A Prototype Conspiracy Thriller

[mtvessel]

Dec 2019
The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins – Joe Books inc, 2015 (kindle edition)
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This book reminded me a lot of its near contemporary, Dracula, in the way that it promises to break apart the conventions of a Victorian novel and then spends an inordinate amount of time ensuring that it does not do so. This is not entirely fair - Collins is a much better writer than Bram Stoker - but it is frustrating to see the potential of its first half be utterly wasted in the second.

The story consists of a series of written eye-witness accounts, the majority of which are by Walter Hartwright, a drawing master. He is a classic clean-cut Dickensian hero and therefore rather boring. On the recommendation of Professor Pesca, an Italian tutor who owes him a favour, Hartwright is offered a cushy job as drawing master to Laura Fairlie, a rich heiress, and her cousin, Marian Halcombe, at a stately pile in Cumberland called Limmeridge House.

An impressive Gothic atmosphere is generated when on the night before his departure, Walter encounters Anne Catherick, the eponymous woman in white, who makes a number of disturbing allegations and then disappears. Moments later, Walter encounters and misdirects two agents of the local lunatic asylum. So is Anne a mad woman who may be about to do something horrible? Or has she been the victim of a dastardly plot?

Walter arrives in Limmeridge House and romance inevitably happens. This was the point at which I started to dislike him. For he falls in love with the fair-haired, pretty but wet Laura (despite the fact that she is betrothed to Sir Percival Glyde, a promising baronet), instead of her far more interesting sharp-tongued and incisive cousin. Fortunately Marian becomes the storyteller for most of the rest of the first half which develops into a promising paranoid conspiracy thriller as she and her cousin begin to realise the sinister intentions of her betrothed and his friend, the portly Count Fosco.

What’s really interesting about this is how the female characters and their concerns become the chief focus of attention. Collins was clearly aware of the ways in which men lie to and manipulate women. If you want to see a classic example of the technique of gaslighting, look no further than this book. Marian in particular becomes heroic in her attempts to extricate her sister from the web in which she is entangled, and even Laura eventually shows some backbone. For a while it looks like Marian could become the chief protagonist.

Then dreary old Walter returns and the whole thing comes crashing down. The sisters' schemes come to nothing and they become helpless maidens who have to be rescued. The whole story becomes about Walter and his need to get revenge against the man who wronged the love of his life. There are some interesting plot twists at this point, but it is such a shame that the unconventional arc that the story appeared to be following is ruthlessly wrenched back onto standard Victorian tracks. It takes three hundred pages to resolve everything, and frankly they are a bit of a bore.

The same, sadly, also applies to the woman in white herself. Anne is a character with great potential for agency, but she is never given a chance to develop and nor is the gothicky atmosphere that she brings with her. Like most of the characters in the novel, including Walter himself, she is trapped in a passive role and any effect of her actions is largely accidental. It is such a pity that the elements for a great and transgressive novel are here, but are limited by Collins' own conventionality.