`This time the fiction is founded upon facts' stated Wilkie Collins in his Preface to Man and Wife (1870). Many Victorian writers responded to contemporary debates on the rights and the legal status of women, and here Collins questions the deeply inequitable marriage laws of his day. Man and Wife examines the plight of a woman who, promised marriage by one man, comes to believe that she may inadvertently have gone through a form of marriage with his friend, as recognized by the archaic laws of Scotland and Ireland. From this starting-point Collins develops a radical critique of the values and conventions of Victorian society. Collins had already developed a reputation as the master of the `sensation novel', and Man and Wife is as fast moving and unpredictable as The Moonstone and The Woman in White . During the novel the atmosphere grows increasingly sinister as the setting moves from a country house to a London suburb and a world of confinement, plotting, and murder. This book is intended for students of English Literature, particularly Victorian Literature, from undergraduate level upwards.
- ISBN10 0486244512
- ISBN13 9780486244518
- Publish Date 1 March 1983
- Publish Status Out of Print
- Out of Print 10 April 2014
- Publish Country US
- Imprint Dover Publications Inc.
- Format Paperback
- Pages 239
- Language English