I admire Victorian
novelists who scratched away with quills (later, steel pens) and candlelight to
produce very long novels. True, the longer the novel the greater the income in
a world where novels often began their lives in serialised, periodical, form
before appearing as expensive triple-deckers and, eventually, as one volume
popular editions.
The
Woman in White runs to over six hundred pages in my
Penguin Classics edition and at times the story feels as if it is being deliberately
kept going. There are times too when the plot descends into plot summary, the
inevitable consequence I guess of serialised publication which requires that
readers be frequently reminded of what they had read in previous weeks or
months - though that is something which
could have been edited out for a book version. That said, it’s an extraordinary work and
though advertised (on my Penguin cover) as in a Victorian Gothic genre, it has the feel of a detective story complete
with detective (Walter Hart in the right
place), clues, plot twists, lures for
the reader to wrap it all up, late revelations, and final triumphant success
for the detective.
The plot is ingenious,
the presentation of the unfolding story through the statements of a cast of
witnesses innovative, and the suspense on balance well-sustained. As to the main
characters, I found the villains rather more interesting than the heroes: Sir
Percival Glyde and Count Fosco are complex figures who don’t react in
stereotyped ways to the opportunities which present themselves or the changing predicaments
which challenge them. To a lesser degree, the same is true of minor characters like
Mrs Catherick.
The heroes are more
stereotypical, though Collins offers fairly sustained alternatives to what I
take as Victorian conceptions of femininity, notably in the character of Marian
Halcombe, and there are what one might think of as authorial intrusions which underline
the shortcomings of Victorian sex-discrimination, notably in relation to marriage
and property rights. It would be possible to write a long essay on this topic,
and someone probably has written one already.
Despite the fact that
the lawyers consulted by the heroes are presented as good characters, one of
the most interesting sub-texts of the book is a sustained scepticism about
the capacity of the Law to deliver justice, promptly and fairly. Walter
Hartright achieves what justice demands by extra-judicial means throughout and
his menage a trois accomplice, Marian, cheerfully resorts to bribery in order to spring Laura
Fairlie from the Asylum in which she has been imprisoned under a false name and
under false pretences. Whether this aspect
of the novel shocked Victorian sensibilities I don’t know, though the
best-seller success of the book suggests not.
In contrast, the system
of property rights which frees one caste of people from the necessity of ever
working - a privilege which provides endless occasions for inheritance disputes
- attracts little scrutiny. Walter Hartight has to work for his living, but his
achievement is not only to win the woman he loves (and who loves
him) but also restore her to her rightful place in the property order of things.
