Key themes
- Identity stolen — and the woman who must reclaim it
- Victorian marriage law and what it did to women's legal personhood
- The sensation novel as social critique disguised as entertainment
About this book
Identity, conspiracy and a figure in white on a moonlit road; the original sensation novel.
Published serially 1859-60, The Woman in White was an immediate sensation, inspiring Wilkie Collins hairstyles, perfumes and a theatrical adaptation within months. Collins based elements on a real French legal case he read as a young man.
Discussion questions
- Laura Fairlie's identity is stolen through the legal system — she is declared dead while living under another woman's name. What is Collins saying through this extreme premise about what the law actually does to married women?
- The novel uses multiple narrators — Collins said each character gives testimony as if in court. What does this legal structure add — and how does it affect which characters we trust?
- Count Fosco is one of Victorian fiction's great villains — charming, intelligent and genuinely menacing. How does Collins develop him — and what specifically makes him frightening rather than simply evil?
- Marian Halcombe is the novel's most capable character. How does Collins both celebrate and constrain her — and what does Marian's lack of marriage plot say about Victorian fiction's options for women?
- The Woman in White is the prototype of the sensation novel. What does sensation fiction do — and what does it share with the contemporary psychological thriller?
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