaxes. Surely he must be nice if he says he is! This happens several times. Also, a character discovers, through a slip by the villain, that vital evidence is hidden in a location, and the character retires to the inn for the night, planning to search the location the next day. I want to yell, "Go there tonight! Don't give them time to retrieve the information before you!" Of course, he doesn't listen to me. Aside from these few flaws, I found the plot line intriguing and unpredictable.

There are two unforgettable characters--Count Fosco and Marian Holcombe, or "the magnificent Marian," as the Count refers to her. This is one point on which the Count and I agree. Intelligent, resourceful, courageous, quick-witted--she is a force to be reckoned with. Despite all this and a rocking hot bod, she is plain (ugly is the word that is used), so apparently matrimony is out of the question. Victorian men are not too bright, evidently. Marian is content to devote her life to her younger sister, Laura, who is the antithesis of her sister: one of those pallid, trembly, whispery creatures who flinches at every noise and never has an original thought. She is, however, quite pretty. When the attractive young drawing master arrives at Limmeridge, guess who he falls in love with? Of course, Laura never does or says anything to merit this, while Marian is being charming and vivacious all over the place. I was afraid, for awhile, that Laura was the Collins equivalent of Lucie Manette, and she would be weeping and fainting for the entirety of the book. In the middle of the book, she does grow a backbone and actually defies her husband several times. Later, however, she endures a couple of months in an asylum and this almost destroys her sanity. Now, this is a private asylum for wealthy people and there's no mention of abuse, but her reason is seriously affected. I guess the flower of womanhood were really like flowers back then--delicate hothouse flowers.

This is where I really had a problem with Walter. He has been adventuring in Central America, trying to forget his hopeless love. When he meets Laura again, after a year apart, she is literally like a child. She speaks like a child and spends all her time drawing terrible pictures. Walter and Marian are united in their determination to right her wrongs and bring justice to Sir Percival and the Count. Caring for Laura and plotting against their enemies throws them closely together, but does he recognize that Marian is worth one hundred of her sister? Of course not! He loves Marian as a sister, while reserving all his passion for the complete absence of personality that is Laura.

Count Fosco is a superb villain--witty, urbane, and keenly intelligent. He alone has the great good sense to recognize the "sublime" qualities of "the magnificent Marian." This alone endears him to me. He is ruthless and self-serving, but immensely likable, all the same. Underneath his charm, he has the soul of a cobra. The cobra has a weakness, though, and it is his admiration for Marion. Despite the fact that he knows what a formidable opponent she is and that she could actually succeed in foiling his plans, he cannot bring himself to allow any harm to come to her. When she is dangerously ill, he fights against the doctor himself in order to save her life, even though her death would have removed a major obstacle from his path. Dickens is famed for his memorable characters, but with these two characters, Collins has created two people--complex individuals who will remain with his readers long after they have finished the book.

All in all, this is an engrossing read with some superbly drawn characters. I highly recommend for anyone who doesn't turn pale and tremble like a Victorian heroine at the sight of a book over 300 pages!

*** 12/04/17 Update ***
Just finished leading a group discussion over this book with the Victorians. It was so much fun! I greatly enjoyed sharing the reading experience with my group. This second reading didn't really change any of my previous opinions, but rather, reinforced them. I still have a fondness for Count Fosco and still think Walter is a schmuck for not choosing Marian over Laura, but it remains a great read!

I had heard of this novel but knew nothing about it. This was not the novel I was expecting. It is melodrama of the highest order and one can tell it was a serialised work as Collins throws everything into the mix. Escapees from lunatic asylums, dopple-gangers, fake nurses, druggings, debt, suspicious foreigners, thwarted love, kidnappings, and baddies that are so cliched they twiddle their moustaches. It’s a lot to cram in, even given it’s 600 pages long.

It rattles along at such a pace that it is only after I finished it I had time to realise how much of it irritated me. I know it is a novel of its time and one must expect the portrayal of women to be different but Collins comes perilously close to having a strong, autonomous female character that is also attractive to men but then gets cold feet and makes her too ugly to be a romantic lead. Not only is it disappointing but it also undermines the foundation of the novel. The artist Walter Hartright (who is employed over a summer to teach Marian and her half sister Laura watercolour painting) spends most of the novel extolling the virtues of Marian, declaiming her intelligence, wit and bravery. She is the one he confides in, the one he is honest with and yet he claims to be hopelessly in love and desirous to marry the insubstantial void that is Laura, albeit it a prettily packaged one. The only person that Marian is entitled to receive lustful or romantic interest from is the comically obese, foreigner Count Fosco – a man who is portrayed as having some strange fetishes such as enjoying having white mice run over his body and repeatedly kissing his pet birds and I visualised as the Go Compare opera singer which was really rather distracting.

Yes ladies, if you are a bit too tall, a bit too dark and haven’t bleached your ‘tache in a while a life of spinsterhood or marriage to a man who you can’t stretch your arms around is your future.

Of course the thrust of the story is the evil Sir Percival Glyde having a secret that the titular character knows and his desire to get his debt-ridden mitts on his wife Laura’s fortune. However, the big reveal of his secret has lost its shock value with the passage of time and discovering it led to a big, fat meh on my part.

There are some pockets of great writing such as this expose of hypocrisy towards criminality,

n  “Is the prison that Mr. Scoundrel lives in, at the end of his career, a more uncomfortable place than the workhouse that Mr. Honesty lives in at the end of his career? When John-Howard-Philanthropist wants to relieve misery, he goes to find it in prisons, where crime is wretched – not in huts and hovels, where virtue is wretched too…
Which gets on best, do you think, of two starving dressmakers – the woman who resists temptation, and is honest, or the woman who falls under temptation and steals? You all know that the stealing is the making of the second woman’s fortune- it advertises her from length to breadth of good-humoured, charitable England- and she is relieved, as the breaker of a commandment, when she would have been left to starve, as the keeper of it.”n

There are also moments of humour, which are genuinely funny and come almost exclusively from the bizarre figure of the girls’ uncle Frederick Fairlie, a man incredibly wealthy but too much of a hypochondriac to enjoy it. On meeting the Count he writes this,

n  ” My first inquiries were for the Count. Had we really got rid of him? Yes- he had gone away by the afternoon train. Had he lunched; and, if so, upon what? Entirely upon fruit-tart and cream. What a man! What a digestion!”n

And showing how great the class divide between masters and servants he is bemused by his interaction with a female servant,

n  “ The Young Person’s face became more unfinished than eve; and, I think she began to cry. I certainly saw something moist about her eyes. Tears or perspiration? Louis (whom I have just consulted) is inclined to think, tears. He is in her class of life; and he ought to know best.”n

For all its failings it is an enjoyable read though perhaps excluding the strange ending that borders on ridiculous and appears to be included merely to re-introduce a character given some significance in the beginning and forgotten throughout the rest of the story. Perhaps a case of what worked in serialisation needing to be tightened up for novel form.

The only real flaw in this densely plotted page-turner of a novel is that in the end it slightly disappoints because it promises more than it delivers. It makes the reader fall in love with its plain but resourceful heroine Marian Halcombe, and teases us with the delightful prospect that she will become the principal agent bringing the villains to justice. When, in the middle of the novel, Marian tells her half-sister Laura that "our endurance must end, and our resistance begin," it seems like a groundbreaking feminist principle, and a little later Collins gives us the perfect metaphor for liberation when Marian divests herself of much of her cumbersome Victorian clothing so that she may safely climb out on a roof to eavesdrop on her enemies.

But--alas!--she is soaked by the rain, becomes ill, and--after having been removed to the ancient Gothic wing of the estate to recuperate--she returns to the plain woman's typical Victorian role of loyal sister and adoring aunt, allowing the returning hero Walter Hartwright to tie up the loose ends of the plot. Nevertheless, the intricate resolution is absorbing (even if the last hundred pages seem too crowded and rushed) and the ending (although perhaps too pat) is satisfying.

Oh, I almost forgot to mention Count Fosco! He is--particularly in Marian's grudgingly admiring description--one of the most fascinating and dangerous villains of all mystery fiction.

3, 5.

Citit pe la 15-16 ani, romanul lui Collins are mari șanse să intre în biblioteca afectivă a oricărui cititor. Din păcate, dacă-l citești mai tîrziu, observi, înainte de orice, că are 620 de pagini. Și asta te intimidează...

Observi că Anne Catherick (Femeia în alb) și Laura sînt niște ființe mult prea gingașe și sensibile (sînt surori vitrege și asta ar putea explica inclinația lor nevrotică), dar că Marian Halcombe (și ea soră vitregă cu Laura) nu prea seamănă cu ele: nu e „slabă la minte” ca Anne și nici hipersensibilă și anxioasă ca Laura. În chip ciudat, aceste eminente virtuți sînt, cum să zic?, diminuate de chipul ei neatrăgător:

„Niciodată vechea zicală că natura nu poate greşi n-a fost mai categoric contrazisă, niciodată aspectul promiţător al unei înfăţişări frumoase n-a fost mai straniu şi mai uimitor dezminţit... Această doamnă avea un obraz aproape negricios, iar puful negru de deasupra buzei superioare era aproape o mustaţă etc.”.

Mai observi că ogarul Laurei îi simte imediat pe bărbații dubioși și latră la ei (la sir Percival Glyde, în primul rînd), dar dă din coadă și se veselește în fața unui bărbat onest, moral și muncitor. Mă refer, firește, la întreprinzătorul Walter Hartright, prof de desen și om cu indiscutabile abilități de detectiv: mînuiește cu eleganță bîta și, cînd e urmărit de răufăcători, are o viteză de alergare neobișnuită.

Observi, în plus, că Providența îi mîngîie pe cei buni și-i pedepsește exemplar pe cei răi. Ea rezolvă partea murdară a afacerii: abjectul sir Percival Glyde, baronet (noblețea lui e falsă), moare în incendiul din sacristia bisericii din Welmingham, iar sinistrul conte Fosco, ajuns în Paris, e înjunghiat (de un asasin plătit, cu o cicatrice de rău augur pe față) și aruncat în Sena.

La sfîrșit, Walter se căsătorește cu Laura, iar Marian decide să rămînă pe veci cu ei și să-și educe nepotul / nepoții cu devotamentul cunoscut și apreciat de toți. Ea știe din capul locului că nu va avea noroc la bărbați (of, mustața!) și alege să-și sacrifice energia și spiritul de inițiativă în serviciul tinerei familii: „După tot ce am suferit împreună toţi trei - a spus ea -, între noi nu mai poate exista despărţire, pînă la despărţirea din urmă. Walter, inima şi fericirea mea sînt alături de Laura şi de tine”. Am putea vorbi de un ménage à trois...

Oare Wilkie Collins ignora adevărul verificat de experiență că pentru orice femeie există întotdeauna cel puțin un bărbat care o așteaptă? Preceptul e valabil, desigur, și în cazul bărbaților...

P. S. Necesitatea nu e, vai, întotdeauna binevoitoare, întrucît Anne Catherick, înspăimîntată de Fosco, face un atac de cord în momentul cel mai nepotrivit pentru criminal. Ar trebui să moară pe 26 iulie, dar moare - în ciuda contelui - pe 25. Vorba lui Cehov: Blestem!

P. P. S. Neîndoios, personajul cel mai interesant din toată povestea rămîne Marian Halcombe. Așadar, are dreptate criticul John Sutherland. Ar merita o soartă mai bună :)

A Literary Masterpiece

Wow! This was a real epic of a book, a Victorian detective story of the highest calibre. It took some stamina to complete the read but it was well worth the effort. Highly recommended.