“No sensible man ever engages, unprepared, in a fencing match of words with a woman.”
Huge thank you to #classiclitbookclub for picking The Woman in White for October, because it has officially become my new favourite book. Rebecca has been my number one forever, but nope—it's been bumped. 😂 Clearly the gothic vibe is my thing… it’s only taken me 52 years to figure that out!
I read the gorgeous clothbound copy while also listening to the audiobook, and switching between the two was so much fun. The creepy, psychological tension totally sucked me in. 🙊 Some of the characters are seriously twisted—they start off all lovely and then bam, the masks come off. And honestly? It’s wild (and pretty scary) to think people could just be thrown into an asylum back then with hardly any assessment.
It’s told through multiple POVs, and I did get a bit lost now and then, but it didn’t ruin anything for me. The writing is gorgeous and the story is brilliant. Now I’m off to find a pretty copy of The Moonstone!
About the Book
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 is drawn into 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.
About Wilkie
William Wilkie Collins, or Wilkie as he was known to his friends and readers, was born in London's Marylebone where he lived more or less continuously for 65 years. Today he is best known for The Moonstone (1868), often regarded as the first true detective novel, and The Woman in White (1860), the archetypal sensation novel. During his lifetime, however, he wrote over thirty major books, well over a hundred articles, short stories and essays, and a dozen or more plays.
He lived an unconventional, Bohemian lifestyle, loved good food and wine to excess, wore flamboyant clothes, travelled abroad frequently, formed long-term relationships with two women but married neither, and took vast quantities of opium over many years to relieve the symptoms of ill health. Collins's circle of friends included many pre-eminent figures of the day. He knew the major writers, particularly Charles Dickens with whom he regularly collaborated, as well as a host of minor novelists. His friends and acquaintances included some of the foremost artists, playwrights, theatrical personalities, musicians, publishers, physicians and society figures of the time. Collins's unorthodox lifestyle reveals a cynical regard for the Victorian establishment. This view is reflected in his books together with a sense of humour and a profound understanding for many of the then prevailing social injustices.
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