tutorial, commentary, study resources, and web links

Armadale (1864) was the follow-up to two previously successful novels by Wilkie Collins – The Woman in White (1860) and No Name (1862). It didn’t result in quite so many magazine sales, but it certainly helped to cement his position of the master of the ‘sensation novel’ – of which this was his longest. He was paid £5,000 for the complete work – money that went to support the two separate families he maintained in London’s fashionable West End at the same time

Armadale – a note on the text

Armadale first appeared as twenty serial episodes in the Cornhill Magazine between November 1864 and June 1865. It then published in two volumes by Smith, Elder in May 1865. There were minor revisions to the text, and Collins added a preface and even an explanatory appendix to cover some of the issues he wished to address in the novel.

An American edition of the novel appeared as a serial in Harper’s Monthly Magazine from December 1864 to July 1865, then a one-volume edition published by Harper in 1866.

Collins also produced a stage dramatisation of the story, though this was never given a live production. He wrote this to protect his copyright, because at that time there was nothing to prevent pirated versions of a story appearing on stage – unless a separate version had been written by its original author.

This phenomenon of publishing in a variety of genres also illustrates the commercial enterprise of writers such as Collins and his friend Charles Dickens. They were keen to exploit all possible versions of their works – as newspaper and magazine serials, in volume form as novels, and as stage productions. This is not unlike contemporary dramas which may appear as television serials, cinema movies, novelizations, and boxed sets of CDs, as well as in downloadable digital formats.

Armadale – critical commentary

The sensation novel

Wilkie Collins, along with his contemporary Mary Elizabeth Braddon, became famous for the sensation novel in the 1860s. He made his name with The Woman in White (1860) and she had a best-seller with Lady Audley’s Secret (1862). These were novels that introduced elements of mystery, suspense, and crime into otherwise ordinary social settings.

They were also designed to titillate and shock readers by including topics that skirted as closely as possible to what was acceptable in popular fiction at the time. These topics included illegitimacy, secret marriages, forged wills, theft, contested inheritance, suicide, and even murder.

Armadale has its fair share of this type of subject matter embedded in the plot, which includes instances of concealed identity, spying, personation, secret marriage, drugs, attempted and real suicide, plus murder.

Names and identities

From its very start the novel is concerned with the relationship between names and personal identity. For instance the principal character is called Lydia Gwilt – a woman who weaves herself and her influence around several of the other characters in the novel.

But Lydia Gwilt is not her real name. Her original or true name is not known, She is a foundling and even she does not know what her name should be (Book the Third, Chapter XV). Her name has been attached to her by others.

As a result of her first marriage she becomes Mrs Waldron, and then through her second marriage Mrs Manuel – though we know that this marriage is illegitimate, because Manuel is still married to someone else at the time.

She then contracts a bigamous marriage with Midwinter – an illegal union because Manuel is still alive. And Ozias Midwinter isn’t his real name either. He is actually called Allan Armadale, a name which Lydia Gwilt wants to acquire so as to pose as the widow of the ‘other’ Allan Armadale after murdering him and claiming his money.

It is not surprising that this potpourri of names, identities, and relationships eventually leads her into states of illegality, then later into psychological breakdown and eventually to her suicide.

The villainous character

Sensation novels often have dubious, devious, villainous, or criminal characters – but Lydia Gwilt pushes the boundaries of credibility. She has a completely irregular provenance – with a past history in which she has manipulated men, and been ill-treated by them in her turn. She uses her sexual allure to work on the elderly and decrepit servant Bashwood, who is so besotted with her that even after discovering he is being manipulated, he ends up in a semi-demented state, imagining that he is about to marry her.

Yet Bashwood might be considered to have a lucky escape, because there is evidence that she murdered her first husband Waldron. She makes two attempts to poison Armadale in pursuit of his wealth; she is a serial bigamist; she is involved in deception and fraud; she is a drug user. addicted to laudanum; she is hostile and vindictive to anybody who stands in the way of her plans; and she both attempts and eventually commits suicide.

The one feature that redeems this stereotyped catalogue of villainy is that towards the end of the novel Wilkie Collins gives her a streak of sympathy and appreciation towards Midwinter, whom she perceives as a fellow outsider. She has married him in order to share his real name (Allan Armadale) but gradually she dimly realises that she loves him for his own sake.

Weaknesses

The enormous length and complexity of the plot makes unusually severe demands on the reader. This is a novel in which there are no fewer than four characters with the same name – Allan Armadale – and the relationship between them requires prodigious feats of memory on the part of the reader, because the connections are briefly adumbrated in the first pages of the novel then hardly mentioned again throughout the eight hundred pages that follow.

There are also several strands in the plot which first appear significant, but are then dropped or disappear without trace. For instance, the relationships of the ‘original’ Allan Armadale and the person who takes up his name (Fergus Ingelby) is lost in obscurity after the Prologue to the main story. The same is true of their marriages and their sons – also called Allan Armadale.

At the other end of the novel, Armadale’s relationship with Eleanor Milroy appears to be woven into the over-dramatic finale when she is transported to the Sanatorium, in a state of mental shock following the (false) news of Armadale’s death. The highly over-wrought sequence of attempted murder and switched rooms involving Armadale, Midwinter, and Lydia Gwilt brings the novel to its climax – but Wilkie Collins appears to forget that the other member of this quartet is also on the premises. Eleanor is simply not mentioned again until she makes a brief reappearance in the Epilogue as Armadale’s wife.

It also has to be said that the latter part of the novel collapses into Grand Guignol melodrama when all four principal characters are locked overnight into a mental asylum. Lydia Gwilt as the arch villain is plotting to murder Allan Armadale with poisonous gas, but Midwinter and Armadale have switched bedrooms. Lydia therefore fails in her quest and ends up (almost) poisoning her own husband – before killing herself.

Wilkie Collins also has the annoying habit of relating some scenes twice. He will deliver a sequence of events as a (very intrusive) third person narrator – but then have his characters go over the same events again, either in discussion or as explanation to each other. This might be a deliberate element of the serial form – reminding readers of ‘the story so far’ – but it is irritating for readers to be told something they already know.

These diffuse strands of plotting might be useful to sustain readers’ interest during their consumption of a serialized fiction – but they do not help to create the tight cohesion and thematic density that we associate with an intellectually satisfying novel. However, it is worth noting that the two cultural forms of the literary and the popular serial novel were coexistent at that time.

Armadale – study resources

Armadale – Oxford Classics – Amazon UK

Armadale – Oxford Classics – Amazon US

Armadale – Independent Publishers – Amazon UK

Armadale – Independent Publishers – Amazon US

The Complete Works of Wilkie Collins – Kindle eBook

Armadale – eBook formats at Gutenberg

Armadale – plot summary

Prologue

I. A Scottish solicitor Alexander Neal and the paralyzed Englishman Allan Armadale arrive in the German spa town of Wildbad.

II. The local doctor asks a reluctant Neal to take English dictation from the dying Armadale, who will not trust the job to his beautiful wife.

III. Neal reads out the start of a long letter Armadale is writing as a confession to his son. His original name is Allan Wrentmore and he has inherited a fortune at the expense of Allan Armadale – whose name he must take. The original Armadale steals his bride-to-be but then is drowned during a storm at sea. Wrentmore reveals that he locked Armadale in his cabin as the ship was sinking.

The Wrentmore Armadale marries in Trinidad then goes to Europe where he is dying, comforted only by his son who is also called Allan Armadale. The confession is rounded off as a warning to his son to avoid any contact with other people in the drama (particularly the original Allan Armadale’s son) and is posted off to solicitors in London.

Part the First

I. Twenty years later the Reverend Brock looks back as tutor to the young Allan Armadale and would-be suitor to Mrs Armadale. When an advert appears in the Times seeking information on Allan Armadale she quashes all interest in it.

When brain-fevered outcast Ozias Midwinter appears, Allan Armadale assumes complete financial responsibility for him. Mrs Armadale is suspicious of the outcast and thinks he might be the ‘real’ Allan Armadale in disguise. She is also visited by her former young maid (Lydia Gwilt) whom she regards as pernicious. Shortly afterwards she falls ill and dies.

Another newspaper advert appears from the London lawyers requesting information on Armadale. Brock and Armadale go to Paris where they learn that as a result of three family deaths, Armadale has inherited his wealthy uncle’s estate in Norfolk.

A mysterious young woman (Lydia Gwilt) attempts suicide but is rescued. Armadale takes Brock and Midwinter on a cruise to the Isle of Man where Midwinter reveals to Brock his true identity as Allan Armadale.

II. Midwinter relates how his mother married Alexander Neal who beat him, and how he escaped with the rogue gypsy who gave him his odd name. He lives as a vagabond, ends up in jail, then spends two years working for a miserly bookseller. He responds to the Times advert and receives a salary from his share of the inheritance. Because of the kindness Armadale has shown to him, he decides to stick to the assumed name of Midwinter and ignore his father’s injunction to avoid Armadale. Midwinter burns his father’s confessional warning letter.

III. Midwinter and Armadale spend a desultory day on the Isle of Man where they meet the local doctor Mr Hawberry and go for a midnight sail in his boat. They end up stranded on the wreck of La Grace de Dieu, the vessel on which the original murder took place.

IV. They find themselves outside the cabin where Midwinter’s father killed Armadale’s father. Armadale is unaware of its history. Midwinter is tempted to reveal the truth, but feels deeply conflicted. Armadale has a dream whilst on the wreck , and later they are rescued by Hawberry. 

V. Armadale’s strange dream is interpreted by Hawberry using rational arguments from the previous day’s events. Midwinter remains convinced that the dream is prophetic.

Book the Second

I. Midwinter is worried about being made steward at Thorpe-Ambrose estate. The procuress Mrs Oldershaw advises Lydia Gwilt to pursue Armadale as revenge for her ill-treatment by his mother. Major Milroy takes up tenancy of the estate cottage with his invalid wife and young daughter. Lydia plans to apply for a job as their governess.

II. Armadale inspects his new estate. He meets Miss Milroy and instantly falls in love with her. He meets her father, who advertises for a governess.

III. Midwinter finds Armadale’s mother’s books in the room featured in Armadale’s dream. Armadale has insulted the old family solicitor and is approached by a new partnership in the town. The local gentry regard him unfavourably.

IV. Midwinter encounters grievance at the Milroy cottage. The locals do not like Armadale’s radical new attitudes. Armadale flirts with Miss Milroy and starts to entertain ideas of marriage.

V. Mrs Oldershaw tries to baffle Reverend Brock. Lydia Gwilt is in hiding, but is determined to marry Allan Armadale as an act of revenge. Mrs Oldershaw changes her name to Manderville and employs a maid to act as a decoy for Lydia.

VI. Armadale and an ebullient Midwinter visit the Milroy cottage. Midwinter creates an embarrassing scene, and Major Milroy exhibits his animated clock.

VII. Allan invites Eleanor to a picnic. Bashwood recounts to Midwinter the story of his disastrous family life. Lydia Gwilt is invited to the picnic when she arrives.

VIII. There is a boating party excursion onto the Norfolk Broads, with courtship and comic interludes. 

IX. The party returns to Thorpe-Ambrose, but Armadale stays behind to meet Midwinter, where he has a re-enactment of his dream when he encounters Lydia Gwilt.

X. Midwinter fears that Armadale is fulfilling his own prophetic dream. Lydia Gwilt’s arrival immediately upsets the Milroys. Midwinter checks on Lydia, but uses a flawed description of her supplied by Brock. Because of this he abandons his superstitious belief in the prophetic dream.

XI. Lydia Gwilt is in danger of being exposed, and she rightly believes that Mrs Milroy suspects her. She reports that Midwinter is in love with her. Mrs Oldershaw deploys her decoy maid to deceive Brock.

XII. Midwinter has banished all his earlier qualms about the dream and installed Armadale in his mother’s old room. Armadale announces to a mortified Midwinter that he is in love with Lydia Gwilt.

XIII. Armadale and Midwinter discuss Lydia. Armadale knows very little about her background. He wants Midwinter’s help, but because he too is in love with Lydia, Midwinter leaves Thorpe-Ambrose.

Book the Third

I. The invalid Mrs Milroy is fuelled by a jealous suspicion towards Lydia. She opens her mail and thinks she is trying to seduce the Major.

II. Mrs Milroy shares her hatred of Lydia with her daughter Eleanor, who reveals to her the connection between Lydia and Armadale.

III. Mrs. Milroy plots to send Armadale to London in search of further information on Lydia and her background which they both want.

IV. Armadale and lawyer Pedgift Junior go to London in search of Mrs Manderville, not realising that her real name is Oldershaw.

V. Armadale and Pedgift Junior trace the connection with Lydia Gwilt to a brothel in Pimlico. Armadale abandons the search but is pestered for evidence from the Milroys. The scandal of a challenge to Lydia Gwilt’s virtue without any evidence is made public in Thorpe-Ambrose.

VI. Pedgift Senior advises Armadale against Lydia Gwilt. She makes two attempts to visit Allan, but Pedgift insists that she is refused. Armadale is very reluctant to pursue further enquiries.

VII. Pedgift then reveals that Lydia has threatened Eleanor Milroy, and Armadale is persuaded to let Pedgift set a spy on tracing Lydia’s movements.

VII. Lydia knows she is being followed and she employs a love-smitten Bashwood as an informer. She meets Midwinter on his return to Thorpe-Ambrose and lies to him that she has been misunderstood.

VIII. Armadale and Midwinter argue about Lydia Gwilt – and in doing so re-enact a scene from the prophetic dream.

IX. Bashwood reports to Lydia on the argument and on Armadale’s refusal to accept Pedgift’s advice. Midwinter vows to leave Thorpe-Ambrose forever – but he writes to Lydia Gwilt and falls into her seductive trap by revealing his true identity.

X. Lydia Gwilt’s diary summarises the plot as she records Midwinter’s confession. She despises Allan but is attracted to Midwinter as a fellow outsider. She eavesdrops on Armadale’s marriage proposal to Eleanor and receives letters from Midwinter. She devises a plan of a secret marriage to Midwinter after which she will claim to be the widow of Allan Armadale following his death.

XI. Armadale and Eleanor discuss the legal requirements for a marriage. He decides to go to London to seek advice.

XII. Armadale and Lydia Gwilt leave for London on the same train – observed by the jealous Bashwood, who vows to seek revenge on Lydia Gwilt.

XIII. Bashwood applies to Pedgift, but gets little help. He then contacts his son, the private detective whom Mrs Oldershaw has also consulted.

XIV. Lydia checks the legalities of marrying Midwinter in her maiden name of Gwilt, then invents a false biography for herself. Major Milroy imposes a six month delay on Eleanor’s marriage to Armadale. Lydia notices she is being followed by spies, and she realises that she is in love with Midwinter.

XV. Bashwood Junior reports to his father on Lydia’s background. She was married to Waldron who died of poison. She was found guilty, then acquitted, then imprisoned for theft. Next she married Manuel, who absconded with all her money. The Bashwoods try to catch up with her but they are too late. Lydia marries Midwinter.

Book the Fourth

I. Two months later in Naples Lydia feels that her marriage has already gone sour. Midwinter is working as a journalist. They are joined by Armadale, who annoys her with his enthusiasm for a new yacht and his concern for Eleanor.

II. Lydia sees her former husband Manuel at the opera. She tries to poison Armadale, but he rejects the drink because she has added brandy, to which he is allergic. Manuel tries to blackmail Lydia, but she fobs him off with a scheme to murder Armadale for his money. Armadale sets out on his yacht, but Midwinter and Lydia do not go with him.

III. A month later Lydia is in London and Midwinter is in Turin. Armadale’s yacht sinks in a storm at sea. Lydia is worried about the handwriting on her marriage certificate.

She turns against Midwinter and seeks help from the abortionist ‘Doctor’ Downward. He agrees to be a fake witness for an exorbitant fee. She is visited by Bashwood Senior whom she sends back to Thorpe-Ambrose as a spy. Bashwood reappears with the news that Armadale is alive. Downward constructs a plan to lure Armadale into the Sanatorium he has bought.

Book the Last

I. Downward tries to persuade Lydia to enter the Sanatorium as a patient. She plays for time. Midwinter arrives in London unexpectedly.

II. Bashwood encounters Midwinter at the railway station and causes him some alarm. Midwinter follows Bashwood to Lydia and confronts her. When she reveals that she is not his legal wife, he collapses.

III. Lydia escapes into the Sanatorium. Downward shows visitors round the establishment and talks to Lydia about poisons. Midwinter meets Armadale at the station. They go to the Sanatorium where Eleanor is recovering from the shock of the news of Armadale’s death. Lydia plans to poison Armadale, who switches rooms with Midwinter. Lydia discovers the switch, saves Midwinter, then kills herself instead.

Epilogue

I. Nobody is found guilty, although Pedgift senior suspects the bogus doctor. Bashwood goes insane, and imagines he is about to be married to Lydia.

II. Midwinter is finally reconciled with Armadale who marries Eleanor. Midwinter also accepts Reverend Brock’s quasi religious views on the question of Destiny and free will.

Armadale – principal characters

Armadale – further reading

William M. Clarke, The Secret Life of Wilkie Collins, London: Ivan R. Dee, 1988.

Tamar Heller, Dead Secrets: Wilkie Collins and the Female Gothic, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992.

Winifred Hughes, The Maniac in the Cellar: Sensation Novels of the 1860s, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014.

Sue Lonoff, Wilkie Collins and his Victorian Readers: A Study in the Rhetoric of Authorship, New York: AMS Press, 1982.

Catherine Peters, The King of Inventors: A Life of Wilkie Collins, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014.

Walter C. Phillips, Dickens, Reade, and Collins: Sensation Novelists, New York: Library of Congress, 1919.

Lynn Pykett, Wilkie Collins: New Casebooks, London: Palgrave-Macmillan, 1998.

Nicholas Rance, Wilkie Collins and Other Sensation Novelists: Walking the Moral Hospital, London: Palgrave-Macmillan, 1991.

© Roy Johnson 2017

tutorial, commentary, study resources, and web links

Basil (1852) was the first major novel by Wilkie Collins and possibly one of the first sensation novels. Because of his friendship with the more famous writer Charles Dickens, Wilkie Collins has been unjustly neglected, with the exception of his two best known novels The Woman in White and The Moonstone. But he was an energetic and prolific artist who, like his contemporary Mary Elizabeth Braddon, was amazingly successful in the mid-nineteenth century. Their novels were the cultural equivalents of today’s soap operas and multi-part television dramas.

Basil contains all the elements of a mystery story and a thriller, and is amazingly in advance of its time in depicting what we would now call existential angst. As a result of a casual sighting of an attractive woman, Basil gradually finds himself enmeshed in a life-threatening struggle with forces he only half understands.

Basil – a note on the text

Basil was first published in three volumes by Richard Bentley, London in 1852. The full title at that times was Basil: A Story of Modern Life. It was then reprinted in 1856 and reset in one volume, published by James Blackwood, London with no alterations.

Wilkie Collins then carefully revised his text (and eliminated the sub-title) for publication in one volume by Sampson Low, Son & Co, London in 1862. The changes he made were largely a reduction in the length of some of the longer scenes and the removal of items from doubled or trebled phrases which were a common feature of his style.

Basil – critical commentary

The sensation novel

The sensation novel came of age in the 1860s with the publication of Collins’ The Woman in White (1860) and Mary Elizabeth Braddon’s Lady Audley’s Secret (1861). The genre has been described as ‘novels with a secret’ – and it is easy to see Basil as a precursor to these well known examples.

Basil certainly has a number of secrets that help to drive the plot and its suspense. The first of these is the enigmatic figure of Margaret Sherwin – a a woman who completely mesmerises Basil, but about whom we know nothing. Unknown to Basil she is conducting a secret relationship with the sinister character Mannion.

The second secret or mystery is Mr Sherwin’s bizarre proposal of a secret marriage for his daughter, followed by a twelve month chaste courtship. Why would anyone propose so unusual an arrangement? This puts Basil’s patience under strain, and it has to be said it the reader’s credulity too.

Mrs Sherwin is a ‘silenced’ woman and a bag of nerves. She is a second level of mystery – but it is obvious to the reader that she is being threatened into silence by her domineering husband. As a character, she seems to be signalling her disquiet to the reader above the heads of the other characters.

Mr Mannion is an additional mystery. He appears at first to have no ‘background’, and is only a clerk, yet acts in a superior manner. His employer Mr Sherwin rates him very highly. His background and the sources of his malevolent motivation are only revealed later in the novel

The double, twinning, and parallels

Underpinning both the structure and the characterisation of the novel is a pattern of twinning or parallels – commonly referred to in literary studies as the double. The most obvious case is that of the two women towards whom Basil is attracted – his sister Clara and his ‘wife’ Margaret Sherwin.

The two women are opposites. Clara is fair-haired and virtuous, loyal, pure, and long suffering. Margaret is dark-haired and scheming, duplicitous, sensual, and cruel. They represent the two sides of Basil’s attitude to sexuality.

He is drawn to Clara in a lofty, spiritual, and almost intellectual sense. She represents everything that is good and untainted in woman – though it has to be said that short of incest, there is no way this relationship can lead towards anything productive. It is interesting nevertheless that at the end of the novel Basil has gone into a very premature retirement, living with his sister.

But he is drawn towards Margaret by libidinous impulses that he simply cannot control. It is worth noting that the moment he recognises the force of these desires, he starts to feel guilty – towards his family and towards Clara in particular.

When Basil dreams, this division is symbolised by his struggle with two women. One is a fair creature in pure white robes trying to lead his towards heaven; the other is a dark-haired seductress who is dragging him into the woods.

I was drawn along in the arms of the dark woman, with my blood beating and my breath failing me, until we entered the secret recesses that lay amid the unfathomable depths of trees. There she encircled me in the folds of her dusky robe

This ‘twinning’ or ‘doubling’ is repeated in the figures of Basil and his arch-rival Robert Mannion. Both of them have been burdened by a negative legacy from their fathers. Basil is cursed by his father’s obsessive ancestor worship and his desire to keep the family‘s name and ‘honour’ free from any lower class contamination.

Basil is the younger, not the elder son – but for the majority of the novel his profligate brother Ralph is absent from the narrative. Mannion’s life has been blighted by the reputational disgrace of his own father, which has pursued him, thwarting his ambition.

Interestingly, Mannion’s father’s disgrace and execution was brought about by Basil’s father. This gives Mannion one powerful motive in his desire to wreak vengeance on Basil.

Both Basil and Mannion are attracted to Margaret Sherwin, and both of them try to ‘educate’ her – without success. Mannion is attracted to her physically but despises her morally. Basil appears to be different, but following the revelation of her duplicity he ends up hating her as well.

Both men have literary aspirations. Basil starts out writing a historical romance, but is side-tracked by his obsession with Margaret. Mannion too seeks fame in writing, but is reduced to hack work for third-class newspapers.

So the two men are locked in an antagonistic union. Basil’s ‘marriage’ to Margaret is destroyed by Mannion’s scheming seduction, and yet Basil’s family has been responsible for the destruction of the confidential clerk’s prospects in life. The two men have every reason to hate each other, and a logical conclusion to the novel might have left Basil in a state of permanent insecurity – but Collins kills off Mannion in a Cornish cliff top scene.

Just in case this ‘doubling’ of characters were not enough, Collins reinforces the effect with dramatic scenes that are significantly paralleled. The very day Basil’s twelve months of celibate waiting are over, his expectations of physical union with Margaret are thwarted by Margaret’s elopement with Mannion. Basil traces them to the seedy ‘hotel’ where he is forced to listen to Mannion and Margaret consummating their illicit relationship in the room next door.

In a similar climactic scene, Basil visits Margaret in the small room where she is dying of Typhus. He forgives her as she expires in a delirium, mocking his attentions and affection. But in another room next door Mannion is a silent witness to this tragic ‘goodbye’. The two men are locked into their conflict right up to the point of Mannion’s death

Literary relativism

The Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges, who was very fond of paradoxes and what might be called the metaphysics of literature, posited the notion that gifted writers could create their own predecessors. What he meant was that a writer in, say, the twentieth century, could express an idea or a feeling that caused readers to newly interpret the work of a writer from a previous age. The contemporary reader looks at the earlier work and sees meanings which were not previously evident to readers at the time the work was created. The words are the same as they have always been, but new meanings are revealed in them

What he was saying is that work created in the present can cause us to see elements of the same feelings, situations, and tensions in work of the past – but which were not previously evident. The idea is offered in a playful and entertaining manner – but it carries with it an important nugget of cultural history.

It is quite common for gifted writers to anticipate moods, feelings, problems, and situations in their work – consciously or unconsciously – which readers at a later date to perceive as prophetic. A classic case in point is Franz Kafka, who was a product of the extremely bureaucratic Austro-Hungarian Hapsburg empire in the early twentieth century. His work anticipated many of the intellectual nightmares of German fascism and Russian Stalinism which engulfed Europe in the 1930s, long after he was dead.

In Basil Wilkie Collins was exploring psychological states and existential crises that were explored later by writers such as Dostoyevski and Kafka. Basil’s narrative is an anguished account of his being trapped in a contradictory and very stressful emotional dilemma that is largely of his own making. And the more he tries to solve the problem he faces, the worse it becomes.

Basil’s state of anguish is very similar to that of Dostoyevski’s first person narrators – from the Underground Man to The Gambler; and Basil’s conflict with his father over his dishonouring of the family name is very reminiscent of the many well-known instances of father-son conflict in Kafka’s work. This is not to claim that Wilkie Collins was somehow being prophetic of later states of being – but it has to be said that he creates a distinctly modern form of existential angst in Basil.

It should also be noted that this particular variety of anxiety, like those of Dostoyevski and Kafka, has a distinctly sexual element in its foundation. Basil sees Margaret Sherwin with her mother on an omnibus ride in London – and falls obsessively in love with her at first sight. He knows nothing about her, except that she is good looking and has dark hair and eyes. And then apart from her social status as the daughter of a linen draper, he learns very little more about her, yet he is prepared to accept the bizarre arrangement of an unconsummated ‘marriage’ followed by twelve months of celibate courtship. Eventually, he is driven to the lengths of attempted murder in pursuit of his obsession.

Problems

This is the first really serious work in what was to become a prodigious output from Collins as a novelist – the ‘King of Inventors’ as his definitive biographer Catherine Peters called him. It is arguably the first ‘sensation novel’ – a genre that combined realistic fiction of English social life with domestic crime, mystery, suspense, and effects which would shock the reader. Nevertheless, it has to be said that there are some problems of narrative logic and credibility in the plot of Basil.

The main problem is that no convincing reason is provided for Sherwin’s strange proposal of a secret marriage followed by a twelve month period of marital abstinence – or Basil’s acceptance of this odd arrangement. Sherwin claims his daughter is too young to be married = she is only seventeen – and it might be thought that he sees Basil as an upper class social catch. But Basil is the younger son of the family and stands to inherit nothing.

The second important weakness is the characterisation of Margaret Sherwin. She hardly exists as a fictional character at all, and is only presented through Basil’s obsession with a love object. She does not act in the narrative; she is not dramatised; she hardly speaks; and we are given no access to her thoughts or motivation.

This is a weakness in the obvious sense of the novel having a character who simply fails to ‘come to life’, but in terms of Wilkie Collins anticipating the psychology of modernism, it is not altogether surprising. The story is intently centred on Basil’s psychology as an individual dealing with threats from all quarters of his life. This is why it is possible to see Collins’ narrative as a precursor of modernist concerns with the existential state.

Basil – study resources

Basil – Oxford Classics – Amazon UK

Basil – Oxford Classics – Amazon US

Basil – Independent Publishers – Amazon UK

Basil – Independent Publishers – Amazon US

The Complete Works of Wilkie Collins – Kindle eBook

Basil – plot synopsis

Part I

Basil is writing his confession at the age of twenty-four in Cornwall. He recalls his rich but austere, ancestor-worshipping father and his elder brother Ralph who is profligate and has no interest in the inheritance of the family estate. His younger sister Clara is a beacon of virtue – selfless and unassuming. Basil is writing a historical romance.

On an omnibus ride he sees Margaret Sherwin and is immediately attracted to her. He follows her home and discovers that she is a shopkeeper’s daughter. He feels burdened by his duty to marry only into his own class, but is tormented by his desire for Margaret. He dreams of a dark-haired woman taking him off into a wood.

Next day he bribes a servant and intercepts Margaret on her way to market, spilling out his love for her. She dismisses his attentions, but it does not deter him. He writes to her but she refuses his entreaties on the grounds of their differences in rank. He then obtains an interview with her father, to whom he proposes a secret marriage which will be revealed at a later date.

Basil immediately feels guilty at concealing the plan from his family. At a second meeting Mr Sherwin proposes an immediate ‘private’ marriage followed by a twelve month supervised courtship, because Margaret is only seventeen. Basil’s father puts him under a code of honour to respect the family tradition before leaving for his estate. Clara wishes to share any of his sorrows or difficulties. Basil and Margaret are married in virtual secrecy, after which he goes home alone.

Part II

Basil is allowed to meet Margaret every day under the nervous supervision of Mrs Sherwin. He decides to educate Margaret in works of literature, but she only wants to hear trivial gossip about his family. They are joined by Sherwin’s confidential clerk Mr Mannion, who is cold, handsome, and mysteriously superior. He knows all about the secret marriage.

Basil goes home with Mannion, who is subserviently friendly and offers to help Basil ‘manage’ Mr Sherwin. Basil has brief glimpses of Margaret’s petulance. Mannion discretely helps him to overcome Mr Sherwin’s strictures.

Basil is summoned to the country by a letter from his sister. His father remains distant and severe. Clara guesses that Basil is involved with a woman. On his return to London, Margaret and Mannion both seem to be ill.

At the end of his year-long probation Basil finds that Margaret has gone to an aunt’s party with Mannion, He follows them and traces them to a seedy hotel of assignation. Realising he has been duped, he waits for Mannion to leave the hotel, then launches an attack to kill him.

Part III

Basil then has a nervous breakdown, during which he thinks back over previous events and how he has been duped. He is cared for by Clara. Mannion is not dead but has lost one eye and is horribly disfigured. He refuses to say anything about himself or what happened.

Basil receives a letter from Sherwin claiming that Margaret is innocent. This is followed by a second letter threatening to expose him. Basil’s father demands to know what secret Basil has been keeping from him. When he learns the truth he turns on Basil savagely and disowns him completely for disgracing the family name. Clara appears and pleads for clemency, but it is refused.

Basil confronts Sherwin, who argues that he must accept Margaret since she is legally his wife. Mrs Sherwin however supports Basil’s claims of duplicity, but then dies shortly afterwards. Basil discovers that Mannion has been sending letters to Margaret.

Basil reads Mannion’s long confessional letter describing his father’s crime of forgery against his employer (who was Basil’s father) and his being hanged as a result. Mannion is dogged by his bad family reputation, but eventually finds work with Sherwin and rises in status. He also covets Margaret, though Mrs Sherwin suspects his intentions.

Mannion has groomed Margaret, whom he secretly despises, and he has plotted revenge on Basil throughout his probationary twelve months ‘courtship’. Now horribly disfigured, Mannion threatens to pursue Basil and discredit his family’s name once he is out of hospital.

Basil’s brother Ralph suddenly arrives and offers to help him by negotiating with Sherwin and buying his silence. He is followed by a visit from Clara who offers shreds of comfort from home. Ralph returns with with the news that Margaret has joined Mannion at the hospital. Ralph has counter-threatened Sherwin, who has agreed to compromise.

Ralph and Basil go to the hospital where they learn that Margaret was followed by Sherwin who is in pursuit of her. Mannion is regarded as a monomaniac, and there is an outbreak of Typhus on one of the wards.

A week later Basil learns that Margaret is dying of Typhus she accidentally contracted during her visit. Dr Bernard invites Basil to visit her, which he does, watching through the night whilst she mocks him in her fever. But he eventually forgives her – shortly before she dies.

At Margaret’s graveside Basil is confronted by Mannion who menaces him again, threatening to blight his life and his family. Ralph advises Basil to leave London so as to protect Clara from Mannion. Basil goes to a remote village in Cornwall.

Journal

Basil lives in isolation, peacefully at first, until the villagers turn against him. He feels that Mannion’s evil influence is pursuing him, so he leaves. Whilst walking along the coastline in a storm he is confronted by Mannion, who then falls to his death into a chasm. Basil cannot get the image of Mannion out of his mind, and he has a nervous breakdown.

Letters

Cornish people check Basil’s papers and send word to his family in London. Ralph, Clara, and Dr Bernard rescue Basil, who is reconciled with his father. Nine years later Basil retires to a country cottage with Clara to live in obscurity. Following their father’s death Ralph becomes a reformed head of the family, and Basil consigns his confession to Dr Berard for publication.

Basil – principal characters

Basil – further reading

William M. Clarke, The Secret Life of Wilkie Collins, London: Ivan R. Dee, 1988.

Tamar Heller, Dead Secrets: Wilkie Collins and the Female Gothic, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992.

Winifred Hughes, The Maniac in the Cellar: Sensation Novels of the 1860s, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014.

Sue Lonoff, Wilkie Collins and his Victorian Readers: A Study in the Rhetoric of Authorship, New York: AMS Press, 1982.

Catherine Peters, The King of Inventors: A Life of Wilkie Collins, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014.

Walter C. Phillips, Dickens, Reade, and Collins: Sensation Novelists, New York: Library of Congress, 1919.

Lynn Pykett, Wilkie Collins: New Casebooks, London: Palgrave-Macmillan, 1998.

Nicholas Rance, Wilkie Collins and Other Sensation Novelists: Walking the Moral Hospital, London: Palgrave-Macmillan, 1991.

© Roy Johnson 2016

More on Wilkie Collins
More on the novella
More on literary studies
More on short stories

tutorial, commentary, study resources, and web links

Man and Wife (1870) was one of the novels in which Wilkie Collins undertook to expose social injustice – in this case the absurdities which existed in British marriage laws. It was his ninth published novel. As someone who had briefly studied law himself, Collins took a keen interest in legal matters, particularly how they applied to domestic life. He himself never married, even though he maintained two separate families who lived quite close to each other in London’s fashionable West End. The novel explores both the social and legal problems which arise from bad law and the cruelties inflicted on women trapped in abusive marriages.

Man and Wife – a note on the text

Man and Wife first appeared as a serial in Cassell’s Magazine between January and June 1870. It was simultaneously serialized in the United States by Harper’s Weekly and then published as a novel in three volumes by F.S. Ellis, to which Collins added a preface, a dedication, and an appendix. He often felt that he needed to explain and justify the subjects he chose for his novels, because they were considered slightly scandalous at the time, and many critics doubted the realistic validity of his subject matter.

Man and Wife – critical commentary

Principal issues

Readers will have no difficulty in appreciating that the main elements of the novel are the legal problems surrounding ‘irregular’ marriage, the social status of women, and irregularities and differences between the laws of England and of Scotland.

There are several long discussions between characters on the subject of the ‘irregular’ Scottish marriage. The essence of this is that a marriage did not need to be announced in advance (by the issuing of ‘banns’) did not need to take place in a place of worship, and did not need to be solemnised by a member of the church. A marriage could be legally established by mere assertion of the two parties concerned – with no scrutiny of the validity of their claim.

The problems and anomalies to which this arrangement might give rise are fully explored in the events of the novel, and full recognition is given to the fact that differences of legal opinion could arise on the status of a particular union.

Arnold Brinkworth marries Blanche Lundie in a perfectly orthodox manner in England – but is then shocked to discover that he is considered to have previously married Anne Silvester. This is because he merely announced himself as her husband and stayed overnight in the same remote inn where she was waiting for Geoffrey Delamayn.

Anne Silvester has a verbal agreement with Geoffrey Delamayne that they will marry in secret. She writes to him asserting their understanding, and he replies in agreement. And that letter alone is later regarded as ‘proof’ of their marriage.

Even though she later hates Delamayne, Anne agrees to respect the agreement and thereby sacrifices herself so that no shadow of scandal will blemish the marriage of her friend Blanche to Arnold. The tragic consequence of her action is that on the strength of this Delamayne eventually imprisons her (which the law permits) and plans to murder her so that he can marry the rich Mrs Glenarm.

Add to these instances the sad story of Hester Dethridge’s marriage to an abusive husband from which she cannot escape, and the reader is presented with a whole range of complexities arising from bad law and the uncertain outcome of marriage (at any time). Wilkie Collins was obviously sceptical of the institution, as he reveals rather satirically when describing the wedding ceremony:

Thus, the service began—rightly-considered the most terrible surely of all mortal ceremonies—the service which binds two human beings, who know next to nothing of each other’s natures, to risk the tremendous experiment of living together till death parts them—the service which says, in effect if not in words, Take your leap in the dark: we sanctify but we don’t insure it!

The sensation novel

Man and Wife is often seen as the opening work of Wilkie Collins’ ‘later period’ in which he took a ‘moral and didactic’ approach to social issues of the day. This is most evident in the close relationship of his marriage law subject matter and the constitutional changes taking place at the time, notably the Married Women’s Property Act (1870).

But the novel also contains many elements of the sensation novel which had made his earlier works of the 1860s so popular – notably secret marriage, bigamy, blackmail, domestic violence, incarceration, and murder.

The main plot gets under way with two non-marriages which assume legal status. The first is Anne’s proposal of a secret marriage to Geoffrey Delamayne. This takes place purely on paper – in a letter from Anne asserting their union which also contains Geoffrey’s affirmative reply.

The second occurs when Arnold visits Anne at the inn pretending to be her husband. This leads directly to what Collins presents as the absurdity of the ‘irregular Scottish marriage’. They are deemed to be married merely because they spend the night together under the same roof.

More seriously, because of this innocent accident Arnold later becomes guilty of bigamy when he marries Blanche. The whole of the second part of the novel is driven by attempts to unravel this Scottish marriage and to counter its social ramifications.

Part of the plotting and counter-plotting involves blackmail. The scurrilous waiter Bishopriggs gains possession of the vital letter of understanding between Anne and Geoffrey Delamayne. When Bishopriggs threatens to reveal its contents unless he is well compensated, Anne counter-threatens the same thing, which will make the letter worthless. (However, it is a serious flaw in the plot that he parts with it for the measly sum of five pounds.)

The mysterious figure of the dumb cook Hester Dethridge is eventually revealed as a victim of domestic violence. She is married to a man who is a drunkard, who takes and squanders all the money she earns, and who beats her savagely. Her written confession which presents this catalogue of abuse is clearly offered by Wilkie Collins as a polemical illustration of the lack of women’s rights at the time.

The abuse is so severe that Hester feels she has no alternative but to remove its source – so she eventually murders her husband. She rather improbably escapes detection – but she is ever afterwards haunted by a recurrent homicidal impulse.

This finds its ultimate outlet when she is forced to assist Geoffrey Delamayne in his attempt to murder Anne using the same method she has used. But instead of helping him, she strangles him – though he appears to have a stroke at the same moment. It is not altogether clear if she is the actual killer – but she is nevertheless incarcerated as a result – in a mental asylum from which she will not be released for the rest of her life.

Dramatic structure

Wilkie Collins produced the novel as a prose narrative for serial publication in Cassell’s Magazine. As such it sits alongside literary works in the novel genre produced by his contemporaries Dickens, Gaskell, Braddon, and Trollope. But it is quite clear that there is a strong sense of a stage drama underpinning the structure of the work.

The fact is that he first conceived the story as a play, and one of its principal weaknesses is that the narrative is comprised of a series of rather long-winded ‘conversational’ interludes sewn together by episodes of a quite different pace and style.

The main scenes in the unfolding of the plot are very static, and they take place usually in the drawing room, dining room, summer-house, library, or some other location easily rendered under the proscenium arch of a traditional stage.

There are lots of comings and goings in and out of doorways, and lots of situations packed with dramatic irony. It is closer in tone and genre to a country house comedy of manners than to the serious and dark melodrama into which the novel turns during its third and final volume.

Perhaps the most surprising structural weakness occurs at the end of the novel. Just as the story is being brought to its climax and the main theme of the story (the Anne-Geoffrey non-marriage) is being resolved – Collins interrupts the dramatic tension by inserting the potted biography of Hester Dethridge. This is a blatant passage of propaganda on the subject of women trapped in abusive relationships – and as such it completely disrupts the tone of the main narrative.

Moreover it culminates in Hester’s murder of her abusive husband in a scene which is very badly explained in terms of dramatic invention. We are asked to believe that Hester puts her hands through a lath and plaster wall, suffocates her husband with a wet towel, then somehow repairs the wall leaving ‘nothing disturbed or altered’. Geoffrey then plans to murder Anne in a gimcrack reprisal of the same method in the final scene, which is as rushed as it is far-fetched.

Man and Wife – study resources

Man and Wife – Oxford Classics – Amazon UK

Man and Wife – Oxford Classics – Amazon US

Man and Wife – Facsimilie Publisher – Amazon UK

Man and Wife – Facsimilie Publisher – Amazon US

The Complete Works of Wilkie Collins – Kindle eBook

Man and Wife – eBook formats at Gutenberg

Man and Wife – plot synopsis

Prologue

I. Ambitious John Vanborough feels that his wife is holding back his chances of rising socially. He discovers that his marriage is technically invalid and throws himself at rich widow Lady Jane Parnell.

II. He marries her, enters parliament, and becomes famous. Delamayne enters parliament and becomes solicitor general. Vanborough commits suicide, leaving his daughter Anne Sylvester to be raised by Lady Julia Lundie, where she is governess to Blanche her step-daughter.

The Story

There is a garden party at the estate of Sir Patrick Lundie. Anne Sylvester is at odds with the termagant Lady Lundie. Sir Patrick discusses inheritance with young Arnold Brinkworth, who proposes to Blanche Lundie. Anne bullies Geoffrey Delamayne into a secret marriage because he has been paying court to her. News arrives that Delamayne’s father is ill, so he deputes his friend Arnold to explain his absence to Anne.

Second Scene

Arnold takes the news to a distraught Anne at a nearby inn. They unwisely pass themselves off as newlyweds. Arnold misses his train and is forced to stay overnight. When Blanche arrives, Anne hides Arnold and gives Blanche a partial explanation.

Third Scene

Delamayne is in London. His father wishes him to marry, and his brother Julius presents an attractive alternative in rich widow Mrs Glenarm.

Fourth Scene

Blanche, Arnold, and Geoffrey assemble at Windygates to discuss Anne, who is in hiding . There are lots of dramatic ironies and much consideration of irregular Scottish marriages. A visiting surgeon makes a case against physical exercise, and predicts that Geoffrey is internally flawed. Anne suddenly returns to the house and is rejected by Geoffrey. Anne disappears again, and is pursued by Sir Patrick and Blanche. Anne sends Blanche a letter of terminal farewell. Sir Patrick urges marriage as a solution for Arnold and Blanche, to which Arnold agrees. Anne is traced to Glasgow.

Fifth Scene

In Glasgow Anne receives contradictory advice on her legal status under Scottish law. She then collapses at the hotel.

Sixth Scene

Geoffrey jousts verbally with Mrs Glenarm to whom he is secretly engaged. He trains for a running race – and shows signs of weakness. Blanche questions the waiter Bishopbriggs about Anne’s letter which he plans to use in blackmailing Geoffrey and Mrs Glenarm.

Seventh Scene

On the evening of his wedding Arnold is questioned by Sir Patrick about Geoffrey’s secret – which he feels he cannot honourably reveal. Arnold and Blanche marry and go on honeymoon. Letters arrive from Anne sacrificing herself and revealing the truth about her meeting with Arnold. Geoffrey’s marriage to Mrs Glenarm is announced in the newspapers, as is the attempted blackmail of Mrs Glenarm. Anne moves to London.

Eighth Scene

Anne confronts the blackmailer Bishopriggs and pays him five pounds for her letter.

Ninth Scene

Anne confronts Mrs Glenarm and they dispute the veracity of Geoffrey’s claim that Anne is married to Arnold.

Tenth Scene

Lady Lundie intervenes and interrogates the inn-keeper Mrs Inchbare. She then plots further with Mrs Glenarm.

Eleventh Scene

Lady Lundie confront’s Blanche and convinces her that Arnold was already married to Anne, her closest friend. She then takes her away to London.

Twelfth Scene

Anne visits Geoffrey in Fulham, and is rejected anew. But Sir Patrick interprets Anne’s letters to and from Geoffrey as proof that they were married under Scottish law.

Thirteenth Scene

Geoffrey loses the running race in Fulham and collapses after the event.

Fourteenth Scene

There is a meeting of lawyers to consider the legal status of the disputed marriage. Sir Patrick argues the case for Arnold and Blanche. He produces Anne’s ‘marriage’ letter which proves the case – and Anne chooses to sacrifice herself for Blanche’s sake.

Fifteenth Scene

Sir Patrick visits Lord Holcome who is dying. He has made a new will with provision for Geoffrey (and possibly Anne) but dies before the codicil can be signed.

Final Scene

Geoffrey Delamayne takes his ‘wife’ Anne to the lodgings run by Hester Dethridge. He plans to sue for a ‘divorce’ but cannot make a legal case. When his father dies, he imprisons Anne in the cottage. His brother Julius proposes to honour the unsigned codicil to his father’s will if Geoffrey will agree to a separation. Geoffrey refuses. and becomes ill. Hester sees an apparition of some kind and tells Geoffrey he must leave. Geoffrey reads Hester’s confession of how she killed her abusive husband. He prepares to murder Anne in the same way, but when he makes the attack through a bedroom wall he has a stroke, whilst Hester has another homicidal vision and kills him.

Epilogue

Six months later Hester has been placed in a mental asylum, Mrs Glenarm is in the process of becoming a nun, and Anne has become Lady Lundie by marrying Sir Patrick.

Man and wife – principal characters

Man and Wife – further reading

William M. Clarke, The Secret Life of Wilkie Collins, London: Ivan R. Dee, 1988.

Tamar Heller, Dead Secrets: Wilkie Collins and the Female Gothic, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992.

Winifred Hughes, The Maniac in the Cellar: Sensation Novels of the 1860s, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014.

Sue Lonoff, Wilkie Collins and his Victorian Readers: A Study in the Rhetoric of Authorship, New York: AMS Press, 1982.

Catherine Peters, The King of Inventors: A Life of Wilkie Collins, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014.

Walter C. Phillips, Dickens, Reade, and Collins: Sensation Novelists, New York: Library of Congress, 1919.

Lynn Pykett, Wilkie Collins: New Casebooks, London: Palgrave-Macmillan, 1998.

Nicholas Rance, Wilkie Collins and Other Sensation Novelists: Walking the Moral Hospital, London: Palgrave-Macmillan, 1991.

© Roy Johnson 2017

tutorial, commentary, study resources, and web links

The Moonstone (1868) is often regarded as the first great detective novel. It is certainly a great novel of mystery that sustains both its central puzzle and the solution to it over a very long narrative. The book is also a ‘sensation novel’ – one that sets out to deliberately shock the reader. This was a genre of fiction in which Wilkie Collins excelled. He was a friend and a collaborator of Charles Dickens, and one of the most commercially successful novelists of the mid nineteenth century.

The Moonstone – a note on the text

The Moonstone first appeared as weekly instalments in All the Year Round, the literary magazine owned and edited by Charles Dickens, the friend and sometimes collaborator of Wilkie Collins. Before the serialization had reached its conclusion, it was published in what was then the conventional three volume format by William Tinsley, and in single volume format later the same year.

Although the book did not at first sell well in novel format, it eventually became Collins’ second most successful work, after The Woman in White.

For a full account of the composition, publication and reception of the novel, see the bibliographic essay by John Sutherland in the Oxford World’s Classics edition of The Moonstone.

The Moonstone – critical commentary

The narrative

Wilkie Collins adopted the same narrative strategy as he had for his previous big success The Woman in White – a multiplicity of voices. They are multiple both in their literary style and their various points of view. This makes the reader’s task more difficult in assembling a ‘truth’ of what happens in the story, but it offers more entertainment as a compensation.

The narrators include Gabriel Betteredge a longwinded house steward,;Franklin Blake the apparent hero of the novel; Drusilla Clack an interfering spinster; Sergeant Cuff a Scotland Yard detective who guesses the identity of the villain; and Ezra Jennings, a curious medical assistant who actually solves the mystery.

Gabriel Betteredge’s narrative is styled as a combination of his favourite reading – Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe – and another eighteenth century monologuist, Laurence Sterne. Betteredge goes into enormous detail over inconsequential trivialities, and he offers long irrelevant digressions, meanwhile passing flattering comments on his own approach as a raconteur of events.

His explanations of what has taken place mean that the story often goes backwards to fill inn the provenance of characters and what has already happened. He is driven to address the reader, pleading for patience, and offering promises that before long the story will be going forwards to get to the point he has been tasked with addressing.

Betteredge also changes his written style to suit the events he is describing. For instance, he gives an account of his daughter Penelope’s police interview in the form of a constable’s abbreviated notes – lapsing comically into longwinded irrelevancies and self-reference. (Betteredge frequently compliments himself as a gifted sleuth: he describes himself as being overcome with ‘the detective fever’.)

Penelope examined. Took a lively interest in the painting on the door, having helped to mix the colours. Noticed the bit of work under the lock, because it was the last bit done. Had seen it some hours afterwards, without a smear … dress recognised by her father as the dress she wore that night, skirts examined, a long job from the size of them, not the ghost of a paint-stain discovered anywhere. End of Penelope’s evidence – and very pretty and convincing too. Signed, Gabriel Betteredge.

Multiple narrators

Collins’ strategy of using multiple narrators produces some other amusing characters – such as the appalling shrew Drusilla Clack, who tyrannises the other characters with her ‘improving’ religious tracts on Satan in the Hair Brush. But this approach does have its weaknesses. There is sometimes unnecessary repetition when one character gives an account of events which are already known to reader, without adding anything new.

A larger weakness is that there is sometimes no explanation given for the source of the information. When Godfrey Ablewhite is exposed as the Diamond thief, Sergeant Cuff gives an account of his villainous embezzlement, his lavish villa in the suburbs, and his secret mistress – but there is no explanation of how he has obtained this information or why it could not have been known before.

Added to that, there are minor problems of scrappiness generated by the number of different narrators towards the end of the story, and unexplained issues such as the identity of the author of the prologue, and no really convincing justification for Murthwaite’s final missive describing the restitution of the Diamond in India.

The sexual interpretation

It is not difficult to see that the central incident of the Diamond theft has distinctly sexual overtones. The moonstone has been given to Rachel on her eighteenth birthday – acting as both a symbol of her virginity and an emblem of her ‘coming-of-age’ at the same time. As the literary critic John Sutherland observes, in eastern religions, gemstones were often placed in the ‘Yoni’ (the vagina) of female statues.

Franklin and Rachel are amorously attracted to each other, and (controversially for that period) are both in her bedroom late at night when the Diamond disappears. Franklin takes the stone from a drawer in her cabinet, with the result that he has a stain (semen? hymenal blood?) on his nightgown. Both parties are awake at the time – though he has been drugged.

The stained nightgown is then confiscated by the maid Susanna Spearman, who is passionately in love with Franklin and quite rightly sees Rachel as rival for his affections. Not only that, but she inspects his bedroom and finds further stains on the inside of his dressing gown: As she writes to him later:

My head whirled round, and my thoughts were in a dreadful confusion. In the midst of it all, something in my mind whispered to me that the smear on your nightgown might have a meaning entirely different to the meaning which I had given to it up to that time.

She is conflicted over her possession of the soiled nightgown, unsure if it will be useful for her love or her revenge. In the end she buries the nightgown in an effort to protect Franklin from detection. But this symbolically blots from her consciousness the evidence of his sexual connection with another woman. She replaces it with a new, unsullied nightgown of her own making, thus preserving an unstained image of him in her own mind. Shortly afterwards she commits suicide.

The detective novel

The poet T.S.Eliot once described The Moonstone as ‘the first and the greatest of English detective novels’ – an endorsement which has been blazoned across the covers of many paperback editions ever since. Yet it is not the first detective novel: Dickens published Bleak House sixteen years previously in 1852, which included his famous sleuth figure, the sardonic Inspector Bucket. Whether it is the ‘greatest’ detective novel is open to debate – a debate for which Eliot does not offer any evidence or make a case.

Moreover, it is not really a detective story, so much as a mystery story – and this despite featuring not one but two detectives amongst its characters. The first of these, local officer Superintendent Seegrave, misinterprets the situation, makes a hash of gathering evidence, and fails to solve the problem. The second detective, Sergeant Cuff from Scotland Yard, is more perceptive and he does eventually predict the identity of the villain correctly – but he fails to recover the Diamond.

The mystery is actually solved by an outsider – the tragic and piebald medical assistant Ezra Jennings, who is an opium addict. It is he who correctly ‘interprets’ the delirious ramblings of his employer Thomas Candy. He then proposes the experiment of unlocking Franklin’s memory of exactly what happened the night the Diamond was stolen by repeating the dose of laudanum he had secretly been given. Jenning’s surmise and his experiment are both successful – and the remainder of the novel is a frantic pursuit to re-capture the Diamond, which fails completely.

The double

In her biography of the author, Catherine Peters observes that ‘All his life, Wilkie Collins was haunted by a second self”:

When he worked late into the night, another Wilkie Collins appeared: ‘… the second Wilkie Collins sat at the same table with him and tried to monopolise the writing pad. Then there was a struggle … when the true Wilkie awoke, the inkstand had been upset and the ink was running over the writing table. After that Wilkie Collins gave up writing at nights.

There is certainly a very striking example of what we now call ‘the double’ at work in The Moonstone. When the assistant doctor Ezra Jennings is introduced, the description of him (given by Franklin) emphasises his peculiar appearance. He has a ‘gypsy complexion’, ‘fleshless cheeks’, and appears simultaneously old and young. Most peculiar of all, he is piebald – with hair that is distinctly black and white.

Yet he and the handsome Franklin are immediately and inexplicably drawn to each other. Franklin finds that ‘Ezra Jennings made some inscrutable appeal to my sympathies, which I found it impossible to resist’. Jennings for his part confesses ‘There is no disguising, Mr Blake, that you interest me’.

Franklin is rich and handsome: Jennings is an outcast with a guilty secret in his past. Both of them are burdened by a misdemeanour, and neither of them are capable of proving their innocence. Jennings has a stain on his reputation as a human being, and Franklin a stain on his clothes that brands him as a thief. Moreover, both of them are drug addicts.

Franklin is addicted to tobacco. When he stops smoking cigars he cannot sleep and is reduced to a nervous wreck, grappling with the temptation of his cigar cabinet. Jennings is an opium addict – a habit originally taken up to ease the pain of some unspecified ailment, but now a simple dependence on the narcotic.

The two characters, as with many examples of the double, are like two parts of the same being, twins yet opposites. Franklin is rich, handsome, and rising in society. Jennings is broken, haunted by his past sin (which is not specified) and sinking fast under the effects of his addiction.

Yet Jennings is sinking in a noble manner. Knowing that he will soon die, he is working hard to leave money to someone he loves. He feels grateful for the mere fact that Franklin shows him toleration and friendship:

You, and such as you, show me the sunny side of human life, and reconcile me with the world that I am leaving, before I go … I shall not forget that you have done me a kindness in doing that.

Jennings saves Franklin’s social reputation by proving his innocence. In doing so he restores the relationship between Franklin and Rachel. His interpretation of events is superior to that of the professional sleuths, Seegrave and Cuff. And in the end he dies a tragic hero, wishing to be forgotten in an unmarked grave.

The sensation novel and its credibility

The sensation novel was ‘a novel with a secret’ and for the first three quarters of The Moonstone the secret of the whole drama is that the person who stole the Diamond from Rachel Verinder’s bedroom is none other than the apparent hero of the novel – Franklin Blake.

This incident sets in train a whole host of sub-mysteries and red herrings about who the guilty person might be, and how the mysteries can be unravelled, the crime solved, and the Diamond recovered.

But it has to be said that Wilkie Collins, for all his inventiveness, puts a great strain on the reader’s credulity in forging the links in his plot. The fact that Franklin was acting under the influence of a secretly administered dose of opium when he stole the Diamond is difficult enough to accept as an explanation of three hundred pages of mystery and drama.

But then we are asked to believe that whilst in the act of taking the Diamond (all the time observed by his lover Rachel) he then unconsciously gives the Diamond to the villain of the piece (Godfrey) who has been watching him secretly from a room next door. This pushes the plotting of the novel into the realms of over-contrived melodrama.

These events concern what the novel’s contents page describe as ‘The Loss of the Diamond’ but in the latter part of the novel (‘The Discovery of the Truth’) there are similar demands made of the reader’s credulity. First the opium experiment proposed by Ezra Jennings manages to miraculously repeat the exact sequence of events that took place on the night of the theft – thus proving Franklin’s innocence.

Well – that might be explained as an essay in ‘released memory’ or ‘the workings of the unconscious’ – a quasi-scientific approach to interpretation reflecting the mid-nineteenth century understanding of psychology. But when the location of the Diamond is discovered (which rounds off the story quite nicely) Collins pushes the levels of contrivance to unacceptable lengths. We are expected to believe the following sequence of events.

First, that the Indian vigilantes are able to gain access to the roof of “The Wheel of Fortune” tavern where Godfrey is hiding, disguised as a sailor. Fortunately for dramatic purposes, a builder’s ladder has been left conveniently available nearby. Next, once on the roof, they are able to cut through a trapdoor (using an ‘exceedingly sharp instrument’) then drop into the room – without once disturbing the occupant. They then kill the thief (Godfrey) without making any sound, and are able to climb back out through the trapdoor, which is seven feet above them. How do they manage this? By using yet another ladder which is kept under the bed – for regular use by customers.

It’s fortunate that The Moonstone has many other successful features of characterisation, narration, and design; because without these literary qualities, the improbabilities and unconvincing elements of ‘sensation’ plotting would sink the novel completely.

The Moonstone – study resources

The Moonstone – Oxford Classics – Amazon UK

The Moonstone – Oxford Classics – Amazon US

The Moonstone – Penguin Classics – Amazon UK

The Moonstone – Penguin Classics – Amazon US

The Moonstone – Wordsworth Classics – Amazon UK

The Moonstone – Wordsworth Classics – Amazon US

The Moonstone – Study Notes – Amazon UK

The Complete Works of Wilkie Collins – Kindle eBook

The Moonstone – 2009 BBC film

The Moonstone – plot summary

Prologue

1799 – The Moonstone is looted by Colonel John Herncastle during the storming of Serangapatan in India.

First Period – The Loss of the Diamond

1848 The aged house steward Gabriel Betteredge is asked to begin the narrative concerning the loss of the diamond. There is a visit to the house by three Indian ‘conjurers’. Betteredge talks to the morbid maid Rosanna on the Shivering Sand. Spendthrift Franklin Blake returns home from his education in Europe – in possession of the diamond, which has been left to Rachel Verinder in the Colonel’s will.

The Colonel has visited Lady Verinder on Rachel’s birthday, but has been turned away from the house. Franklin Blake reports the Colonel’s arrangements for his will and goes to put the Diamond in a local bank until Rachel’s next birthday.

Franklin and Rachel go in for decorative door painting. The maid Rosanna is in love with Franklin. Philanthropist and ladies’ man Godfrey Ablewhite is invited to Rachel’s party. The Diamond is presented to Rachel, who then refuses an offer of marriage from Godfrey. During dinner there is a visit from the Indians. By next morning the Diamond has disappeared.

Superintendent Seegrave arrives to interview staff and guests, with no result. Rosanna has the vapours over Franklin and behaves strangely. Franklin sends to London for more experienced help.

Sergeant Cuff arrives from Scotland Yard, establishes the paint smear on a door as an important clue, and then claims the Diamond has not been stolen. Cuff wishes to inspect everyone’s clothes in pursuit of the paint smear – but Rachel refuses to comply.

Cuff pays special attention to Susanna because of her erratic behaviour. Betteredge and Cuff visit the Shivering Sand, then Susanna’s friends in a fisherman’s cottage. Cuff believes Susanna has sunk something in the sands.

When they get back to the house, Rachel wants to leave. Cuff has a theory that she has the Diamond. Susanna seems on the edge of making a confession, but doesn’t. Cuff thinks that Susanna has made a new nightdress and hidden the one with a paint smear. Rachel leaves the house and Susanna seems to be plotting to retrieve her hidden nightdress.

When Susanna disappears a fruitless search is made of the Shivering Sand, followed by the discovery of her suicide note. Lady Verinder thinks to dismiss Cuff, who argues that Rachel probably has secret debts and has engaged Susanna as an accomplice in selling the Diamond. Lady Julia challenges Rachel with these claims, but she denies all the charges – so Cuff is paid off.

Lady Verinder takes Rachel to London. Franklin leaves for Europe, and Limping Lucy Yolland accuses him of ruining Susanna’s life. Cuff’s three predictions regarding the Yollands, the Indians, and the money-lender all come true.

Second Period – The Discovery of the Truth

Miss Clack gives an account of Godfrey Ablewhite being decoyed in London and searched by three Indians. The same thing happens to Mr Luker. Rachel is upset by the news. She interrogates Godfrey and insists on his innocence against rumours that he is in league with Luker.

Lady Verinder reveals that she has heart problems. Clack and lawyer Bruff discuss Rachel, Godfrey, and Franklin as possible suspects. Clack leaves improving books with Julia, all of which are returned unread – so she posts letters containing quotations. She overhears Godfrey proposing to Rachel, who is conflicted but accepts. Lady Verinder suddenly dies.

The Ablewhites and Rachel move to Brighton accompanied by Clack who vows to ‘interfere’. Rachel retracts her engagement to Godfrey, who accepts the rejection, but his father reproaches Rachel and refuses to be her guardian. Clack wants to read sermons and is rejected by everyone. Rachel leaves under the protection of family lawyer Bruff.

Bruff reveals that Godfrey has asked to see Sir John Verinder’s will, which limits Rachel’s inheritance. Godfrey has accepted Rachel’s rejection because he needs a ‘large sum of money’. Bruff is visited by the suave Indian who has also been to see Luker, asking how soon a loan must be repaid. Murthwaite advances a theory that explains the Indians’ plot to retrieve the Diamond, which has been handed to Luker.

Franklin returns to England on the death of his father (having inherited a substantial fortune). Rachel refuses to see him. He thinks it’s because of the Diamond, so he goes to Yorkshire to take up the search where it was left off. Betteredge helps him to recover the letter left for him by Susanna. The letter gives him instructions for recovering the nightgown hidden in the Shivering Sand.

Rosanna has also left a long letter, explaining her love for Franklin and how she found the paint stain on his nightgown. She kept it, believing that he had stolen the Diamond to pay off heavy debts.

Franklin takes the evidence to Bruff in London, who agrees to arrange a meeting with Rachel. She reveals to Franklin that she saw him stealing the Diamond, and has concealed the fact ever since out of love for him. They part in great bitterness. Franklin goes to Yorkshire in search of the birthday dinner guests. Mr Candy wants to tell him something, but cannot remember what it is.

Ezra Jennings relates how he has nursed Mr Candy, and how his life has been ruined by a stain on his reputation. He is saving his small inheritance for a loved one and surviving the threat of death by taking opium. When Franklin reveals his own problem Jennings claims that his transcriptions of Candy’s delirious statements will prove Franklin was unconscious at the time the Diamond was stolen..

The notes reveal that Candy gave Franklin a dose of opium on the night of the party. Jennings also suggests that the Diamond might have been stolen from Franklin, so he proposes a repeat opium experiment to prove Franklin’s innocence.

Jennings writes to Rachel explaining the party trick on Franklin and asking for permission to use the Hall for a re-enactment. Rachel agrees and forgives Franklin. Bruff disapproves but agrees to attend. Betteredge gives reluctant consent.

The principals assemble at the Hall and the experiment is successful. Franklin takes the opium and removes a fake diamond from Rachel’s cabinet, but falls into a stupor before placing it in his own room.

Bruff and Franklin return to London where they see Luker at the bank. People who might have the Diamond are followed. A sailor is traced to a pub, but is dead next morning and turns out to be Godfrey Alblewhite.

Epilogue

Sergeant Cuff reports on the secret life of Ablewhite. He has stolen another man’s inheritance and spent it on a lavish villa where he keeps his mistress. Cuff reveals that Ablewhite was in the room adjacent to Franklin on the night of the party. Franklin, who had been drugged, asked Ablewhite to take the Diamond to his father’s bank for safe keeping.

Mr Candy reports on the death of Ezra Jennings. Franklin and Rachel are married. Cuff’s man traces the three Hindoos to a ship bound for Bombay. The captain reports that the Hindoos jumped ship whilst it was becalmed off the coast of northern India. Murthwaite’s letter records the return of the Diamond to its place in a shrine dedicated to Vishnu.

The Moonstone – principal characters

The Moonstone – further reading

William M. Clarke, The Secret Life of Wilkie Collins, London: Ivan R. Dee, 1988.

Tamar Heller, Dead Secrets: Wilkie Collins and the Female Gothic, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992.

Winifred Hughes, The Maniac in the Cellar: Sensation Novels of the 1860s, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014.

Sue Lonoff, Wilkie Collins and his Victorian Readers: A Study in the Rhetoric of Authorship, New York: AMS Press, 1982.

Catherine Peters, The King of Inventors: A Life of Wilkie Collins, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014.

Walter C. Phillips, Dickens, Reade, and Collins: Sensation Novelists, New York: Library of Congress, 1919.

Lynn Pykett, Wilkie Collins: New Casebooks, London: Palgrave-Macmillan, 1998.

Nicholas Rance, Wilkie Collins and Other Sensation Novelists: Walking the Moral Hospital, London: Palgrave-Macmillan, 1991.

© Roy Johnson 2016

tutorial, commentary, study resources, further reading

The Woman in White (1861) was one of the best-selling novels of the nineteenth century. It not only sold in thousands of copies but also created what we would now call a ‘franchise boom’. It was so popular that manufacturers produced Woman in White perfumes and clothing, and proposals of marriage were made to the courageous (but fictitious) heroine Marian Halcombe.

The publication introduced two new elements into the novel genre. It was a ‘sensation novel’ or a ‘novel with a secret’ as they came to be known. It was also tightly plotted and intricately organised in a manner that makes powerful intellectual demands on the reader. And, it should be noted – it was structured and related by a multiplicity of narrative voices in a remarkably successful manner.

The Woman in White – a note on the text

The Woman in White first appeared as a serial in All the Year Round, the weekly newspaper owned and edited by Charles Dickens. The novel ran between November 1859 and August 1860, and enormously increased sales of the newspaper.

It then appeared in what (at that time) was a conventional three-volume format, published by Sampson Low, and was an immediate success. Its initial printing of 1,000 copies sold out on the first day, despite a relatively high cost of 31s 6d.

The success of the novel led to further editions and printings in America, Australia, France, and Germany. For all of these productions Wilkie Collins tweaked and supplemented the text. The most ‘stable’ and reliable version of the novel is generally considered to be the ‘New Edition’ created for the single-volume publication of the book in 1861.

For a full account of the composition, publication, and reception of the novel, see the bibliographic essay by John Sutherland in the Oxford World’s Classics edition of the book

The Woman in White – critical commentary

The detective novel

Wilkie Collins is often credited with the invention of the detective novel – which is not quite true. The first real detective hero in fiction was Auguste Dupin, the super-rationalist of Edgar Allen Poe’s stories, who solves crimes largely by a combination of creative imagination and what Poe called ‘ratiocination’. The second major fictional detective was Inspector Bucket in Charles Dickens’ Bleak House (1852) who is a superior sort of Scotland Yard dogged sleuth-investigator.

The Woman in White is in one sense a detective novel without a detective. The central character Walter Hartright acts as a form of solicitor-cum-sleuth. He assembles what we would now call ‘witness statements’- letters, depositions, diaries, and memoirs to provide a body of evidence supporting his case against the villains ‘Sir’ Percival Glyde and Count Fosco.

This ‘case’ never reaches a formal trial. We the readers are the unstated jury, and Walter‘s evidence proves the case he is making against the two accused men and their accomplice, the sinister Countess Fosco.

Wilkie Collins flags up at the start of the novel the originality of this quasi-legalistic approach – for which he justly deserves credit. The ‘hero’ Walter Hartright points out that his collection of personal testimonies will constitute the voices normally heard in a court of law:

Thus, the story here presented will be told by more than one pen, as the story of an offence against the laws is told in Court by more than one witness – with the same object, in both cases, to present the truth always in its most direct and most intelligible aspect, and to trace the course of one complete series of events, by making the persons who have been most closely connected with them, at each successive stage, relate their own experience, word for word.

Multiple narrators

Wilkie Collins’ genius lies in making his collection of narrators credible, yet partial, flawed, and even downright deceptive – yet he does so in such a manner that the reader can piece together a coherent account of what has taken place.

The framing narrative perspective comes from Walter Hartright, who is baffled by events, but is truthful in what he relates. Whilst absent from events, he hands over to Marian Halcombe, who is a more complex character. She is initially impressed by both Percival Glyde and Count Fosco, even though it will be clear to most readers that they are devious and villainous.

The housekeeper Eliza Michelson is even more gullible: she is taken in completely by Fosco’s oleaginous flattery. The solicitor Gilmore is accurate but short-sighted, and he too is taken in by Glyde and Fosco. The narrative even includes a supposedly full ‘confession’ from Fosco himself. This is a literary masterpiece (on Collins’ part) of lies, half-truths, self-justification, and evasiveness, all dressed up in his flamboyant, vainglorious style of speech and writing.

It is often observed that the use of multiple narrators had been pioneered by writers such as Tobias Smollett in Humphry Clinker (1771) and Emily Bronte in Wuthering Heights (1847) – but Wilkie Collins pushed this literary device along a few stages further.

In Fosco’s contributions to the narrative for instance, he throws up factual smokescreens, he lies, and he even offers taunting satirical comments on other people’s evidence. Both his entries in Marian’s diaries and his last-minute ‘confession’ are superb examples of Wilkie Collins’ multi-layered approach to the construction of a narrative.

Fosco is contributing to the account of events; he is passing comment on them; he is attempting to distort the record of what happened, and he is also mischievously aware of being an actor in the narrative of the drama – making him almost a self-conscious fictional character.

The sensation novel

Wilkie Collins is generally regarded as the inventor of the ‘sensation novel’ – and The Woman in White is seen as the first and classic example of this particular genre, the influence of which lingered until the end of the nineteenth century. At that later point its vogue in popular fiction was overtaken by the even more extreme Gothic horror story.

The sensation novel made its impact by introducing issues such as sexual scandal. murder, disguise, bigamy, madness, blackmail, fraud, theft, kidnapping, incarceration, and disputed wills. It also relied heavily on mysteries and secrets underpinning events – which is certainly true of The Woman in White, which has a number of mysteries, but ultimately rests on one Big Secret.

This is the fact that ‘Sir’ Percival Glyde is bogus throughout the whole novel – because he does not legitimately hold the title of Baronet. His parents are not married, and the legitimate title belongs to someone else. Glyde is a fraud – and that is the source of his Secret. He is guilty of false identity – technically ‘personification’

This leads to another typical element of the sensation novel – forgery. Glyde illegally inserts details of his parents’ non-existent marriage into the parish register. He does this for three reasons: he wishes to assume right to the Baronetcy; he wants to inherit the Fairlie estate; and he needs legitimacy to give himself the legal possibility of borrowing money against the Fairlie ‘name’.

Imprisonment

The Woman in White involves not just one but two instances of illegal imprisonment. Anne Catherick (The Woman) is placed in a lunatic asylum against her will by Glyde – because he fears she might reveal his Secret. She escapes, goes into hiding, and tries to warn Laura about him.

When Glyde learns that there has been contact between the two women, he assumes that his Secret has been revealed (which it has not) and he then imprisons his own wife in the asylum – but does so under Anne Catherick’s name. This is a sort of ‘double imprisonment’ for Laura.

Subsequent to this, as part of what we might now call ‘identity theft’, Anne Catherick (who dies) is buried not in her own name but in Laura’s.

The other shocking elements of ‘sensation’ should be fairly obvious to modern readers. Glyde becomes a psychologically and physically abusive husband to Laura; letters are intercepted, stolen, and re-written; a death certificate is forged; there is a great deal of spying; and Count Fosco and his sinister wife drug their victims using what he a euphemistically refers to as an interest in ‘chemistry’.

The legal problem

There is however something of a puzzling issue at the base of the plot line of The Woman in White. As a fake Baronet badly in need of money, the villain Glyde goes to extraordinary lengths to secure Anne’s inheritance of twenty thousand pounds. He will not marry her unless she agrees to the condition, and he has the gullible solicitor Gilmore draw up legal agreements to secure it.

Yet under the law obtaining at the time the novel is set (and was written) all of a woman’s property and money automatically passed into the control of the man she married. This was one of the scandalous iniquities of English law which was much debated and eventually changed with the passing of the Married Woman’s Property Act in 1882.

Even worse at that time, a woman ceased to be a legal or moral entity when she married. It was not until the Act of 1882 that these conditions were changed.

So there was no need for ‘Sir’ Percival Glyde to resort to solicitors: Laura’s money would come to him automatically – unless Collins was suggesting that Glyde’s false legal status could invalidate the process, but there is no consideration of this point in the text.

Characterisation

In terms of literary characterisation, The Woman in White poses some interesting problems. The positive characters – hero and heroines – are thin and unprepossessing, whereas some of the negative characters are quite vivid, memorable, and even amusing.

The protagonist and main narrator Walter Hartright is honourable, loyal, and indefatigable in his pursuit of the truth regarding the mystery. But as a character he is rather bland and unmemorable. Similarly, the ostensible ‘heroine’ of the novel, Laura Fairlie, is like a child’s doll. She might be pretty, but she is an agent who is acted upon but makes no positive impression of any kind.

Laura’s half-sister Marian starts out as a more interesting creation – with un-corsetted haunches and mannish behaviour – but this side of her character is not developed. She becomes merely the stoic tomboy who climbs onto a verandah in the rain, and eventually endures typhoid fever. The most interesting thing about her is that she ends up living in a ménage a trois with her married half sister and brother-in-law.

Yet amongst the negative characters, Wilkie Collins creates two inspired characters. The first is self-obsessed aesthete Frederick Fairlie who hides from the world behind a wall of hypochondria which is so advanced he would rather not be bothered talking to anybody, and wants doors closed quietly so as not to upset his nerves.

The acute nature of his avoidance of all responsibility becomes quite comic. He is a similar character to Horace Skimpole in Bleak House (1852) – a man who has elevated self-interest into a philosophy and an art form. When Count Fosco tries to reassure Fairlie that Marian’s typhoid fever is not contagious, he recoils with shock and horror:

Accept his assurances! I was never farther from accepting anything in my life. I would not have believed him on his oath. He was too yellow to be believed. He looked like a walking West-Indian-epidemic. He was big enough to carry typhus by the ton, and to dye the very carpet he walked on with scarlet fever.

The other stand-out character is his fellow villain Count Fosco, a fat, witty, sophisticated, larger-than-life character who is quite obviously not at all that he seems. He flatters everybody he meets, dabbles in ‘chemistry’ (which is his euphemism for poison) and has pet mice and birds about his person, He turns out to be not only a charlatan but a spy who in his ‘confession’ at the end of the novel gives a boastfully frank account of his criminality in a typically oblique fashion:

If Anne Catherick had not died when she did, what should I have done? I should, in that case, have assisted worn-out Nature in finding permanent repose. I should have opened the doors of the Prison of Life, and have extended to the captive (incurably afflicted in mind and body) a happy release.

The Woman in White – study resources

The Woman in White – Oxford Classics – Amazon UK

The Woman in White – Oxford Classics – Amazon US

The Woman in White – Penguin Classics – Amazon UK

The Woman in White – Penguin Classics – Amazon US

The Woman in White – Wordsworth Classics – Amazon UK

The Woman in White – Wordsworth Classics – Amazon US

The Woman in White – York Notes – Amazon UK

The Complete Works of Wilkie Collins – Kindle eBook

The Woman in White – 1982 BBC film

The Woman in White – plot synopsis

The First Epoch

Artist Walter Hartright saves Professor Pesca from drowning at Brighton. Pesca passes on to Walter the request for a private tutor in drawing in Cumbria.

Walter meets the Woman in White late at night on Hampstead Heath. She has connections with Limmeridge House in Cumbria where he is going. She claims to have been ill-used by a Baronet, and has escaped from an Asylum.

Walter travels to Limmeridge House, meeting the shapely but mannish Marian Halcombe. He tells her about the Woman in White’s association with the house. He is interviewed by Frederick Fairlie who is an aesthete and a valetudinarian.

He meets Laura Fairlie and immediately falls in love with her. Marian reads from her mother’s letter and a connection is established between Laura and Anne Catherick (the Woman in White) because of similarities in their dress.

Marian explains to Walter that he must leave, because Laura is engaged to be married to Sir Percival Glyde. She produces an anonymous letter, warning Laura not to marry Glyde, who is a Baronet from Hampshire.

Walter meets Anne Catherick and her friend Mrs Clements in the graveyard. Anne has no father, and is at odds with her mother. At the mention of Sir Percival Glyde she goes into a seizure of fear.

Walter and Marian go to the farm where Anne is staying, but she has left the same morning. Sir Percival Glyde is the visitor expected at Limmeridge House.

The solicitor Gilmore arrives and reassures Walter that Glyde is completely honourable. Marian and Laura thank Walter for his help – and he leaves Limmeridge.

Glyde arrives and persuades Gilmore that he has acted on Mrs Catherick’s own wishes in ‘providing’ a private Asylum for her daughter Anne. He also persuades Marian to write to Mars Catherick for proof of his claim.

A response from Mrs Cathherick supports Glyde, who gives Laura every latitude in coming to her decision about the marriage. She asks for more time, and Gilmore supports her.

A week later Gilmore gets a letter saying Laura will marry Glyde before she is twenty-one. Glyde (who has no money) insists on receiving Laura’s twenty thousand pounds as part of the marriage settlement.

Gilmore appeals to Laura’s guardian Fairlie to let her retain the twenty thousand pounds, but Fairlie refuses to take any interest in the case.

Laura wishes to tell Glyde that she is in love with Walter, but Glyde refuses to call off the engagement, claiming he loves Laura all the more because of her fine principles.

Glyde prides himself on his absence of any jealous feelings. Laura capitulates, and Walter leaves for Honduras.

Glyde sets a date. Laura complies passively. Marian finds more and more positive qualities in Glyde, who is still searching for Anne. Marian has presentiments that something will prevent the marriage, but it takes place.

The Second Epoch

Six months later Marian has arrived at Blackwater Park; Walter is in Honduras; Gilmore is ill; and Laura is on honeymoon in Europe. Marian visits the ominous Black Lake, then finds Mrs Catherick’s dog which has been shot by the park keeper.

On return Laura will not discuss her new marriage, yet asks about Walter. Glyde is even more distant and short-tempered. Marian gives a positive account of the fat and sleek Count Fosco, with his pet birds and tame mice. Glyde’s solicitor Merriman suddenly arrives from London.

Marian overhears news of Glyde’s money problems. She and Laura suspect that Fosco knows the details. On an excursion to the Lake they discuss Crime and its detection. Glyde learns about Mrs Catherick’s dog and is alarmed.

Glyde wants Laura to sign a legal document but will not reveal its content. She refuses, and there is a violent disagreement. Marian writes to Gilmore’s office for advice, but Fosco reads the letter.

Laura reveals to Marian that she knows Glyde married her for her money, and that he has learned of her love for Walter. He threatens to persecute both of them. They think they see a woman walking round the Lake.

A solicitor’s letter from London recommends not signing the document. Marian dreams about Walter in Honduras. Laura meets a distraught and dying Anne in the boat house. Anne wants to impart Glyde’s ‘secret’ to her – but doesn’t.

Laura is due to meet Anne in the boat house, but is intercepted by Glyde. He interrogates her then imprisons her in the House. Fosco’s spying is exposed, yet he persuades Glyde to release Laura.

Marian writes to the solicitor and to Mr Fairlie, trying to arrange a temporary refuge for Laura. She gives the letters to Fanny who has been dismissed and is returning to Limmeridge House.

Marian climbs out onto a verandah roof in the rain to overhear Glyde and Foco plotting to get money from Laura, and the search for Anne Catherick. Glyde assumes that Hartright and Laura know his ´secret´, which is also known by Anne Catherick and her mother.

Marian falls ill. Fosco confiscates and reads her diaries, even writing a mock-complimentary entry in them.

Fanny arrives at Limmeridge House with Marian´s letter. She has been intercepted and drugged by Countess Fosco. Count Fosco arrives to announce that Marian has a fever and to suggest that Fairlie should avoid a scandal by receiving Laura. Fairlie takes the line of least resistance and accepts.

The naive housekeeper Eliza Michelson gives an admiring view of Fosco, who plants an accomplice Mrs Rubelle in the sick room. Marian’s illness grows worse, and proves to be typhoid fever. When she recovers, the doctor is dismissed and Glyde sacks all the servants.

Mrs Michelson is sent away on a pointless errand to Torquay. On her return, Marian has been taken away by Fosco. Laura leaves Blackwater Park next day for London and Cumbria. Mrs Michelson discovers that Marian is still at Blackwater Park, and resigns her post. Mrs Rubelle leaves, and so does Glyde, in a great hurry.

Laura is taken to St John’s Wood in convulsions. She gets worse and appears to die of a diseased heart Walter Hartwright returns from abroad. He visits Laura’s grave, where he is met by Marian and Laura herself.

The Third Epoch

Count Fosco sends a letter to Marian announcing Laura’s death. Marian asks her solicitor to check, but he finds no suspicious circumstances. Count Fosco attends the funeral and writes that Anne Catherick has been recaptured and sent back to the Asylum.

Marian goes to the Asylum where the patient turns out to be Laura. Marian bribes a nurse to release her, and they go to Cumbria where her uncle refuses to recognise her [Fosco has kidnapped Laura, drugged her, and taken Laura to the Asylum as the recaptured Anne.]

Walter sets up in hiding with Marian and Laura. He begins to assemble evidence and accounts of events from participants (which constitute the text of the novel).

He consults the solicitor Kyle who warns him that he has no legal case. Walter is being followed by Glyde’s agents.

Walter tracks down Anne’s friend Mrs Clements, who relates that she took Anne to Grimsby for safety, but when Anne fell ill she wanted to communicate something to Laura. At Blackwater Park Mrs Clements meets Fosco who deceives her, prescribes drugs for Anne, and suggests their going to London. Once there, Fosco and his wife kidnap Anne.

Mrs Clements then relates the history of the Catherick family. Mrs Catherick refused to marry until she suddenly became pregnant by someone else. Percival Glyde came to live near them and began an intrigue with Mrs Catherick. When her husband discovered this, he beat Glyne, then emigrated. He pays his wife an allowance, which she does not touch, living instead off payments from Glyde.

Walter questions Mrs Catherick, who remains implacably opposed to answering any of his questions about Anne and Glyde. Walter assumes that Glyde is not Anne’s father.

Walter inspects the marriage records in an old vestry for evidence of Glyde’s parents’ marriage and finds a dubious entry. When he inspects a duplicate set of records he finds no entry. On his way back to the vestry he finds it on fire, with Glyde trapped inside. Walter organises a rescue, but it fails, and Glyde is killed.

Walter receives a letter from Mrs Catherick that reveals how Glyde forged the entry in the register of marriages. His parents were not married, and he needed a certificate in order to raise money on the estate. Mrs Catherick does not get on well with her daughter Anne, who learns that there is a secret but does not know its details. Nevertheless Glyde locks her up in an asylum with her mother’s consent.

Marian recounts meeting Fosco, who makes vague threats but reveals a vague sexual ‘interest’ in her. Consequently, Marian and Laura move house. Walter conjectures that Anne and Laura might have the same father.

Walter feels that to protect Laura from Fosco he must marry her. He wishes to establish her true identity against all the false evidence of her death. They get married.

Walter concludes from the existing evidence that Fosco must be a spy. He takes Pesca to identify Fosco at the opera – but Fosco is terrified by the sight of Pesca, who then reveals that he is a member of a secret revolutionary brotherhood.

Walter concludes that Fosco has a price on his head. He writes a letter to Pesca to be acted on if necessary the following morning, then goes to interview Fosco.

They challenge and threaten each other, but finally Walter gives Fosco a chance to escape in exchange for a written confession.

The confession relates how Fosco and Glyde arrived in England, both of them short of money. Fosco conceives the plan of extracting money out of Laura via her close resemblance to Anne.

His interest in ‘Chemistry’ is used to justify administering drugs to people, and he intercepts their mail. He kidnaps Anne, who dies in his house, then he conveys Laura under sedation to the asylum.

Walter gathers further documentary evidence, then Laura is taken back to Limmerage House where she is reinstated, despite the resistance of her uncle Fairlie. Walter organises a public statement of events, and then they return to London.

Walter receives a commission in Paris, where he learns about the assassination of Fosco. Walter and Laura have a child, who on the sudden death of his relative Frederick Fairlie inherits the Limmerage estate.

The Woman in White – principal characters

The Woman in White – further reading

William M. Clarke, The Secret Life of Wilkie Collins, London: Ivan R. Dee, 1988.

Tamar Heller, Dead Secrets: Wilkie Collins and the Female Gothic, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992.

Winifred Hughes, The Maniac in the Cellar: Sensation Novels of the 1860s, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014.

Sue Lonoff, Wilkie Collins and his Victorian Readers: A Study in the Rhetoric of Authorship, New York: AMS Press, 1982.

Catherine Peters, The King of Inventors: A Life of Wilkie Collins, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014.

Walter C. Phillips, Dickens, Reade, and Collins: Sensation Novelists, New York: Library of Congress, 1919.

Lynn Pykett, Wilkie Collins: New Casebooks, London: Palgrave-Macmillan, 1998.

Nicholas Rance, Wilkie Collins and Other Sensation Novelists: Walking the Moral Hospital, London: Palgrave-Macmillan, 1991.

© Roy Johnson 2016

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