Wilkie Collins first published The Woman in White as a serial in All the Year Round between November 1859 and August 1860. Collins was praised by critics for the care he took with both plotting and character development. When the mystery came out in volume form, Collins attached a preface, first reassuring readers that all legal detail was true, as he had carefully consulted “a solicitor of great experience” to ensure realism.

Second, he explained his belief that “the primary object of a work of fiction should be to tell a story,” and if that requirement were met, an author was in no danger of “neglecting the delineation of character.” He had the idea for both plot and character from reading information about some French trials, which focused on mistaken identity, also long an important element of much romance fiction. A letter from someone he did not even know mentioned the possibility that an individual might be mistakenly held in an insane asylum, powerless to object to the admission by a second party.

He developed the first-person narrative approach to the novel from the fact that witnesses testify singly in courtroom proceedings. This also allowed him to withhold knowledge from the reader, as it would be revealed a bit at a time. His approach captivated his audience, which found small details frightening simply because they were without explanation, drawing them further into the story. His attraction to frightening his readers placed his work firmly within the tradition of sensation fiction.

The plot features two sisters who act as foils. While Laura Fairlie, as her name suggests, is pretty and fair, her half-sister, Marian Halcombe, is unattractive and dark, but also extremely intelligent. That dichotomy suggests the traditional fairy tale, in which the blond beautiful heroine is also passive and sometimes dense, while the undesirable female in the form of a step-relative often proves the most active and bright.

Walter Hartright, another character with a symbolic surname, tutors the sisters in drawing and falls in love with Laura, but she is engaged to marry Sir Percival Glyde, whose surname suggests a smooth, and perhaps tricky, personality. A mysterious woman dressed in white is introduced named Anne Catherick, who is already known by Walter. She has managed to escape from a lunatic asylum to which Sir Percival had her committed, apparently due to some damning information she possesses about Percival.

Her circumstances interest feminist critics, as women had frequently been “committed” by controlling males for refusing to remain silent or to behave as a patriarchal society deemed correct. Laura is not moved by the possibility of trouble and chooses to marry Sir Percival, causing Walter to take his leave. However, Marian is intrigued and chooses to pursue Anne’s claims, prompting Percival to seek aid in the form of the Italian count Fosco.

When Anne dies, Percival and Fosco kidnap Laura, taking advantage of her resemblance to Anne to lock her up in the asylum in Anne’s place, while they bury Anne under Laura’s name. The determined Marian uncovers the scheme, discovering her sister in the asylum and helping her escape. Although Laura began as the story’s heroine, that position is co-opted by the brilliant and dogged Marian, who remarks, “Nothing, in my opinion, sets the odious selfishness of mankind in such a repulsively vivid light as the treatment, in all classes of society, which the single people receive at the hands of the married people.”

The women and Walter then find a parish registry that reveals Sir Percival is actually illegitimate and not heir to an aristocratic title or property. Percival reacts by attempting to burn the records, lets the fire get out of hand, and is destroyed along with the church by the flames. The fire symbolizes a new beginning through purification, and Walter gains that new beginning for Laura by forcing Count Fosco to admit to her true identity, freeing her both physically and emotionally so she may marry Walter.

He concludes from reading Laura’s journals and overheard remarks that Fosco was actually a spy. A further satisfaction occurs when Fosco is murdered by a secret Italian society, the Brotherhood, in revenge for his past betrayals. The book closes focused on Laura and Walter’s son, to whom Marian served as godmother. She receives the credit she deserves as Walter completes his part of the tale by writing, “Marian was the good angel of our lives.”

The Woman in White proved of great importance to the development of crime and detective fiction, offering a new type of villain in Fosco, because he is suave, but also fat. In addition, within the serious narrative Collins inserts much irreverent humor, which helps to delineate his characters.

In Walter’s early testimony, he describes Professor Pesca sharing information about a family to whom he teaches Italian: “A Mamma, fair and fat; three young Misses, fair and fat; two young Misters, fair and fat; and a Papa, the fairest and the fattest of all, who is a mighty merchant . . . a fine man once, but seeing that he has got a naked head and two chins, fine no longer at the present time.”

In another amusing testimony, the girls’ guardian laments his condition as a single person, of whom all the married people in the world take advantage. The novel remains popular and has appeared in various stage and film versions.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bachman, Maria K., and Don Richard Cox, eds. Reality’s Dark Light: The Sensational Wilkie Collins. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2003.

Peterson, Audrey. Victorian Masters of Mystery: From Wilkie Collins to Conan Doyle. New York: Ungar, 1984.

Phillips, Walter Clarke. Dickens, Reade, and Collins: Sensation Novelists; A Study in the Conditions and Theories of Novel Writing in Victorian England. New York: Russell & Russell, 1962.

Categories: British Literature, Detective Novels, Literature, Novel Analysis

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