So, what did you think about The Woman in White?
I have many, many opinions to share about the book but I am in a bit of a hurry this morning so I will have to come back after work to participate in the discussion. I just didn’t want to wait until tonight to get the thread posted for those who wanted to start discussing the book right away!
Also, please vote in the poll for the book we will read for next month.
Okay, now that work is over and done I have lots of things to say about The Woman in White!
First of all, I absolutely loved it. I thought it was a fantastic story and it kept me interested the whole way through. Though I will admit it was a bit wordier than I felt was necessary it was still an awesome, awesome book and I am thrilled to have read it.
I think Count Fosco is my new favorite literary character. Such a fantastic villain! And I was especially pleased that as an obese character he was written to be driven, intelligent and talented. So often the fat characters (like the dull servant at Blackwater) are written to be stupid, lazy people and it was so nice to see someone heavy written to be so damn good, even if what he is good at is being a supervillain.
I liked it. I too found the pacing VERY slow, and wondered if that was just a function of what was popular in fiction of the day.
I loved Marian, and am interested in reading some lit crit about how she’s seen in feminist circles. Fosco was fun; I liked the juxtaposition of how terrible he was to people, while lavishing attention on his pets.
I’m a bit behind ( :o ), but should be able to participate in a couple of days.
Me too, I though I would be done quicker since I recently had shoulder surgery and am off work for a bit. But trying to read while on Vicodin I was going on a pace of like 5 pages an hour :(. It’s a really interesting story, I can’t wait to join the thread.
I loved Marian too, though I did get a little tired of the constant, “Oh, I’m just a woman you know…” type of comments. At least half a dozen times she wrote off her emotions due to just being a woman when Glyde got to be a raging psychopath without one comment about his masculinity causing him to be a stupid douche. But given the time in which it was written Marian is one of the most kick-ass female characters ever written. She is strong, forceful, intelligent and pulls no punches, which I think was necessary as a counter to Laura who is pretty weak and effeminate. Beautiful and kind beyond words, but weak.
I constantly had to check myself with the reminder of when it was written, otherwise the love affair would’ve been too twee by half. I also tired of the denigration of our “fairer” sex, 
although Marian made up for it despite her low self-esteem. Laura was annoying to me and I could not see her appeal. Both Fosco and what turned out to be his nemesis in Pesca. I adored them both and found it enticing that Fosco, at his size, would have so many admirers. That was awesome and just goes to prove that personality is more important than looks. Apart from all that, the formality and stiltedness of the writing were overcome a lot sooner than I thought, which was surprising. And even in today’s standards, the twist (so to speak) was no slouch. I liked it quite a bit. Good choice, all.
I will say I was amused by the sheer number of people willing to do whatever was asked of them for a little money. Seemingly random strangers wandering through towns not visited by any of the main characters in years were willing to do whatever Glyde wanted, no question. Glyde and Fosco had what seemed like at least 10-12 people, maybe more, that were happy to switch a living woman with a corpse for identity theft purposes or follow a man and trick/goad him into assaulting them so he could be put in jail.
I don’t know if it was simply standard at the time that you just didn’t question what your boss asked you to do or if poverty was rampant enough that any job that paid any amount of money was a great thing because it put food on your table, but a large number of people in this book were happy to do terrible things for money.
I’m glad you mentioned that aspect, because the attempted fake assaults were odd to say the least. To know that bank then, all someone had to do to land you in jail was simply make you fight back (even tenuously so) and no one assumed your innocence. Bizarre.
I just read this some 4 weeks ago for the first time. My first takeaway after reading it was that it reminded me a little bit of my experience here at the SDMB.
“A mysterious woman arrayed all in white, met on the road at night, asking for help, oh, and also, do you happen to know any baronets?” Awesome, I’m in! Later we find the woman in white is just a woman who has been done wrong by for most of her life, that she is really more along the lines of pitiable than anything mysterious and that England in that time may have put just a little too much weight on who gave birth (and fathered) whom and when.
Similarly, here - I read the Dope for years before posting. All these mysterious names and personalities! Jillgat, OpalCat, Melin, Saruman, Coldfire. Then I started posting and a goodly number of those mysterious names turn out to be a) gone and b) somewhat less than I had imagined. This is a very general overview and please don’t imagine that I am knocking anyone or the SDMB itself. I love it here and I loved The Women In White. It’s just that, for me, in each case the promise was somewhat more than the delivery.
I think is was one of the best novels of the 19th century. First of all Count Fosco was a terrific villain – seemingly considerate of Laura, but willing to do anything to get his goal. I also liked his admiration for Marian – here she’s trying to thwart him and getting the evidence to ruin his plans, and yet he admires her for it. He is devious and smart.*
And there’s a lot to admire about Marian. She smart, brave, and adventurous, and is one of the best female characters in literature. Very modern in thought, despite the issues built into her society. Walter would have done better to marry her instead of the bland Laura (though it wasn’t likely).
One point I liked was that
Anne really had no knowledge of Glyde’s secret. It was the perfect McGuffin.
Frederick Fairley was also an excellent character – the section he “wrote” is just plain hilarious as he complains about all the problems everything causes him.
*I’m going through Collins’s No Name and some of the best parts involve two villains who are trying to trick each other, and who see through the other one’s plans immediately. BTW, Glyde’s secret figures as the event that starts the narrative of that book, and Captain Wragge and Mrs. Lecount are also great villains.
Open spoilers please! This is specifically the thread to discuss this book; I think if you are not prepared for spoilers you need to not be in this thread.
Laura was SO annoying to me. He fell in love with such a delicate wilting flower when Marion was right there! Strong and beautiful, even if not by contemporary standards.
I was surprised by how truly unimportant the Woman ended up being in the end. I mean, her entrance was dramatic, but in the end, she was just a plot device.
It did drag a little, especially towards the second half. And some of the plot conveniences are a bit overwhelming - of course Marian gets typhus right when she is most needed!
But I did read it avidly and eagerly to find the end. Count Fosco was fascinating and his admiration for Marian was a little creepy at times.
Frederick Fairly was terribly annoying to me - I didn’t find him amusing at all, just useless. But it was stunning that Anne really had no idea at all…
I think it was more than that. I believe Fosco fell in love with Marian over the course of the story. I think he sort of felt that he was beyond love for most of his life, that there would never be a woman who could keep up with him mentally and given his life as a spy (and general personality issues) he needed a wife who would be obedient and subservient, but after meeting Marian he looked back at his life and wondered what could have been if only she had been around when he was young and single. I think that is why he let her break Laura out of the asylum, why he used his medical knowledge to save her life when he could have let her die of typhus, and why he went through the whole plan to put Laura in the asylum instead of killing her in the first place. He would have walked away from the whole situation ten thousand pounds richer and left no one the wiser if he hadn’t been doing what was best for Marian through the entire story.
Cool idea. 
I missed the last one, but just voted for Pride and Prejudice for next month. It’s the only one of the four given choices I haven’t read.
I’ve tried, which is why I didn’t vote for it. I read Sense and Sensibility, and enjoyed it, but Pride and Prejudice, I could just never get into it. I’m certainly willing to try! But it looks like Call of the Wild is winning. 
I’ll comment before reading what everyone else has to say.
First, I found the viewpoint transitions worked very well, except the part where I wanted to punch Frederick Fairlie in the face…but that was the point, I think. All the voices were very well done and distinct.
Marian Halcombe? Now one of my favorite female characters in literature. It’s unfortunate that Collins felt the need to put a masculine face on what he probably saw as masculine behavior, but whatever…Walter Hartright should have fallen for her anyway, the stupid sap. Ungrateful wretch!
Count Fosco? A fantastic villain! More nuanced, human, and yet diabolical than I expected, a fantastic foil for Marian. I loved the part when he wrote the note in her diary. (though her falling ill was quite annoying)
The Victorian naming game wasn’t too pervasive I guess: sure the hero was “Heart Right” and the fragile flower of womanhood “Fairly”, and apparently “Fosco” in Italian is “dark” or “gloomy”, and yes the serpentine husband did “glide”…hmmm, maybe I take back what I said. I can’t seem to make anything of Halcombe though.
Overall I’m delighted I read this.
Looking to the next book, isnt’ “Call of the Wild” a novella? On Amazon it’s showing 66 pages in paperback. Not that that rules it out, just thinking I’ll vote for something with more meat. ETA: I’m throwing “Frankenstein: The Modern Prometheus” into the mix.
So far everyone seems to have enjoyed the book. Did anyone read it and just hate it? Did we have anyone who tried to read it and just couldn’t get through it?
I’m still not finished (but feel no need to avoid the thread, since as a child I know I read the Classics Illustrated version of TWIW. I may not consciously recall the ending and the twists, but on some level I probably do know them, due to that exposure. ^_^)
Something is bothering me:
The ‘family tree’ information given by the solicitor Gilmore (on page 145 and onward, in the Barnes & Noble paperback edition) would indicate that “Madame Fosco”—formerly Eleanor Fairlie—was the only daughter of the Mr. Fairlie the Elder who was also the father of Philip (Laura’s father) and Frederick (the ‘invalid’ uncle).
As such, surely, she would have grown up in Limmeridge House along with her brothers. When the elder Fairlie died and Philip succeeded to the property, presumably she would still have gone on living there, as she didn’t marry until late in life. In fact, the author tells us that she and Fosco have been married only seven years.
Seven years before the novel begins, Laura would have been 13-going-on-14 (we know this because she’s about to turn 21 when the story begins. If we’re told the exact age difference between Laura and Marian, I either haven’t encountered it yet, or don’t recall it—but Marian is probably at least two years older than Laura, which would have made her 16 or older when Eleanor married Fosco.
My question: why is Eleanor spoken of as if she’s someone Laura and Marian barely know, instead of someone they must have lived in the same house with for many years?
Mention is made of bad relations between Eleanor and the others after her marriage. But what of the years from Laura’s birth until Eleanor’s marriage–about fourteen years?
Eleanor would not have been living in her own establishment. Single women of the gentry didn’t do that, particularly since Eleanor had no money of her own. So they must all have been living in Limmeridge House, all those years.
Did Collins simply neglect to work all this out (and so spoke of Eleanor as if she were a relative not well known to Laura and Marian)? Granted, he had a lot of plot elements to knit together. Did this one just escape his notice?
I believe Collins mentions that Laura and Marian were very familiar with Madame Fosco and that she had always been a bit like Marian personality-wise but after marrying the count she became what we saw her as in the novel. The count essentially broke her beyond repair.
Okay, based on the responses to the poll I am choosing Call of the Wild to be our second book club selection. I will start a thread on 01/15/15 for that discussion. And don’t worry Maserschmidt, I will make sure Frankenstein makes it into our next poll.