The Woman in White

This post first published August 19, 2013.

Author: Wilkie Collins
First Published: 1860
Publisher: Modern Library
668 pages (paperback)
 
I’ve had this sitting on my bookshelf for quite a long time. It was part of a 3 classics for $10 deal from a long time ago. There were 2 classics I wanted, but I did not know what to get for a 3rd. So I randomly chose this one, The Woman In White. Never heard of it before then. It ended up being one of my better decisions because this book was absolutely wonderful to read!

What I love about this book is how the plot went from being relatively simple to something so big and complex. Like a seed, it grew into a large tree with sprawling branches. Told in different points of views by various characters, The Woman In White begins with a drawing master named Walter Hartright. A bit down on his luck, his good friend Professor Pesco manages to find Hartright a job as a drawing instructor for two ladies at Limmeridge House. The night before his journey, he runs into a mysterious woman dressed all in white, on the road to London. She becomes quite excited to know that Hartright is heading to Limmeridge House, a place she remembers fondly from her childhood. After assisting her with directions, Hartright finds out that the woman he just helped is a patient who has escaped from an insane asylum.

Upon arriving at Limmeridge House, Hartright meets his new pupils: Marian and Laura. Hartright and Marian develop an instant friendship, bonding over the mysterious woman in white he encountered and wondering who she could be and what fond memories she has had at Limmeridge House. However, Hartright’s heart falls for Laura instead, who coincidentally bears a striking resemblance to the mysterious woman in white. Laura, too, appears to also have fallen for Hartright; unfortunately, she is already betrothed to the baron, Percival Glyde. Marian implores Hartright to not upset the family by respectfully asking him to leave before the obvious attraction between Laura and Hartright interfere with the already established engagement, which Hartright agrees to.

As if being heartbroken wasn’t enough, Laura receives a mysterious letter from anonymous defaming her future husband, Percival, and telling her not to marry him. Percival Glyde himself comes to Limmeridge House to set matters straight — he determines that the letter is from the mysterious woman in white, who is named Anne Catherick. He knows her mother, a faithful servant from the past, and helped sought medical help for her disturbed daughter by paying for her stay in the asylum. Thus, Anne hates Percival. Explanation understood, Laura marries Percival and becomes Mrs. Glyde.
The courteous and polite Percival Glyde suddenly transforms into a controlling and short tempered version of the baron. He knows Laura has fallen in love with another and is frustrated that she does her duties as his wife with no love.  He is also in some financial trouble and is angry that he has to ask his wife for money. Laura and Marian, in the mean time, have become more interested in who Anne Catherick is, who continues to try to contact Laura, but at the same time, have to fear Percival’s foreign friend, Count Fosco. Fosco is an incredibly cunning man and appears to be mixed up somehow in Percival’s financial issues. Part of his involvement is to stop Laura and Marian from contacting Anne Catherick, as she knows Percival’s terrible Secret, which could be the downfall of both Percival and Fosco.

You might be thinking that I just gave away most of the plot — crazily enough, that’s all just the BEGINNING! The story becomes incredibly layered and complex from this starting point, and yes, Hartright does appear again later in the story. I am still in awe at what I have read. They call this a ‘sensation’ novel and I understand what they mean. We have lots and lots of plot here — spying, family secrets, insanity, secret identities, kidnapping — you name it, it’s got it. It’s also a mystery novel, sort of, because of all the secrets that come to light, which Hartright and Marian try so hard to solve for the sake of their beloved Laura.

What I also like about this book is that it’s a book that was written in 1860 about that time period.  Therefore, it does what few historical novels can do — it truly immerses you into the time period. Everything feels so authentic about the time, from the language used to write to the manners and courtesies expected of the characters in each of their stations in life, to their hobbies, etc.

I am just so, SO pleased with this novel. I surprised myself by enjoying it so damn much. I know some people are hesitant to read older books because the language isn’t contemporary, and I myself am like that sometimes too, so I completely understand; however, this book was surprisingly easy to read, and easy to become addicted to. I heartily recommend it to anyone looking for a good classic novel to read, and I hope you will enjoy it too!

My Rating: 5/5

The Picture Of Dorian Gray

This post first published May 30, 2011.

Author: Oscar Wilde
Published: 1890
Publisher: Random House USA
254 pages (hardcover)
 
I made a list of classic books I want to read before I die, which ended up being pretty long because I realized that I don’t read a whole lot of classics. Anyway, one of the books on my list is The Picture of Dorian Gray. A friend of mine had to read the book for a literature course a few semesters ago, and although she didn’t really end up liking it that much, the premise of it sounded so interesting to me that I wanted to give it a try myself.

Dorian Gray is a handsome young man (twenty years old, or even a little younger, at the start of the story) who is sitting for a painting that his friend Basil Hallward is doing of him. Basil’s other friend, Lord Henry, visits Basil that day and meets Dorian Gray. Lord Henry marvels at what a handsome, gorgeous person Dorian is, and plants an idea in Dorian’s head that youth and beauty is everything. When Dorian sees Basil’s completed portrait of himself, Dorian comes to the conclusion that Lord Henry is right — his portrait self has attained immortality, but Dorian himself will eventually grow old, ugly and die. He tells his friends how he wishes he and the portrait can exchange places; he shall retain his youth and beauty while his portrait should be the one to grow old and ugly.

Dorian and Lord Henry become best of friends, which worries Basil. Lord Henry fills Dorian’s head with ideas of living life recklessly, and Basil is sure Lord Henry (despite being a good friend of his) is being a bad influence on Dorian. After doing something not quite nice one night, Dorian returns home to find his portrait has changed slightly — there is now a cruel smile where there wasn’t before. His soul is now in the portrait instead. Horrified, Dorian realizes that his wish somehow came true, but after further reflection, decides this is the best thing to happen to him, for every sin he does now, his portrait will bear it instead of his own appearance.

It wasn’t exactly what I thought it was going to be like, but I ended up really liking it. There is a sense of horror in this novel, and I don’t normally read horror stories of any kind, but the scary factor is very, very subtle. Much of it comes from Dorian looking at his painting. He keeps it covered most of the time with a piece of cloth because he’d prefer not to watch his soul degrade, so as the reader, you don’t see it that often either; but every time he does uncover it, it’s terrible. As the novel goes on, Dorian becomes even more reckless and daring and the portrait of himself becomes even more twisted and ugly. I think the scariest part is that Dorian himself still continues to look like a young, handsome twenty year old even when he’s in his late thirties, and nobody suspects a thing because surely a person that looks so beautiful can’t be harboring an ugly soul riddled with his sins. And isn’t that what real life people think too?

Another theme is influence. Dorian is a pretty normal guy at the beginning of the novel and doesn’t even realize he’s a handsome fellow until he meets Lord Henry; later on, Basil admits he was artistically drawn to Dorian, initially because of his great beauty. Then, not only is Dorian obsessed with maintaining his youth, Lord Henry becomes his BFF and tells him about his views on life and how one should live it, interact with people, and so on. This plants all sorts of ideas into Dorian’s head, and it makes me wonder if the evil things he did later on in the story … was he doing them because of what his friends said about him, thus influencing his nature? Or was he always like this from the beginning and his friends have only tipped him over the edge?

As you can probably tell, I was really fascinated by this novel. However, I can also kind of see why my own friend did not like it that much. Oscar Wilde is really, really good at run-on sentences, haha. In fact, by the time I finish reading a sentence, I often have forgotten what the sentence was supposed to be about. Chapter eleven was brutal to read, for me, because it seemed to be one giant tangent of a chapter. The entire chapter is dedicated to describing what Dorian’s reading in this corrupting book that Lord Henry lent to him, and it just goes into excruciating detail. I wasn’t even wholly sure what the chapter was about until I reached the end.

As the novel is not really action-orientated, coupled with the long-winded writing and dialogue, it can seem a bit slow, or over embellished, I suppose. I personally thought, plot-wise, it was pretty good although I suppose it could have been better in some way. Though the ending was really obvious and predictable (to me), it was also fitting, so I liked it. I think I would have been shocked if the ending wasn’t what I thought.

Overall, this is a great book and I definitely would recommend it. It does require some concentration to read; it’s not the kind that you can just zip through. However, I think it would be worth it.

My Rating: 4/5