“Woman in White” by Wilkie Collins
A mystery classic and renowned example of sensation fiction, The Woman in White is the fifth published novel by Wilkie Collins.
Published in 1859, we are immediately intrigued by the narrative - a young and genial tutor of arts, Walter Hartright, encounters a woman dressed head to toe in white who is lost in the streets of London. After reporting her to the authorities Walter is informed that the lady was an escapee from a mental asylum.
However, when Walter takes a new position in teaching art he encounters a girl named Laura, whose looks are stunningly similar to those of the woman in white. As the pair fall for one another, the sense of mystery deepens - is there more to their meeting than first meets the eye?
Lauded for its innovative and compelling plot and use of multiple characters in narration, The Woman in White is one of the earliest examples of detective fiction. Throughout his quest for the truth, Walter hires a number of private detectives and eventually mimics their methodology, with Collins' legal know-how lending realism to the plot line. Wilkie Collins was strongly motivated to author her novel by the unequal situation men and women found themselves: at the time, the law overtly deferred to men in matters of inheritance and estate.
The book's legacy is towering and significant: in the modern day The Woman in White continues to be voted and rated among the greatest novels ever published by surveys such as the BBC's Big Read and by newspapers such as The Observer (Amazon).
“'In one moment, every drop of blood in my body was brought to a stop... There, as if it had that moment sprung out of the earth, stood the figure of a solitary Woman, dressed from head to foot in white'
The Woman in White famously opens with Walter Hartright's eerie encounter on a moonlit London road. Engaged as a drawing master to the beautiful Laura Fairlie, Walter becomes embroiled in the sinister intrigues of Sir Percival Glyde and his 'charming' friend Count Fosco, who has a taste for white mice, vanilla bonbons, and poison. Pursuing questions of identity and insanity along the paths and corridors of English country houses and the madhouse, The Woman in White is the first and most influential of the Victorian genre that combined Gothic horror with psychological realism” (Good Reads).
