The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins

Speaking of things that were once new becoming commonplace, Wilkie Collins opens his novel The Woman in White by basically telling the reader, “I’m about to do something no one to my knowledge has done,” and then explaining that he will jump back and forth between different characters' perspectives as he tells the story. Wilkie Collins was conducting a literary experiment that he was pretty sure no one had ever tried. Now whether or not he was actually the first, I don’t know, but that particular literary device doesn’t seem so new and daring anymore. Everyone tells stories from multiple perspectives these days. I guess I'd never really thought about the fact that this must have started somewhere. And Collins didn’t just use the device haphazardly. He very carefully crafted a way to make the telling of the story from several different perspectives natural, necessary, and integral to the plot. The main character had important reasons to collect the accounts of other involved characters, and then intersperse his own account with theirs, in the forms of letters, journals, and even one long, delightfully annoying exposition in which a sinister character takes great delight in laying out the entirety of his dastardly plan.

I don’t know that I have anything much deeper to say about the book, but I definitely enjoyed it. Collins wove a good tale, but (okay, I guess I do have something deeper to say) I think the strength of the book was the characters, who had very distinct personalities, almost to the point of being exaggerated, but not to the point of being unbelievable. Some were likeable, some were unlikeable, some where a mix of both.

In fact, the only character, major or minor, who had no well developed personality was the main love interest. This was the only thing I can actually say I disliked about the book. She was beautiful and helpless and therefore the main character fell madly in love with her, while her cousin, who was plain, but intelligent, resourceful, loyal, pragmatic, and interesting, just accepted that her lot in life was spinsterhood. I kept rooting for the main character to suddenly wake up and realize that she was a much better match for him, but alas, the thought didn’t ever seem to cross either of their minds. I liked seeing a strong female character, but I disliked seeing that she got the short end of the stick in her society.

Still, it wasn’t enough to make me dislike the book. It was a good read. I have to thank my mom for this recommendation, and for giving me the book for Christmas so that I could actually get around to reading :).