The Woman in White

I'd almost totally forgotten about this blog. It's been an incredibly busy nine months, from which I've emerged as a fully fledged and qualified English Teacher.

Not much pleasure-reading has gone on as a consequence.

However, since finishing approximately 2 weeks ago, I've read a novel I've been wanting to read for ages: Wilkie Collins' Woman in White. The only Wilkie Collins book I'd read in the past was The Moonstone, which is a sort of classic detective type of story and which I really enjoyed at the time. But The Woman in White is considered his masterpiece.

I must admit I was slightly disappointed. I felt the mystery 'Woman in White' was exposed far too early in the story and turned into a pathetic, rather than a mysterious or entrancing figure. I found most of the characters irritating rather than sympathetic. We have to remember that Victorian novels describe a time increasingly distant from our own, but I kept getting the 'Hardy feeling': that urge to step into the novel and shake the characters really hard.

I also felt it was over long. By the end, I had virtually ceased to care about the various intricacies of the plot, the central one of which is extremely underwhelming by modern standards of morality.

All that said, it was still a largely satisfying read, and I can see why it has achieved classic status. I think it would have been better read before The Moonstone, however, and shortened by 200 or so pages. Particularly the parts which describe the married life of central character Laura Fairlie.

The novel is told by several different narrators who cover different aspects of the plot (as is often the case, this is said to be in the interests of veracity and precision by using the witnesses to the 'real' events). I felt that this was actually underused. One of the most interesting parts of the novel was where the narrative voice changed rapidly for 100 or so pages. In reality, well over half the book is told by Walter Hartright, a character I found to be self-righteous and whiny.

The book is sometimes posited as an example of detective fiction, but being an avid fan of early detective fiction (Sherlock Holmes and the excellent detectives created by Edgar Allen Poe spring to mind) I thought this one of the novel's major weaknesses. The development of this area of the plot was extremely uneven. Tiny details were stretched too thinly over tens and tens of pages while passages of rapid action or discovery are squashed into a few short lines. This gives the novel an unpleasantly breathless feel and makes for unsatisying read.

Wilkie, I give you 6.5/10.