The Woman in White promises so much and delivers very little.

The first hundred pages of the book are gripping and intense. Wilkie Collins begins with an atmospheric mystery that is exciting and almost haunting. I really wanted to know all the secrets the story had to offer.

So even when the book began to grow a little dull around the middle I carried on reading because I hoped that the dryness would be worth it, my patience was bound to be rewarded. (I was so terribly mistaken.) The big reveal at the end is so ridiculously anti-climactic that I actually laughed. That’s what I had been waiting for all this time?

For a book like this, one that is driven by the plot rather than the characters, it is such a major downfall. The real problem this story had is its pacing. There is simply too much middle where the story just doesn't go anywhere and the characters fret over the same facts but get no closer to understanding what any of it means. I grew bored of the endless speculation and marriage politics. I wanted something to happen beyond the seemingly endless conversation that held no substance.

And the entire situation was agony. It was just so frustrating! It simply did not need to happen whatsoever and was predictable to a fault. When you get into bed with a nasty person it’s hardly surprising that your life turns to shit; yet, for the characters it came as a drastic shock. Wake up! Look at the real world! Surely, surely, nobody would be that stupid?

I gave up caring. It was a relief to finish.

It’s quite astonishing to me to think about the fact that The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins has been tantalizing readers for 162 years! Victorian readers of Charles Dickens’s magazine called All the Year Round got to read the first installment in 1859 in which they met Walter Hartright and ventured along with him on his moonlight walk through Hampstead Heath where he meets the mysterious woman in white for the first time. I can imagine the readers’ own shock as they got to this part:

…in one moment, every drop of blood in my body was brought to a stop by the touch of a hand laid lightly and suddenly on my shoulder from behind me.

Imagine how utterly sensational this new style of writing and reading was to the Victorians. Collins had given them a brand new sensation novel that would knock at their own back doors and invite the criminal elements, intrigue and madness into their own homes and parlors where they believed the secrets could be safely concealed. Author Henry James described the sensation novel experience perfectly when he said that the book ”introduced into fiction those most mysterious of mysteries, the mysteries which are at our own doors”.

Collins expertly created a cast of characters centered around a plot that twists and turns and creates tension and uneasiness. Written in narratives from the perspectives of each person’s account of the happenings in question, the reader is provided with all the information plus countless ambiguities throughout and is then left to determine for himself what to believe. The reader wonders who is trustworthy in their account and who is only partially telling the truth. The intrigue, mystery, bribery, madness, ailments, espionage, secret societies, medical twists, conniving and curious characters, secrets, manic moments, and more sensationalistic events certainly kept this reader on the edge of my seat.

The Woman in White is a satisfying and thrilling read and one that will have you coming back to read more. Some of the most unforgettable characters were created here by Collins. Walter Hartright, the drawing master and protagonist has an undying sense for right and justice. Laura Fairlie is cast as the typical beautiful, devoted Victorian young woman while her half-sister, Marian Halcombe is presented as a plain, unattractive, poor yet intelligent and spunky spinster. The sister’s unbearable uncle Frederick Fairlie provides quite a humorous aspect as a whiny hypochondriac who has a nervous tendency. Sinister and secretive Sir Percival Glyde and his friend and companion, the cunning and curious Count Fosco with his cockatoos, canaries and mice he treats like children certainly provoke the awe factor.

My favorite character of all was Marion for her tenacity and loyalty, her ingenuity and her steadfastness. She has got to be one of the most unique and remarkable characters ever created by Collins.

Even after 162 years of readership, Collins’ original sensation novel still has the ability to wow readers with modern sensibilities and awareness.

‘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.

Las novelas de misterio y detectives no serían lo mismo sin las aportaciones que realizó Wilkie Collins durante el siglo XIX. Dentro del fenómeno victoriano, que encandiló a los lectores ingleses con narraciones novedosas, modernas y apasionadas, Collins consiguió hacerse un hueco con sus historias enrevesadas, subtramas y grandes momentos de tensión que no eran nada comunes en la época.

Estas características están todas presentes en La mujer de blanco, probablemente la obra más influyente y exitosa de toda su carrera literaria. La historia se inicia con Walter Hartright cuando, en la víspera de empezar su nuevo trabajo como profesor de dibujo en Limmeridge House, se encuentra con una mujer vestida de blanco en la carretera que le pide indicaciones para poder llegar a Londres. Este suceso, aparentemente inocente, provocará toda una serie de consecuencias en el futuro de varios personajes y familias, con secretos que han permanecido en la sombra durante muchos años.

Uno de los mayores aciertos de La mujer de blanco es su estructura. El entramado avanza gracias a un enfoque narrativo múltiple, en el que cada personaje aporta su particular visión de la historia a través de diarios, cartas y manuscritos. Este método ofrece una agilidad asombrosa al relato, además de ofrecer pistas con cuentagotas, con las que poder recrear los sucesos tal y como ocurrieron.

Collins utiliza temas que ya había tratado en otras novelas, pero demostrando una originalidad y un control de la narración sorprendente incluso en la actualidad, en el que el panorama literario está plagado de thrillers y novelas de suspense con el gran desafío de impactar al lector. En este caso el autor mantiene un ritmo trepidante pese al elevado número de páginas, cerrando todas las tramas y dando sentido a cada relato, a cada movimiento sospechoso y a cada conversación malinterpretada.

Así, vuelve a orquestar de manera magistral todas las obsesiones que aparecen en muchas de sus obras: relaciones familiares, herencias y secretos inconfesables, con unos personajes inolvidables que dan sentido a la trama. Todos están perfilados con una singularidad brillante: desde los verdaderos héroes de la novela hasta los grandes villanos, cada uno de ellos está caracterizado de forma memorable e inteligente. Los diálogos entre ellos, cargados de acidez, ironía e ingenio, son una prueba más del buen trabajo del escritor.

En ocasiones es importante encontrar un libro con el que simplemente poder disfrutar con cada una de sus páginas. No es necesario un giro moral, o un aprendizaje profundo. El fin de muchos libros (y, por tanto, uno de los principales objetivos en la literatura) es el puro entretenimiento. La mujer de blanco, en ese sentido, consigue su propósito con una perfección difícilmente igualable. Su transformación de una novela gótica y siniestra a una mucho más detectivesca sólo confirma la prodigiosa destreza de Wilkie Collins para presentar una gran historia que se ha convertido indiscutiblemente en uno de los mayores pilares en el género.

This is an obvious precursor to myriad crime dramas & the "sensationalist novel."

I found it long but very rewarding. 600+ pages of different POV's (a novel concept then, but now widely utilized); two concrete settings; only five main characters (perhaps not more than 15 in all)... and it is all choreographed so beautifully. The settings are spooky; the motives of characters, although well known from the very start and from the intense descriptions throughout, still manage to surprise. No matter that The Secret deals with money & family skeletons-in-the-closet... & a bunch of classicist European stuff. All the elements I adore are here. It's Gothic, & the writer is like some British Hawthorne (Well at least I think so: & less like his peer, Charles Dickens*).

No matter that bad guys get what they deserve in the end... they arrive at oh so unconventional ends. Really! And the pacing is exactly what a serial novel of this magnitude would require it to endure. I kept at it... found it invigorating, elegant, and haunting.

*This was published in the middle of the 19th century, and along with one of Dicken's serialized masterpieces, this one also ran! Lucky short-living Londoners.

Wilkie Collins, a polyamorous laudanum addict, invented a genre called the sensation novel with Woman in White. He took Gothic stories away from their ghost-filled castles and directly into what he called "the secret theatre of home": "Collins and his fellow sensationalists [Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Ellen Wood, Charles Reade and Rhoda Broughton] re-mapped the 'knowable communities' within which writers such as George Eliot, Elizabeth Gaskell and Margaret Oliphant plotted their fictions as territories that were unknowable, or at least dangerous to know" (Penguin Read Red intro). Unsurprisingly, this has been a big hit with generations of people who dislike their spouses.

And it's a terrific book. The titular woman shows up almost immediately to hook you in; after a brief slow-down to set the stage, around a third of the way in the tension ratchets up and never lets go again. It's incredibly gripping, and there are no plot holes. It features several brilliant characters: Miss Halcombe, the brains of the affair (and also, as Collins tells us at considerable length, the ass*); the hypochondriac Fairlie; and, of course, the illimitable Fosco, one of the most memorable creations ever.

It's set up as an unusual epistolary: testimony from a number of sources, as if for a legal proceeding. The switching of narrators allows Collins to play a bunch of daring tricks: at one point a character suddenly intrudes in another's diary, confessing that he stole and read it, and commenting on her version of events.

And, of course, it lets Collins experiment extensively with the idea of the unreliable narrator. At least three passages are overtly untrustworthy (Fairlie, Mrs. Catherick and Fosco are also the most entertaining narrators); and since Collins obviously meant for us to understand that, might it not follow that the rest of the narrators are equally untrustworthy? Major spoilers: Hartright takes forever in his attempt to save Percival's life. Is it possible that he was stalling? Was it really impossible for him to go to the police? Does he bear some responsibility for Fosco's murder? In each of these cases, Collins gives him an excuse: no townspeople thought of better ways to save Percival; Mr. Kyrle insists that he has "not a shadow of a case"; the scarred man picks up on Fosco's identity as Hartright does. I'm not convinced that we're supposed to believe Hartright is lying to us, but I do think we're supposed to think about it.

*Collins was wonderfully against corsets, and unapologetically an ass man: "I too think the back view of a finely formed woman the loveliest view." (Letters of Wilkie Collins, Vol. II, p. 534; ganked from an endnote in my edition)

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Edition review: the Penguin Read Red edition is fantastic. Great intro and great endnotes. The Kindle version I bought did a superb job of linking to the endnotes (something often neglected in Kindle editions), and it's only $4.75.

Romanticamente inglese
"... vidi stagliarsi solitaria la figura di una donna, vestita di bianco (...), che mi scrutava con espressione grave, e con la mano indicava la nuvola scura sopra Londra".

W. Collins viene considerato il padre del romanzo poliziesco. "La donna in bianco" è il suo capolavoro.
Ritengo però che questo libro non possa essere semplicemente inserito in un sottogenere letterario o etichettato come testo 'di consumo', benché la sua pubblicazione sia avvenuta a puntate su una rivista (nel 1859-60); ma essa era diretta da Dickens!
Il successo fu trionfale. La sua leggibilità è infatti straordinaria, la struttura risulta solida e rigorosa. Poi c'è la scrittura, di piacevole eleganza, secondo la grande tradizione inglese.

La giovane donna in bianco, che compare di notte o al crepuscolo col sua alone di mistero, non rappresenta l'unico elemento d'inquietudine : la sua vicenda s'intreccia con quella di vari altri personaggi, dando vita a molteplici accadimenti collegati fra essi da rimandi sotterranei.
Facili accostamenti risultano al romanzo gotico o a "Cime tempestose" di E. Bronte. L'antico castello, la natura selvaggia, il cupo lago, il cimitero... : ci sono gli elementi d'impronta romantica, ma così ben assortiti in una mescolanza anche di realismo, da formare una stupefacente 'macchina narrativa' .

Walter Hartright a struggling drawing teacher, is walking at midnight back to Victorian London after visiting his widowed mother and sister at their cottage, in the suburbs to say goodbye, a quiet trip nobody around, the road empty everything's still, not even the leaves on the trees flicker in the blackness, nothing only his moving steps are heard, thinking about a lucrative job in a faraway county of England, that he reluctantly took ( he has a bad feeling about) because his friend Professor Pesca, a dwarf from Italy arranged it. Shock, something touches him out of the darkness... a ghostly, sick looking woman dressed all in white appears from the shadows, impossible this creature cannot be real... it speaks. A story unfolds, a young woman with a secret put in an insane asylum without being insane , a conspiracy to steal not only wealth but identity. Anne Catherick (The Woman in White) strangely resembles Laura Fairlie, one of two young ladies Mr. Hartright has been hired by her rich, unsocial invalid uncle Fredrick Fairlie, to teach watercolor painting, never mind that she and her half-sister Marian Halcombe have no talent, they need something to pass the time. Laura is very pretty, her sister is very intelligent but plain, but both are devoted to each other, a lonely life at Limmeridge House in Cumberland by the sea. Their uncle rarely sees them, quite fearful of his health a sick hypochondriac, ( kind of funny) not a man of feelings. A sudden love between Walter and Laura, ensues, the teacher and the student but her older wiser sister Marian doesn't approve, Laura is engaged to Sir Percival Glyde, 25 years her senior, a gentleman of seemingly good manners and taste a baronet, who her late father insisted she marry (men could do that then). Mr. Hartright is forced to leave the premises early, later traveling to the jungles of Central America to forget but doesn't, by Marian ( a event that she greatly regrets soon, and Laura more so), his three month employment shortened to two, Mr.Fairlie is not happy, why the puzzled man thinks can't people keep their promises anymore? The extremely obese, brilliant and mysterious Count Fosco, an Italian nobleman he says and good friend of Sir Percival, arrives with his wife Eleanor, she is the icy aunt of Laura and sister of Uncle Frederick, without any family affections. The Count loves animals but isn't fond of people, his pets are his best friends birds and white mice, he plays with, they adore him too. The Woman in White, sends an anonymous letter to the miserable Miss Fairlie, the future bride warning her that Glyde is not a good person. Anne is creeping about in the neighborhood, the Count and the Baronet are nervous , why? But the unhappy wedding day comes between Laura and Percival, that nobody wants but Sir Percival, he has a motive not love but wealth, she has money he has none. Predictably the couple travel across Europe, see many fascinating things on their long honeymoon and hate each other...Back in sweet England at the home of Sir Percival's, Blackwater Park, an appropriate name for the estate, in need of repairs the conspiracy goes forward, Laura and Marian are alone to battle him and the Count and his faithful wife, Eleanor the lurking Anne is still floating about, by the dismal lake nearby, something has to give soon. A wonderful novel from long ago, quite a mystery to be unraveled and one of the first written, still a superb read for fans of the genre, make that great literature.

Walter Hartright comes across a woman clad in white on a moonlit night; a tutoring assignment finds his student to be identical to the Woman in White! What starts as a daring affair slowly but surely evolves into a waste against time to save his amour as the privilege seek to destroy her! A thoughtful and controversial detective mystery that was built around the gender inequality of the day as the antagonists use their male power to subvert their victims!

Originally published in Charles Dickens 'All Year Round' periodical from 1859 to 1860 this 'sensation' novel serial was a commercial success but not so much so with the critics. Sometimes framed as a supernatural, horror and/or mystery work, this ultimately, became with the passage of the time one of the earliest detective genre reads, and it still stands tall today, in my opinion, 8 out of 12, Four Star Read. Although warning it does really go to town with details, but that might be my impatient 21st century brain moaning.

The pic and GIF are from the 1948 movie adaptation starring Alexis Smith, Eleanor Parker, Sydney Greenstreet, and Gig Young.
2022 read

Too bloody long and overwritten. It sort of took away the tension and mystery.

I've wanted to read this for a long time, ever since I've ofunds out that Fingersmith by Sarah Waters was inspired by this novel. I can see the resemblance but they are different in many aspects.

The Woman in White is a serialised novel, which means it appeared first in many numbers of a literary magazine. The one owned by Charles Dickens, to be precise. The aim was to fill as many editions as possible so most of these novels tend to be on the longer side. Great Expectations is another example of these books but I loved that one. I lost my patience here, probably because it is written as a series of testimonials from different people. I saw this tactic used in many classics, with more or less successful results. This should have been a good one but I admit I got bored midway through.

Walter Hartright is employed as a drawing master to the beautiful Laura Fairlie. On the road to his employer he meets a mysterious Woman in White. He helps her get a cab and then continues on his way. There he falls in love with Laura, who is promised to Sir Percival Glyde. When Laura and her sister got to live in Glyde's estate, things become very dire and strange for the two women. Wilkie Collins is said to be the first author to combine Gothic horror with psychological realism. I thought the plot to be very well woven, and it would have gotten 5* from me ,were it 150 pages shorter. The way the author wrote a phrase tired me many time, I have to admit. It made me think of those houses that have too many ornaments.

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!

Newest review:
4.5/5 stars.

This was a reread and I enjoyed it immensely. So much so that I’m raising my rating of it from 3.5 to 4.5 stars.

First review:
3.5/5 stars.
This was a really amazing book that takes you on such a journey! I started it four days ago, and now - after having finished it - I feel like I've returned back home safely after having been gone for a long time. I don't know if that makes much sense, but that's how I feel :)
Now, this was my first book by Wilkie Collins and all I knew was that it was supposed to be a Victorian, scary read. It was in the beginning, and also slightly in the middle, but I was sad to realize towards the end that this turned more into a detective novel. I'm not fond of detective novels, and therefore that slightly decreased my reading experience and my fondness of this book.
That being said, I loved how this book is constructed through diverse narratives that are all pieces in a big puzzle. The narratives allowed for me to connect with the characters on an intimate level, and the characters were simply amazing! They stuck to my mind and followed me around when I wasn't reading, and I think that they are the best part of this story.
Even though I did find some of the things happening too convenient for my taste, I can't neglect the fact that this is a beautifully crafted piece of work that leaves an impression on you. I was contemplating between 3 and 4 stars while reading, so in the end I decided to go for 3.5. I loved the book despite its weaknesses, I just would've hoped for more Victorian eeriness and less of a detective novel.