Wilkie Collins: The Woman in White

If you had asked me a few weeks ago what I knew about Wilkie Collins, the honest answer would have been ‘nothing.’  If you had put the thumbscrews on and said TELL ME EVERYTHING YOU KNOW in a threatening voice, then I would have yelped ‘erm, wasn’t he friends with Dickens?  And wasn’t he kind of a pervert?  That’s all I know!  I’m SORRY!  Don’t HURT me anymore!’

But a few weeks ago I was living in an empty, pre-Wilkie world.  And now I have seen the light.  The light shining off the Woman in White’s shiny white dress.  And the light is awesome.

The Woman in White, for those people like me who have lived their lives under a rock, is the first ‘sensation’ novel and one of the first mystery/detective novels too.  It was written as a serial, and so each chapter ends on a BIG CLIFF HANGER.  Like a classy soap opera.  Imagine inventing an entire genre by yourself.  The public went mental over it – apparently when published in book form, it became the best selling book of the 19th century – and its easy to see why.

The hero, Walter Hartright (CLUE to him being a hero in the name, see) is a drawing teacher who keeps having these mysterious encounters with an ethereal woman dressed in white.  He goes to teach Laura Fairlie, inevitably falls in love with her, and finds himself entangled in a family drama which keeps getting deeper and deeper, and all somehow connected to the Woman.

In the best tradition of heroines, Laura is pathetic, wet and annoying.  But the cast of supporting characters more than makes up for this.  Whiny Mr Fairlie is the Victorian invalid taken to extremes.  Marion, Laura’s sister, is passionate, articulate and decisive.  And Count Fosco is the most unconventional villain I’ve ever come across: with a weakness for cream and white mice, hypnotic powers, hideous and menacing but charming and irresistable to women.

You lose something by scoffing the whole thing in one go, I think, but that’s my own fault for becoming addicted to it.

Spoilers in the next paragraph

I have to say that when the secret is revealed, I was a little bit underwhelmed, but that’s my modern immorality getting in the way.  I’m sure the Victorians found it very shocking.  I also felt like the ending, involving Professor Pesca, was a bit too far-fetched.  It was almost like Wilkie got bored, and thought ‘how can I get this over and done with in a couple more instalments?’  Otherwise ‘The Woman in White’ is fabulous.  I did get frustrated in places and thought TELL ME THE ANSWERS but that’s because my attention span is very limited.

OK, uncover your eyes now

The Husband has a little thing for Wilkie, having studied him in college, and so kept telling me sort-of interesting facts while I was trying to read.  Apparently Thomas Hardy couldn’t get his mournful tales of woe published because everyone wanted to read sensation novels, so Hardy had to churn one out to get his foot in the door.  The Husband would also proclaim ‘Count Fosco’ in his best fake-scary-dramatic voice every now and again.  Like how the hyenas say ‘Mufasa’ in the Lion King.  Not distracting at all.

The Oxford World Classics edition I was reading had a great introduction, with many more useful facts.  I could do a whole pub quiz on the Woman in White now.  The impression I had of Wilkie being a bit pervy was slightly exaggerated, though his private live was a little on the murky side and he had not one, but two, mistresses and kept them in separate houses.  The introduction tells me that this is reflected in the ending of the Woman in White.  Oh delicious scandal.

Get this now.  It’s a thriller, thriller night, as Michael Jackson said.