The Woman in White

by Wilkie Collins

Matthew Sweet (Introduction)

'The most popular novel of the nineteenth century, and still one of the best plots in English literature' Sarah Waters

The original 'sensation novel', The Woman in White opens with Walter Hartright's eerie encounter with a strange, solitary woman 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 corridors of English country mansions and the madhouse, this is the first and most influential of the Victorian genre that combined Gothic horror with psychological realism.

Edited with an Introduction and Notes by Matthew Sweet

• ISBN10: 0141439610
• ISBN13: 9780141439617
• Publish Date: 27 February 2003 (first published December 1952)
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: GB
• Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
• Imprint: Penguin Classics
• Format: Paperback (B-Format (198x129 mm))
• Pages: 720
• Language: English
• URL: https://penguinrandomhouse.com/books/isbn/9780141439617

Reviews

“This is the story of what a Woman's patience can endure, and what a Man's resolution can achieve.”

An accessible classic that tells an intriguing story.

It took me a while to get through the slow paced first half of The Woman in White but the background information is necessary. The second half is definitely four star worthy and is extremely gripping.

This book has so many words and could have been just as great if it was 200 pages shorter. There are lots of descriptive paragraphs about characters and places/rooms, which could have been shortened, but add to the atmosphere of the story. Some of the character descriptions are also amusing.

The characters are unique and compelling. Walter is always trying to do what's right. Laura is a damsel in distress and while there are moments where she shows steeliness, for the most part she's passive and distressed. I love the relationship between Laura and Marian. Marian is a whole entire mood and is totally unconventional for her time. Some of her comments and thoughts are sexist, but since she's a woman in the Victorian era and that's all she's known, I can understand why she sees the world the way she does. Count Fosco is such a fascinating and dangerous character and Mr Farlie's narrative section is hilarious.

The plot is amazing. This is one of the earliest detective novels and while the detective work only happens in the second half, there's a sense that something mysterious, suspenseful and sinister is going on throughout the novel. The villains are clear from the start and as a reader, I was screaming at the characters not to trust them. The plot progression in the second half, after Lady Glyde 'dies', is insane and everything starts coming together and making sense.

Overall, I had a great reading experience and I'm so excited to read more classics in the future.

“My hour for tea is half-past five, and my buttered toast waits for nobody.”

[MurderByDeath]

As BrokenTune mentioned in her review here, this was a buddy read we did together after discovering we had each bought the exact same edition in charity shops on opposite sides of the world.  Thank goodness I had her to buddy read with, because I'm not sure I'd have finished it otherwise, and that would have been my loss.   This book was laborious.  There were moments when I would have believed the damn thing was continuing to add pages to itself as I read it.  The book switches POVs throughout, and that helps - I can't imagine it told from a single POV - but I still struggled to pick it back up.   I found the characters in the first epoch exasperating; Walter Hartwright was just so hopelessly romantic.  And by romantic I mean a melodramatic Byron wannabe.  Laura, the character the whole story revolves around, actually left very little impression on me at all, and her sister Marion, of whom I expected strong, rational sense from, let me down when the story's POV switched to hers.   The second epoch was the worst for me though. Marion becomes more the character I expected her to be and I really liked her, and Hartwright was thankfully absent, but the second epoch was all about winding up the tension; subtle, brilliantly done foreshadowing and a slow build up to the inevitable Terrible Event.     Most people relish this part of the story – that sense of dread anticipation.  I am not most people.  The second epoch nearly killed me: I could recognise the brilliance of the writing and story telling but at the same time, just get it over with already!  I had prepared myself for Percival being a nasty piece of work; the more obsequious he became in the first epoch, the more obvious it was to me that he was going to be an ass.  Fosco though, Fosco was truly the villain in this tale.  The more he smiled and sided with the women, the diabolical he became.  This was the part I had to make myself read.   The third and final epoch was for me the best one because now things were getting done.  The climax of the story, the biggest plot twist (which I did guess before it was revealed) is over with and the third epoch is about fixing things; making the villains pay by searching out and revealing their secrets.  Hartwright's time away did him good and he's not nearly the twit he was in the first epoch; he becomes a believable hero.  Laura just got on my nerves; her special snowflake status from the start makes it hard to properly sympathise with her for her truly horrible experiences in epoch two.   Percival's comeuppance was all about the chase; lots of action, and a secret that when revealed didn't sound like it was worth all his efforts at concealment until the author makes us aware that at the time it was a capital crime.  His final confrontation was excellent though; I didn't see that coming.   But Fosco, Fosco is revealed to be the true threat, the real evil genius.  If Doyle's Moriarty wasn't strongly influenced by Collins' Fosco I'll eat my socks.  At the same time, I got the strong sense that Collins had the most fun in creating Fosco; I'd dearly love to know how much of himself he put into his mad creation.  Fosco's character was just so different in every way to all the others that by the end it felt like the rest of the story was created merely to give Fosco reason for existing.   Both final acts failed to surprise me:   too much attention was made of the scarred man for him to be background, and no way could any author from this time period walk away from a fortune and a title, even on behalf of their characters.   (hide spoiler)   but it was a satisfying ending nonetheless.  A brilliant read that I'd recommend to anyone interested in a good story.  So many of the tropes and plot devices used today came from authors like Collins and it's worth reading if only to see them done by a master.  But it's definitely not a quick read.

[brokentune]

At the ripe age of sixty, I make this unparalleled confession. Youths! I invoke your sympathy. Maidens! I claim your tears.

So finally, finally I got around to reading the classic that is The Woman in White.

About the book, I am so glad I read it. I didn't love it, but I fully acknowledge that it is a remarkable book and, its time, must have caused quite a stir.
I loved the narration from several points of view - basically, every character got their say at one point. Even a grave stone got a paragraph to tell part of the story!

I loved the plot and the twists - but I won't go into them because, erm, spoilers and such - even tho I already had a good idea of where the plot was going to go.

I loved that there was such a mix of characters. From the courageous, to the devious, to the whiny, to the downright pathetic. And no, the "hero" of the piece was not necessarily the best character.

In fact, Walter Hartwright was such an annoying, whiny, lovesick puppy for the first part of the book that I felt some great relief when another character took over the narration.
Luckily, Walter improved later in the book. (Although, he remained a condescending git.)

The second main character, Laura, was no better. If there was a quote to describe her, this would be my pick:

"I am so useless— I am such a burden on both of you," she answered, with a weary, hopeless sigh. "You work and get money, Walter, and Marian helps you. Why is there nothing I can do? You will end in liking Marian better than you like me— you will, because I am so helpless! Oh, don't, don't, don't treat me like a child!"

Luckily, Laura is absent for much of the book because.....ahaha....it's a mystery.

No, my favourite character of this book was Marian Halcombe, whom Walter (the main character) describes as follows on their first encounter:

The easy elegance of every movement of her limbs and body as soon as she began to advance from the far end of the room, set me in a flutter of expectation to see her face clearly. She left the window— and I said to myself, The lady is dark. She moved forward a few steps— and I said to myself, The lady is young.
She approached nearer— and I said to myself (with a sense of surprise which words fail me to express), The lady is ugly!
Never was the old conventional maxim, that Nature cannot err, more flatly contradicted— never was the fair promise of a lovely figure more strangely and startlingly belied by the face and head that crowned it. The lady's complexion was almost swarthy, and the dark down on her upper lip was almost a moustache.
She had a large, firm, masculine mouth and jaw; prominent, piercing, resolute brown eyes; and thick, coal-black hair, growing unusually low down on her forehead. Her expression— bright, frank, and intelligent— appeared, while she was silent, to be altogether wanting in those feminine attractions of gentleness and pliability, without which the beauty of the handsomest woman alive is beauty incomplete.

Well, as I said, Walter was a bit of a git. However, this is one of the examples in the book that shows how Collins set out his narratives and that he did to include humor, even if it was kinda shallow.

Some of us rush through life, and some of us saunter through life. Mrs. Vesey SAT through life.
All of this was very well. Good writing, a well laid out plot, a romantic element, experimental writing (for its time), fascinating characters, ...
So, why did The Woman in White not sweep me off my feet?

I guess the simple answer to this is that the story dragged. A LOT. I'm at a loss to see why we needed to read the Third Epoch, other than this having being printed as a serial originally and Collins obviously kept the story going for a paycheck.

Had he cut some of the overly detailed explanations at the end I would have enjoyed this much, much more. Alas, he didn't. Just could not come to the point, which reminded me of all the things that were so annoying about Walter in the beginning of the book - it took him ages to come to a conclusion about his feelings that were just so obvious:

I loved her. Ah! how well I know all the sadness and all the mockery that is contained in those three words. I can sigh over my mournful confession with the tenderest woman who reads it and pities me. I can laugh at it as bitterly as the hardest man who tosses it from him in contempt. I loved her! Feel for me, or despise me, I confess it with the same immovable resolution to own the truth.

No shit, Sherlock.

[Eve1972]

Great classic read!