Book review: The Woman in White

Book: The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins

Date finished: 3/13/11

Review: I will admit this: prior to last year, I’d never heard of this book. But there it was on the BBC’s list of top 100 books and I never really got around to reading it when my reading challenge fell apart at the seams last year. So, I added it to this year’s reading list and was overjoyed earlier in the year when I found a nice hardback copy from 1937 at a local used bookstore.

It’s really weird that I had never really heard of this book, much less read it. After I started reading it, I did a little research and found out that it’s considered one of the first mystery novels and is widely regarded as a classic. Written in 1859, the novel reveals its plot through several different voices. First we hear from Walter Hartright, a drawing teacher/master, who tells his part of the story. Others, including a lawyer, several servants, a “Count” who may not be a count, and others advance the storyline by telling the events they themselves experienced. Some write their stories as letters; others tell it in first person. One character, Marian Halcombe, tells a large portion of her part of the story through journal entries.

The plot is pretty intriguing and kept me turning the pages, even though I knew, somehow, that it would end happily. Basically, Walter goes to the north of England to teach some young ladies to draw. The night before he goes, he has a mysterious encounter with a woman dressed all in white who he helps get to her destination. Later, he discovers she has escaped from an asylum. Once at his new post, he slowly falls in love with one of his students, a pretty girl who has the misfortune of already being engaged to someone else. Walter leaves despite the fact that both he and Laura love one another and lets her make her decision. She reveals that she loves someone else to her betrothed—honest and forthright as she can be—and he still chooses to marry her. It’s a marriage she didn’t want and most of the people in her life think it’s a terrible idea.

And they turn out to be right. Laura becomes the wife of Sir Percival Glyde, a man with a title who has lost most of his fortune and Laura is his way to get more money. Therefore, she becomes a pawn in a deadly game Glyde and his friend Count Fosco are playing. The story that unfolds involves faked death, stolen identities, asylums, drugs, something kind of similar to the mob, and secrets characters would do anything they could to keep. I’m not going to reveal the entire plot, because I’d rather you read the book and let the mystery unfold for yourself.

I will say that for a book written in 1859, the devices Wilkie Collins’ employed to weave his tale are surprisingly modern. Writers like Jodi Picoult and Ian McEwan have used similar techniques to allow as many voices as possible to tell their stories. While to the modern reader, this mystery may seem overly sensational and romantic, lacking the courtroom drama of a John Grisham novel or the brashness and gore of Patricia Cornwell’s Scarpetta novels, Wilkie Collins’ masterpiece holds up well. It’s an enjoyable (but long) read that kept me turning the pages toward the end just because I wanted to know what happened.

For the mystery lover, this is a must-read. For those who’d like to ease in to classic novels, The Woman in White is a good place to start. So pick up a copy and read it!

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