Had the story been wrought out in the old-fashioned way it could have been told far more effectively and in less space. Much of the first and nearly half the second volume might have been easily condensed into two or three chapters. A story full of movement would not have kept us waiting so long beside Marian’s sick bed, or among the art treasures of her silly and selfish uncle’s sitting-room at Limmeridge. A few pages on the subject of Mrs. Michelson’s narrative, and a few lines about the shorter depositions that follow, would have told us all that was needful regarding the plot laid for destroying the identity of Lady Glyde. Nor will it seem bootless to remind the author that incidents alone do not necessarily help the story forward, even if it be stuffed as full of them as an omnibus is with passengers on a rainy day. If some of those in the present novel are useful to mislead, others can only tend to weary the reader, without adding a perceptible link to the circumstantial chain.
But the attempt to combine newness of form and substance with reality of treatment has led to failure of a still more glaring kind. Throughout the book circumstances grotesque or improbable meet you at every turn. You are bidden to look at scenes of real modern life, described by the very persons who figured therein, and you find yourself, instead, wandering in a world as mythical as that portrayed on the boards of a penny theatre or in the pages of a nursery tale.
A novelist who aims at being natural, and writes seriously, should refrain from reminding us of so broad a farce as Shakespeare’s Comedy of Errors.
—February 1861
MARGARET OLIPHANT
Shakespeare, even in the excitement of a new interpretation, has not crowded the waning playhouse, as has the sensation drama with its mock catastrophes; and Sir Walter himself never deprived his readers of their lawful rest to a greater extent with one novel than Mr. Wilkie Collins has succeeded in doing with his Woman in White.
—from Blackwood’s Magazine (May 1862)
WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY
The author who excites and interests you is worthy of your thanks and benedictions. I am troubled with fever and ague, that seizes me at odd intervals and prostrates me for a day. There is cold fit, for which, I am thankful to say, hot brandy-and-water is prescribed, and this induces hot fit, and so on. In one or two of these fits I have read novels with the most fearful contentment of mind. Once, on the Mississippi, it was my dearly beloved Jacob Faithful: once at Frankfort O M., the delightful Vingt Ans Après of Monsieur Dumas: once at Tunbridge Wells, the thrilling Woman in White: and these books gave me amusement from morning till sunset. I remember those ague fits with a great deal of pleasure and gratitude. Think of a whole day in bed, and a good novel for a companion. No cares: no remorse about idleness: no visitors: and the Woman in White or the Chevalier d‘Artagnan to tell me stories from dawn to night! ‘Please, ma’am, my master’s compliments, and can he have the third volume?’ (This message was sent to an astonished friend and neighbour who lent me, volume by volume, the W. in W.)
—from Cornhill Magazine (August 1862)
HENRY JAMES
Woman in White, with its diaries and letters and its general ponderosity, was a kind of nineteenth century version of Clarissa Harlowe. Mind, we say a nineteenth century version. To Mr. Collins belongs the credit of having introduced into fiction those most mysterious of mysteries, the mysteries which are at our own doors. This innovation gave a new impetus to the literature of horrors.
—from The Nation (November 9, 1865)
Questions
1. A contemporary reviewer, who on the whole disparaged The Woman in White, does praise what he calls “a pleasing purity of moral tone.” Did you note this tone? Can you point to an instance of it? Is it, in the end, all that pleasing?
2. Collins had advanced views about the rights of women. He is said not to have married because marriage so encumbered women. Are these views evident in this novel? In general, do you approve of the novel’s depiction of women?
3. A number of critics have criticized Collins’s characters as being flat, as existing solely to further the plot. “He does not attempt to paint character or passion,” wrote one critic in the Saturday Review. Does such criticism jibe with your opinion of the novel?
4. Is The Woman in White simply to be enjoyed as a self-contained system of plot twist, reversals, and surprises? Or does it touch on something permanent in human character and experience? Does it teach us anything about how to live?
FOR FURTHER READING
Biography
Ashley, Robert. Wilkie Collins. New York: Haskell House, 1976.
Clarke, William M. The Secret Life of Wilkie Collins. Revised edition. Stroud, Gloucestershire, UK: A. Sutton, 1996.
Davis, Nuel Pharr. The Life of Wilkie Collins. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1956.
Grinstein, Alexander. Wilkie Collins: Man of Mystery and Imagination. Madison, CT: International Universities, 2002.
Peters, Catherine. The King of Inventors: A Life of Wilkie Collins. London: Seeker and Warburg, 1991.
Robinson, Kenneth. Wilkie Collins: A Biography. 1951. London: Davis-Poynter, 1974.
Sayers, Dorothy L. Wilkie Collins: A Biographical and Critical Study. Toledo, OH: Friends of the University of Toledo Libraries, 1977.
Wilkiana
Baker, William, and William M. Clarke, eds. The Letters of Wilkie Collins. 2 vols. Basingstoke, UK: Macmillan, 1999.
Beetz, Kirk H. Wilkie Collins: An Annotated Bibliography, 1889-1976. Metuchen, NJ, and London: Scarecrow Press, 1978.
Gasson, Andrew. Wilkie Collins: An Illustrated Guide. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998.
Page, Norman, ed. Wilkie Collins: The Critical Heritage. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1974.
Critical Books on Collins and/or The Woman in White
Bachman, Maria K., and Don Richard Cox, eds. Reality’s Dark Light: The Sensational Wilkie Collins. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2003.
Ellis, S. M. Wilkie Collins, Le Fanu, and Others. London: Constable, 1931.
Heller, Tamar. Dead Secrets: Wilkie Collins and the Female Gothic. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1992.
Lonoff, Sue. Wilkie Collins and His Victorian Readers: A Study in the Rhetoric of Authorship. New York: AMS Press, 1982.
Nayder, Lillian. Unequal Partners: Charles Dickens, Wilkie Collins, and Victorian Authorship. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2002.
————Wilkie Collins. New York: Twayne Publishers, 1997.
O’Neill, Philip. Wilkie Collins: Women, Property, and Propriety. Basingstoke, UK: Macmillan, 1988.
Petersen, Audrey. Victorian Masters of Mystery: From Wilkie Collins to Conan Doyle. New York: Frederick Ungar, 1984.
Pykett, Lyn. The Sensation Novel from The Woman in White to The Moonstone. Plymouth, UK: Northcote House, 1994.
, ed. Wilkie Collins. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998.
Rance, Nicholas. Wilkie Collins and Other Sensation Novelists: Walking the Moral Hospital. Basingstoke, UK: Macmillan, 1991.
Smith, Nelson, and R. C. Terry, eds. Wilkie Collins to the Forefront: Some Reassessments. New York: AMS Press, 1995.
Taylor, Jenny Bourne. In the Secret Theatre of Home: Wilkie Collins, Sensation Narrative, and Nineteenth Century Psychology. London: Routledge, 1988.
Thoms, Peter. The Windings of the Labyrinth: Quest and Structure in the Major Novels of Wilkie Collins. Athens: Ohio University Press, 1992.
Collins in Context
Altick, Richard D. The Presence of the Present: Topics of the Day in the Victorian Novel. Columbus: Ohio University Press, 1991.
Brooks, Peter. Reading for the Plot: Design and Intention in Narrative. New York: Vintage, 1985. Includes a chapter on Collins.
Cvetkovich, Ann. Mixed Feelings: Feminism, Mass Culture, and Victorian Sensationalism. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1992.
Gaylin, Ann Elizabeth. Eavesdropping in the Novel from Austen to Proust. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002.
Hughes, Wini
fred. The Maniac in the Cellar: Sensation Novels of the 1860s. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1980.
Miller, D. A. The Novel and the Police. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988. Includes a chapter on Collins.
Phillips, Walter C. Dickens, Reade, and Collins: Sensation Novelists: A Study in the Conditions and Theories of Novel Writing in Victorian England. 1919. New York: Russell and Russell, 1962.
Pykett, Lyn. The “Improper” Feminine: The Women’s Sensation Novel and the New Woman Writing. London: Routledge, 1992.
Scull, Andrew T. The Most Solitary of Afflictions: Madness and Society in Britain, 1700-1900. New Haven, CT:Yale University Press, 1993.
Showalter, Elaine. The Female Malady: Women, Madness, and English Culture, 1830-1980. New York: Pantheon, 1985.
Small, Helen. Love’s Madness: Medicine, the Novel, and Female Insanity, 1800-1865. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996.
Sutherland, John. Victorian Fiction:Writers, Publishers, Readers. Basingstoke, UK: Macmillan, 1995.
Sweet, Matthew. Inventing the Victorians. London: Faber and Faber, 2001.
a Centuries-old residence hall, originally built for lawyers; one of the Inns of Court.
b Suburb northwest of London.
c Hampstead Heath, a large area of wild, desolate land, unfit for cultivation, used as de facto wild, desolate parkland; it is 4 miles from the London city center.
d Exhibition hall, tantamount to a sideshow, exhibiting curiosities such as dwarfs.
e Cloth or leather leggings spanning from the top of the foot to the mid-calf or knee, worn to protect the bottoms of trousers.
f Popular seaside town on the English Channel in southeastern England. ‡Very coarse beach gravel. §Bathing machine, a wheeled compartment used at the beach to preserve modesty when one enters and leaves the water.
g Residential area of north-central London popular with the newly wealthy.
h Section of Inferno reserved for tyrants, murderers, and the violent.
i Formerly a county in northwestern England, now part of Cumbria.
j A generous salary for the job; guinea coins, usually gold, were worth 1 pound plus 1 shilling.
k Hot alcoholic drink, usually rum mixed with water, lemon juice, and sugar.
l Vast royal park in northwestern London, not opened to the public until 1845.
m Wealthier side of London.
n Highway.
o Affluent northwestern London suburb near Regent’s Park; men often housed their mistresses there.
p Light, covered carriage, usually rented, drawn by one horse.
q Lowest hereditary ranking, below baron and above knight.
r School for religious education in the Wesleyan Methodist Church.
s Large area of northwestern England famous for its lakes and mountains; includes Cumberland.
t County in southwestern England on the Channel. ‡Toll road.
u Light, convertible carriage.
v Capital city of Cumberland/Cumbria.
w City in Lancashire, which borders Cumberland to the south.
x Popular card game for two players, often bet upon.
y Bay window projecting outward from a wall.
z Glazed, printed cotton fabric.
aa Light yellow.
ab Coarsely woven, felt-like fabric.
ac Master Italian Renaissance painter Raffaelo Sanzio (1483-1520).
ad Men’s double-breasted, knee-length coat; vest.
ae Soft chamois or cloth cut to a point, used here for polishing.
af Germanic tribe that overran the Roman Empire in the early centuries A.D.
ag Stretching.
ah In Greek myth, the song of female sea nymphs, which led sailors to their death.
ai Habitual, routine acquaintances, not close friends.
aj Loose ecclesiastical vestment worn over the other robes.
ak Archangel who keeps a record of individuals’ behavior.
al After the title character of Robinson Crusoe (1719), a novel by Daniel Defoe about a shipwrecked sailor building a solitary life for himself.
am Fired once a minute, often for military funerals.
an Sets of steps built for climbing over a wall.
ao One who takes care of the church.
ap Tiny window used to fire small arms through or to admit a bit of light.
aq Streaked with darker colors.
ar Popular card game for four partnered players.
as Tie-breaking round.
at Ill-behaved.
au Straying from the point.
av Restricted to one’s descendants.
aw Erase.
ax Last parts.
ay Three farthings are three quarters of a pence.
az Euston Station terminates the London and Northwestern Railway, which serves Carlisle.
ba Large area of central London.
bb Fine white linen.
bc Extreme political liberal favoring reform.
bd Tory; opposed to change; standing with the Queen and the Church of England.
be May through July, when the nobility held social events in London.
bf The Spanish Steps, a popular tourist attraction, lead to this French-built church.
bg Made of fine wool from the Shetland Islands, off Scotland.
bh Alpine region, mainly in Austria.
bi Abbreviation for baronet, Sir Percival’s rank.
bj Port city in Hampshire.
bk A woman’s private dressing room.
bl Twenty-four-hour ride from London to York (more than 170 miles) ascribed to legendary eighteenth-century highwayman Dick Turpin.
bm A stroke.
bn London suburb.
bo Early photographs taken by means of sunlight exposure.
bp School for skilled workers’ continuing education.
bq Name of three Assyrian kings who reigned during the twelfth through the eighth centuries B.C.
br English king who reigned from 1727 to 1760.
bs Items no longer used, often in storage.
bt Bright, yellow-brown wood.
bu Round little candies.
bv Open, two-wheeled country carriage with back-to-back seats.
bw Brownish-yellow Chinese cotton.
bx Tanned goatskin.
by Handheld accordion.
bz Roman martyr of the third century A.D. who is patron saint of musicians.
ca Manager of the estate.
cb Huge salt lake on the modern Israel-Jordan border.
cc Suppressed anger.
cd High boots with band of lighter-colored leather circling the top.
ce Typical Englishman.
cf Eighteenth-century English prison reformer who agitated for institutional cleanliness and religious rehabilitation of prisoners.
cg The highly favored youngest son of Jacob in the Bible.
ch Adhesive disks used as seals.
ci Viewed negatively by English critics as a bad influence.
Woman in White (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) Page 78