The Woman in White in Around the World

Apr 16, 2019 Mounir rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: literature-english

I read this novel for the first time in its abridged form when i was young. This time i was lucky to find the complete novel, and it was a very enjoyable read.

Certain things were amusing: It is nice to read about people who "dress for dinner", the ladies who "retire" to the drawing room while the gentlemen smoke or have a drink, they "keep a diary", and they send written messages to other persons in a distant town which can reach them in a few hours!

Other things were less amusing !
- i didn't l ...more

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Apr 26, 2010 Lisa (Harmonybites) rated it it was amazing

Shelves: mystery, crime, novels, fiction, favorites, horror, classics, before-i-die, romance, ebooks

I've long heard Wilkie Collin's Victorian classics The Woman in White and The Moonstone cited as the grandfather of the modern thriller and detective novel respectively. The introduction states that "The Woman in White assembles a dubious aristocrat, an obese Italian count with a passion for white mice, vanilla bonbons and poison, an effeminate hypochondriac and a mustached lady." It just so happens the "mustached lady," Marian Halcombe, is my favorite character in the book. I loved her! And no I've long heard Wilkie Collin's Victorian classics The Woman in White and The Moonstone cited as the grandfather of the modern thriller and detective novel respectively. The introduction states that "The Woman in White assembles a dubious aristocrat, an obese Italian count with a passion for white mice, vanilla bonbons and poison, an effeminate hypochondriac and a mustached lady." It just so happens the "mustached lady," Marian Halcombe, is my favorite character in the book. I loved her! And no she's not something from a sideshow, but an "ugly" young lady without the usual Victorian feminine wiles but intelligent, direct, courageous, loyal and a very strong female character I didn't expect to find in a Victorian Gothic melodrama. The book got rated five stars because she is amazing. Her half-sister and the damsel-in-distress, Laura Farlie, is, alas, everything I expected in a Victorian heroine--insipid. She's beautiful and blonde and sweet and and naive and weepy and prone to faint. Her male counterpart, Walter Hartwright, who is just about everything I expected in a stalwart Victorian hero, largely carries the narrative along with Marian. The "effeminate hypochondriac" is Frederick Farlie, Laura's uncle, and a delightfully comic character. The "obese Italian," Count Fosco, is just about the most colorful and cunning villain I've read in literature. The "dubious aristocrat" I'll leave for you to discover.

The prose style is more to my liking than what I expected from a contemporary and friend of Charles Dickens. Not preachy or treacly, though the book is a bit more formal, yet more emotional (some might say melodramatic), than what I'd expect from a contemporary style. The writing is both graceful and very readable. The novel features an unusual structure: a string of first person narratives, diary entries, documents and letters by various characters. The voices are great, even minor characters are very distinct, and at one point you learn how and why the narratives came to be assembled and it really works. By avoiding third person omniscient Collins also made me wonder how much we should rely on the various narratives, and if something different were happening than the obvious on the page. I won't say more because it would head to spoiler territory, but it's all so well done.

It all begins one moonlit night when Walter meets a "woman in white," Anne Catherick, escaping from a private asylum. Romance, ghostly apparitions, intrigue, treachery, madness, hidden and mistaken identities, secret societies, twists and turns follow. I saw one reviewer accuse the novel of being sexist. It sounded like the reviewer was just trotting out the old "Dead White Male" canard, because I don't believe the creator of Marian is a sexist, but more than that, given how the plot deals with the perils of a system that treated adult women like minors, and the scary consequences, I'd instead suspect Collins to be a proto-feminist. All the more reason to suspect him of that given the contempt heaped on the idea of an obedient, dutiful wife in the person of Countess Fosco. The novel is a delicious nail-biting, edge-of-your-seat page-turning confection that's fun to consume. This novel certainly puts Collin's Moonstone on my to-read list, and after reading this I put The Woman in White on my virtual favorites list. ...more

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