Woman in White (Wilkie Collins, 1860)

Wilkie Collins. The Woman in White. Pub. 1860. Ed. John Sutherland. Oxford World's Classics, 2008.

• serialized in AYR 11/1859-8/1860 with Tale of Two Cities (1859) picking up on next page; then 3 vol. pub. by Sampson Low
• Good for: Discontinuous reading of novels (see Reception, Stallybrass 2002, Buurma 2013); 197 end of "First Epoch" - Sutherland notes that in the Ms Collins wrote for the printer, "End of Vol I (in three vol edition)" (immanent multimedia); 289 using M's journal to confirm events metafictively -- interesting ontologically; 453 documentation as a crux with implication for individuality/liberal individualism (in Armadale (Collins, 1866) too); 521 parish registry

Reception

Important quote for discontinuous reading of Victorian novels in ES Dallas's review (The Times, 30 October 1860):

The Woman in White [1859–60] is a novel of the rare old school which must be finished at a sitting. No chance of laying it down until the last page of the last volume has been turned. We have lately gotten into the habit—strange for these fast days—of reading our novels very leisurely. They are constructed on the principle of monthly instalments, and we read a chapter on the 1st of every month, quietly sauntering to the end of the story in about a couple of years. Even the novels which are published complete in three volumes are for the most part built on the same model. It is possible to open the volume at any page and read right on without embarrassment.

General Notes

Renumber from bantam to Oxford ed

• 14 "We don't want genius in this country, unless it is accompanied by respectability" (Pesca's client when P recommends Walter
• 20 the woman in white appears
• 20 Walter "mechanically" walking - that word keeps recurring
  • 40 "dim mechanical drawing"
  • 497 Mrs Catherick "mechanically smoothing her dress"
• 39 "How can I describe her [Ms Fairlie]? How can I separate her from my own sensations, and from all that has happened in the later time?"
  • interesting that the narrator feels the need to decouple description from affect (given his rather cruel description of Mrs Vesey earlier), and the repeated pressure of "later time" and later narrative on the "narrative present": both a device for foreshadowing and for suggesting the contingency of the narrative
• 64 "ordinary rules of evidence" (which WH doesn't have to connect Glyde to the WiW): as in Audley an undercurrent of what counts as evidence
• 71 boys at the school think they've seen a ghost

___

• 144 the legal situation of Laura's life interest and property when married is something of a textual crux - before the Married Women's Property Act 1882, her property would pass to her husband on marriage. Cf. Important Victorian Legislation
• 149-52 details the arrangement of the Fairlies' estate
• 183 Marian's "misandry"
• 197 end of "First Epoch" - Sutherland notes that in the Ms Collins wrote for the printer, "End of Vol I (in three vol edition)".
• 203 how carefully Marian analyzes Laura's character through her letters
• 246ff Laura forced to sign legal document sight unseen
• 278 M's vision of Walter and his visionary promise to "be the instrument of a Design that is yet unseen"
• 280ff Laura and Anne
• 289 using M's journal to confirm events metafictively -- interesting ontologically
• 436 when L is brought to the asylum as A, the nurse::

"Do look at your clothes now! There it is, in good marking ink; and there you will find it on all your old things, which we have kept in the house -- Anne Catherick, as plain as print!"

• 439 God/fate again guiding L and M to see W at the churchyard
• 441 the sale of his drawing-master's practice?
• 442 "great network of streets"
• 446 metafictive account of where the statements of Mrs Michelson, Jane Gould came from at the end of the 2nd Epoch
• 453 documentation is the crux - Kyrle says WH must show diff btwn date of dr's certificate and Laura's journey to london
• 477 Mrs Catherick's relationship with Glyde
• 493 the "modern gloom" of the new country town of Welmingham
• 521 crucial evidence from the copied parish registry
• 538 "Through all the ways of our unintelligible world, the trivial and the terrible walk hand in hand together."
• 539 "Could I have made my discovery a marketable commodity[?]"
• 551 the illusion (delusion) that A knows the secret: how does that play into the patterning about doubling, insincerity, identity?
• 589 contextualizing Pesca's past (and Fosco's presumably) in the revolutionary politics of the Carbonari and the uprisings of early C19
• 615 Fosco's narrative - "Oh, omnipotent Destiny, pull out strings gently!"
• 625 proof

Theme Tracking

Shakespeare references

• 617 Fosco contemplating poisoning Shakespeare as he writes Hamlet