The Woman in White Review

The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins ( pages)
My Rating: 4 Stars
Date Read 23 February 2016

Synopsis:

'In one moment, every drop of blood in my body was brought to a stop... There, as if it had that moment sprung out of the earth...stood the figure of a solitary Woman, dressed from head to foot in white'

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 becomes embroiled in 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 pyschological realism.

Matthew Sweet's introduction explores the phenomenon of Victorian 'sensation' fiction, and discusses Wilkie Collins's biographical and societal influences. Included in this edition are appendices on theatrical adaptations of the novel and its serialisation history.

My Review:

This book was very interesting. It was cool to be able to read one of the first books that used multiple narrators.

Even though it is set in Victorian London, I felt like it wasn't too outdated. I enjoyed the pacing of the plot and the characters felt quite real.

I had to read this for my Victorian Spaces class and it has been one of the few stories I actually enjoyed for that class.

I recommend this novel to anyone who wants to read a murder mystery from the late Victorian period. Overall, I really enjoyed it!