The Woman In White (1860)
(Wilke Collins)
AbstractThe Woman In WhiteWilke Collins' The Woman in White reflects the nineteenth-century concepts of beauty as weakness, and the destructive power of evil. In typical Gothic style, this book covers the subjects of identity (the doppelganger, of the double) imprisonment, incarceration, and the nature of evil.At night on a lonely country road, chivalrous Walter Hartright meets a ghostly pale, unsettled young woman .She is escaping from her pursuers, and begs Walter not to reveal her whereabouts. The woman speaks in mechanical tones and is dressed in white from head to foot. Walter is unsure if she is a flesh and blood woman or an apparition.A carriage appears on the road shortly afterwards, and Walter is told by a rough policeman that the woman has escaped an asylum. Torn between a sense of duty and his own humanity, Walter does not reveal that he saw the woman.Walter gets the position of art instructor and travels to the estate the high-born Mr, Fairlie, who has two daughters; the managerial, robust intelligent older daughter, Marianne Halcome, whom Walter describes as very likeable but mannish and ugly, and her angelically pretty but emotionally fragile half-sister, Laura Fairlie. Walter falls deeply in love with Laura, but as he is her social inferior, he fails to act upon his feelings before it is too late.At her dying father's side Laura agrees to her father's wish that she marry Lord Percival Glyde, (an financially compromised aristocrat) even though she loves Walter. Shortly after her marriage, Laura becomes her husband's prisoner. Percival Glyde and his partner in crime, the manipulative, mysterious Count Fosco, are aware of a secret: Laura Fairlie has a mentally unstable half sister, Ann Catherick (the woman in white) who is Laura's physical double. These two avaricious and predatory, men, attempt to use this resemblance to their advantage.In The Woman in White, the reader explores the depths of villainy, and the healing power of the human spirit.
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