Often considered
the first detective novel in English, Wilkie Collins's The Woman in
White maintains suspense throughout its more than 600 pages. There are
questions from the start, when a mysterious, agitated woman dressed in
white approaches illustrator Walter Hartright on a midnight walk. Who
was the woman dressed all in white? Hartright learns her name, Anne
Catherick, but why did Sir Percival Glyde have her locked up in an
asylum? Is it just coincidental that Anne looks so much like
Laurie Fairlie, one of the two half-sisters for whom Hartright has been
hired as an art teacher and who is engaged to marry Sir Percival? What
is the secret Anne's mother knows that gives her power over Percival
but also gives him power over her? What is the background of Percival's
friend and conspirator Count Fasco? Who will win — the wily
count or the good guys, Hartright and Laura's half-sister Marian
Halcombe?
This is a hard-to-put-down read, with the intricate plot being moved
along by a succession of narrators who each tell the part they know.
Collins not only was a masterful storyteller, he also created two of
the most unforgettable characters in literature in Marian Halcombe and
Count Fasco. Marian, whose courage, brains, and homely face render her
an unlikely marriage prospect in Victorian society, saves Laura and
abets Laura's future with Walter. Fosco, obese, surrounded by his pet
mice and birds, conceals his wickedness beneath a genial exterior. The
two stand in contrast to the blandness of the other main characters,
the romantic duo of Walter and Laura and the villain Percival.
Readers not only will be entertained by this novel but also become
better informed about the social structure of Victorian England. Class
divisions appear to separate Walter and Laura, Percival brutalizes his
servants, and women are legally powerless. The plot of The Woman in White
was drawn from actual cases of wives imprisoned by husbands so they
could steal their fortunes.
The Woman in White was
originally serialized in Charles Dickens's periodical All the Year Round and
then released as a book, and it has never been out of print. In the
introduction to a recent printing, novelist Anne Perry said The Woman in White
"has lasted, to our great pleasure, because it is superb storytelling
about people who engage our minds and our imaginations."
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