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Over the last few months there has been a major resurgence of interest in Wilkie Collins’ work. If Collins was a disbanded pop band (more like ‘The Police’, than ‘The Nolans’), people would be booking concert venues right about now, but as he’s a Victorian author he gets a kickass blog tour instead. Today I bring you the eighth instalment of the not for profit, just for fun, Wilkie Collin’s tour, run by Rebbeca Reads, founder of the Classics Circuit. I’ll be reviewing Collins’ ‘The Woman in White’, which is a tale of madness and greed that all begins with one accidental meeting.Walter Hartwright’s decision to walk back from his mother’s house places him in the path of a distressed young woman walking the road, alone after dark. The woman, dressed all in white, pleads for Walter’s assistance and he helps her to find a cab to London. After she has left him he overhears two men asking after a woman in white, who claim his mysterious acquaintance has escaped from an asylum.
With one of those amazing coincidences that Victorian writers were so fond of, the family of Walter’s new employer are acquainted with the young woman, who turns out to be Anne Catharick, a girl who spent time at Limmeridge House as a child. Laura, one of the young pupils Walter has been engaged to instruct, bears a shocking resemblance to the woman and seems to be the object of Anne’s fascination. When Laura receives a letter warning her not to marry Sir Percival Glyde, the baronet she is engaged to Walter and her sister Marian deduce that Anne has sent it. Walter’s love for Laura means that he is drawn into an attempt to uncover the mysterious reasons behind Anne’s distrust of Sir Percival. He and Marian set out to discover the true nature of Sir Percival. The investigation will place the three young people in serious danger.
The full plot of this book is quite frankly, gloriously insane. ‘The Woman in White’ is over six hundred pages long and Collins is determined to pack meaty plot chunks into every part of it. There’s the thrilling and strange encounter within the first twenty pages, then socially inappropriate romance begins to grow at about the fifty page mark and from then on its one long party with lunacy, deception, secrets, plots and greed right up until the end, where Collins follows the tradition of other greats such as Dickens and Bronte, by making sure his readers are treated to a fire, an attempted rescue and a death. All the shocks, surprises and twists produce exactly the reaction Collins hoped for as readers are jolted and thrilled.
Then there are the slower points in the novel, where Collins describes and develops his character, or creates the atmosphere. These descriptions are technically very good, for example, here Collins sets the scene with a strong sensory description:
‘The dead leaves which had whirled in the wind before me, when I had heard of her marriage engagement in the morning, whirled in the wind before her, and rose and fell and scattered themselves at her feet as she walked on in the pale waning sunlight. The dog shivered and trembled…’
but personally I found myself zoning in and out of these passages. Some parts I passed through without really knowing what I was reading and some parts dragged my attention back to the substance of the words on the page. I put this down to the fact that the novel is rather overloaded with description and my brain just couldn’t cope with it all the time. The descriptive domestic passages, where Walter talks about his time with Laura at Limmeridge, or Marian observes the pain of Laura’s marriage are also the parts of the book where Collins explains societies views on women so perhaps my ticked off mood distracted me from the characters speeches about how they were feeling.
When I read the book I had a hard time deciding whether the sexist views found in ‘The Woman in White’ were Collins’ views, or his attempt to satirize and critique society’s dominant views. On one hand, ‘The Woman in White’ obviously shows that locking your wives up for being an inconvenience, or because you want to steal their money is not acceptable behaviour. Collins champions the right for sensible women to have freedom of movement, without fear of persecution and Matthew Sweet, the author of the introduction believes this was in response to a real life incident that occurred in Collin’s social circle. Baronet Bulwer-Lytton, whose production ‘As Bad as we Seem’ Collins acted in was the real life inspiration for Sir Percival Glyde:
‘Rosina had separated from the Baronet in 1836 on very bad terms…As a result of this affair, Bulwyer-Lytton had Rosina abducted by force by two hired thugs and committed to Wyke House Lunatic Asylum in Brentford…Collins use of a plot about an ageing balding, sour tempered baronet who incarcerates his sane wife in a lunatic asylum greatly pleased Rosina, who wrote to Collins to say she could provide him with material from her own experience that would enable him to create the most dastardly villain in literary history.’
However, Walter Hartwright, who is the main narrator and the man who collects and binds together all the accounts, displays a subtle condescension towards women in many ways, such as assuming that only men will be reading the novel and patronising Laura. This is interesting since on the surface Walter is very much a women’s ally, taking Marian into his confidence and aiding the oppressed women in the story.
So what did Collin’s think of women? Well, after reading a comment on Stefanie’s post about reading ‘The Woman in White’ I’ve learned that he was a committed social reformer, who campaigned for women to be allowed to control their own property after marriage and wrote a detective story featuring the first female detective. Hurray! I expect Marian’s remarks on her own sex show Collins reflecting the views of the times, as anyone who has read a bit of George Elliot will know, some women did not have much concept of sisterhood.
The introduction to my edition of ‘The Woman in White’ raises the interesting idea that:
‘Lies are told; texts invade other texts. The bundle of documents that we are handed might be a full and true account of the Laura Glyde Affair. On the other hand, these papers might be the self-justifying trickery of their editor, the middle-class upstart drawing-master who, by the book’s conclusion, has his feet comfortably under the table at Limmeridge.’
Taking this as a central theory perhaps Walter should be viewed as a less sympathetic character who meddles with the others manuscripts and inserts his own views on the world into the accounts of others. Perhaps he is the reason Marian so often curses all other members of her own sex. Might Collins have been trying to suggest that the views about women are not his, but those of his meddling main character, who represents society? At the same time, Marian Harcourt is obviously a strong female character, whose utterances against women may be taken as arch and sarcastic. However, Marian is such a strong female heroine because she struggles against traditional female feeling and is slightly removed from femininity because of her appearance, she is able to be such a force in the story precisely because she is more like a traditional man than a traditional woman. Is Walter’s perception of her coloured by the fact that he is not comfortable with strong women? I don’t know, it’s a theory, but it’s one I can only hold on to by thinking very hard and so I tend to think it might be a bit flimsy.
Despite the fact that my level of interest fluctuated during the novel I believe ‘The Woman in White’ deserves a massive second coming, because it’s technically accomplished and achieves exactly the effect Collins hoped for, thrilling, shocking and enthralling readers. Enjoy the rest of the tour and please let me know what you thought of ‘The Woman in White’ in the comments.
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