The Woman in White
Feb. 2nd, 2022 08:40 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rynlingThe Woman in White is a painstakingly polite and exquisitely slow-paced novel. At first I could only read a page or two at a time, but I gradually got used to it and began to enjoy it. Putting the heavy-handedness of the circuitous plot aside, reading this sort of prose is its own type of pleasure.
The novel’s plot is far less convoluted than it seems: A member of the British aristocracy of illegitimate birth needs money, so he marries into it. With the help of a foreign friend of similarly dubious aristocratic status, he fakes the death of his wife and arranges for her to be placed in an asylum under a false identity. Thankfully, this young woman is quickly rescued by her devoted sister, who shelters her with the help of the sister’s true love, a young artist who formerly served as her drawing instructor. The wronged wife’s takes-no-shit sister, Marian Halcombe, gradually emerges the true heroine, and the villainous Count Fosco is extremely charming despite being somewhat cheesily revealed as an Italian spy.
I think it might be a stretch to call The Woman in White a “Gothic” novel, as there are no real elements of horror or longing for the dangerous or forbidden. In addition, most of the action takes place outside the home. There are a solid hundred pages of Marian’s diary depicting her stay in her brother-in-law’s country manor that hint at Gothic tropes, but the author doesn’t really lean into them.
In the early twentieth century in Japan, there was a group of writers who identified themselves as belonging to the “New Sensationalist School” (Shinkakuha). Despite having learned this designation by rote while studying the work of these authors, I never understand what “Sensationalist” meant. Apparently, The Woman in White was the first Sensationalist novel, with the term “sensational” meaning “provoking amazement and delight at dramatic spectacle,” especially in stage adaptations that used new technology to create special effects. So it turns out that these early twentieth-century Japanese authors were reacting to a specific categorization of Victorian British literature. How about that. Neat!
Matthew Sweet, the person who edited the Penguin edition of The Woman in White, also wrote a nonfiction book called Inventing the Victorians about the cultural climate of the era. I started reading it, but it’s slow going. Like the Victorians themselves, Sweet writes in endless sentences cobbled together into endless paragraphs. He also uses a lot of references to British culture that are totally over my head. Like, I’m not familiar with actors and brand names of the 1860s. Am I supposed to be? In addition, Sweet’s attempts at humor are a little gross, like when he makes fun of the American political activist Monica Lewinsky for being fat. What a dick.
Anyway! The Woman in White is one of those long Victorian novels that you think is going to be boring but turns out to be a lot of fun. Again, I wouldn’t call it “Gothic,” but I still enjoyed reading it.
The novel’s plot is far less convoluted than it seems: A member of the British aristocracy of illegitimate birth needs money, so he marries into it. With the help of a foreign friend of similarly dubious aristocratic status, he fakes the death of his wife and arranges for her to be placed in an asylum under a false identity. Thankfully, this young woman is quickly rescued by her devoted sister, who shelters her with the help of the sister’s true love, a young artist who formerly served as her drawing instructor. The wronged wife’s takes-no-shit sister, Marian Halcombe, gradually emerges the true heroine, and the villainous Count Fosco is extremely charming despite being somewhat cheesily revealed as an Italian spy.
I think it might be a stretch to call The Woman in White a “Gothic” novel, as there are no real elements of horror or longing for the dangerous or forbidden. In addition, most of the action takes place outside the home. There are a solid hundred pages of Marian’s diary depicting her stay in her brother-in-law’s country manor that hint at Gothic tropes, but the author doesn’t really lean into them.
In the early twentieth century in Japan, there was a group of writers who identified themselves as belonging to the “New Sensationalist School” (Shinkakuha). Despite having learned this designation by rote while studying the work of these authors, I never understand what “Sensationalist” meant. Apparently, The Woman in White was the first Sensationalist novel, with the term “sensational” meaning “provoking amazement and delight at dramatic spectacle,” especially in stage adaptations that used new technology to create special effects. So it turns out that these early twentieth-century Japanese authors were reacting to a specific categorization of Victorian British literature. How about that. Neat!
Matthew Sweet, the person who edited the Penguin edition of The Woman in White, also wrote a nonfiction book called Inventing the Victorians about the cultural climate of the era. I started reading it, but it’s slow going. Like the Victorians themselves, Sweet writes in endless sentences cobbled together into endless paragraphs. He also uses a lot of references to British culture that are totally over my head. Like, I’m not familiar with actors and brand names of the 1860s. Am I supposed to be? In addition, Sweet’s attempts at humor are a little gross, like when he makes fun of the American political activist Monica Lewinsky for being fat. What a dick.
Anyway! The Woman in White is one of those long Victorian novels that you think is going to be boring but turns out to be a lot of fun. Again, I wouldn’t call it “Gothic,” but I still enjoyed reading it.
