45. The Woman In White is NOT a ghost

For some reason, I sort of assumed that The Woman in White was a ghost story. You have to admit that the title lends itself to my assumption rather becomingly, and, besides, one of Supernatural’s episodes featured the urban legend of the ‘Woman in White’.

I know, I know – complete and utter fail.

Wilkie Collins is probably glaring down (up?) at me from the afterlife, and planning some sort of ghostly visit to put the fear of polygamous, Opium-addicted, Victorian bearded authors into me.

Supernatural's version of a Woman in White

I don’t want to give too much of The (actual) Woman In White away – the plot is intricate, and I’m far too lazy to write it all out. Suffice to say, there were no ghosts involved.

But there was:

• A Woman in White (she had a proper name, although I’m rather fond of alliteration), who was assisted in escaping a mental asylum by…
• A lowly middle-class drawing master, who became besotted with …
• A genteel young woman who acted like soggy lettuce throughout the book, especially when confronted with…
• Her new husband, who connived to steal her fortune with…
• A suave villain of “immense corpulence”.

Wilkie Collins

So – no ghosts, but the book was a preclude to modern detective fiction*, and was ridiculously suspenseful – a feat considering how long it was. Moreover, it was originally published in serial form**! I, for one, would have threatened Collins with forced helpings of morality plays until he agreed to provide me with the entire manuscript at once.

Halfway through the story – assuming, of course, I was successful in my endeavour of obtaining the manuscript – I would have nevertheless had to read in small increments due to the villains being super villainous. No, seriously, they enraged me. It took ages to get through a few chapters, just because I had to regularly calm myself down (I feel like Bram Stoker should take note, especially as all his villain ever did was study train timetables for years on end).

After I whipped out a bottle of smelling salts to compose myself, I realised that The Woman In White was the physical embodiment of Collins rolling his eyes at Victorian morals***.

Just like the gesture, the book’s message was subtle, and could be easily ignored should a dignified reader choose to do so. Still, a testament to Collins’ skill was the provision of a moral lesson from his villain – a fascinating character who argued against the widely held belief that the lower classes could help themselves out of poverty by simply being good.

Indeed, what I loved about Collins was his characterisation – that of the aforementioned villain, and especially that of a Mr Fairlie. Mr Fairlie pretended (believed?) he suffered from a nonexistent disease of the nerves, and wanted nothing other than to be left alone to his quiet tyranny. The following excerpt will expose you to everything I loved about Mr Fairlie:

“…The portfolio with the red back, Louis. Don’t drop it! You have no idea of the tortures I should suffer, Mr. Hartright, if Louis dropped that portfolio. Is it safe on that chair? Do you think it safe, Mr. Hartright? Yes? So glad. Will you oblige me by looking at the drawings, if you really think they are quite safe. Louis, go away. What an ass you are. Don’t you see me holding the tablettes? Do you suppose I want to hold them? Then why not relieve me of the tablettes without being told? A thousand pardons, Mr. Hartright; servants are such asses, are they not?…”

The end is nigh, and I think I will grant Mr Fairlie’s wish to have the last word…

Notes:

* Fun Fact #1: Edgar Allan Poe wrote the first ever detective story, which I reviewed here. It compares favourably to Collins, mainly because Poe’s criminal was a primate. In fact, Woman in White was one of the first books to be dubbed a ‘sensation novel’ – a kind of fusion between detective and suspense fiction. The sensation novel described shocking acts in domestic and everyday settings.

** Fun Fact #2: The editor of the periodical that published Woman in White was none other than Charles Dickens, Collins’ significant other in a serious bromance.

*** Fun Fact #3: Collins was quite the bohemian; he famously refused to marry, lived for many years with his mistress, had children with his next-door neighbour, and enjoyed a polygamous relationship with both women (polygamous on his side, not entirely sure how they felt about each other).

72. Dracula – the most villainous villain that ever committed villainy

Before even opening the book, I figured that Bram Stoker’s Dracula had quite a few things going for it:

• The subject matter is vampires, something that seems to have fascinated us humans for centuries
• The presence of vampires corresponds with the presence of all sorts of sexual tension
• The book was comprised entirely of diaries and letters, so the supposed element of reality can scare the masses
• The vampires did not sparkle in the sun. They slept during the day. In a coffin. Kind of like the vampires in every scary vampire legend.

Where, then, did this 1897 novel go so wrong?

The answer, it seems, lies in the Harry Potter series. Clearly, the character of Professor Binns, Hogwarts’ History of Magic teacher, was based on Bram Stoker. Like the author, Binns managed to make the most bloodthirsty of tales (featuring both magical creatures and wars) put his students to sleep in class. He did this by droning on about useless details.

In fact, I can already imagine Edgar Allan Poe’s smug face as he closes Dracula and immediately sets on re-reading his own story about repressed sexuality: The Fall of the House of Usher. In direct contrast to Poe, who is legendary for ensuring that every single detail in his stories is important to the ending, Stoker’s modus operandi is including plenty of details just for the hell of it. For example, pasted in Mina’s journal was a newspaper clipping about some wild storm that went on for, no joke, half a chapter! Pages of nothing but “oh the wind was very windy, and there was some ship, and fishing people said that they wouldn’t sail until the storm had past.” Then when we finally get to the crux of the article, i.e. that there was no one on board but a very dead captain tied to his steering wheel by a rosary, I was in too much of a stupor to even raise an eyebrow.

Stoker also liked including long speeches by characters when, say, a single sentence would have sufficed. These speeches were how characters competed amongst themselves to be The Most Noble Character In the Book. I kept waiting for Dracula to bite off their heads or something, but no such luck (actually, Stoker insisted on writing the most anticlimactic death scene of a villain in the history of publishing).

The very respectable Bram Stoker

My copious amounts of research (reading The Introduction) has unearthed the (little?) known fact that the idea of Dracula came to Stoker in a dream, as jotted down on some fragment of paper:

“Young man goes out, sees girls one tries to kiss him not on lips but throat. Old Count interferes – rage & fury diabolical – this man belongs to me I want him.”

Sounds like a pretty intense dream, huh?

Unfortunately, I think Stoker left out all the interesting bits and instead wrote a totally bland story that tentatively hints at – then decidedly shies away from – anything frightening or “base”. The only tension, in fact, is the one that can be inferred after doing some (proper) research on Stoker – his original version of the character of Dracula, his questions over his own masculinity and sexuality, the way he attempted to hide his acquaintance with the scandalous Oscar Wilde, and his own fear of a dominating and prejudiced employer (one Henry Irving). Had Stoker tried a little less hard (for himself, if not for the general public) to fit into the narrow box of Victorian respectability, then I might have read a very different book. One in which the reader was actually scared of the vampire and his graphic crimes.

But then again, the long, painstakingly polite monologues, combined with the far too meticulous diaries/letters would have cancelled out even the most nefarious of Dracula’s evil deeds.

Edgar, A Poe-t

I like detective stories – it’s like playing a game whilst you read.

So with not inconsiderable excitement, I picked up The Murders in the Rue Morgue and it’s sequel The Purloined Letter. This was the first detective story ever written, and it introduces the genre beautifully. Cue:

• first-person narrative
• the all-knowing civilian detective (although the term had not been invented then)
• shoddy police work due to questionable brain power
• the solution being presented, with an explanation of why anyone (excluding the narrator, the above-mentioned police, and every other character) could have come up with it

Both stories built up the anticipation for the big reveal and, in The Murders in the Rue Morgue’s case, what a spectacular reveal it is! Seriously, who in their right mind (save for people smoking weed and watching animal documentaries) would have guessed the murderer?

Unfortunately, Edgar Allan Poe insists on including long treatises about the difference between calculating and analyzing and how chess players are not as intelligent as they think they are. He rounds out his tirade in The Purloined Letter with proof(!) that poets are far smarter than mathematicians and why it’s so unfair that mathematicians make everyone think they’re brand of intelligence is the only one to have.

I can almost visualise Poe standing in a crowded mall trying a little too hard to get people watch his PowerPoint presentation (complete with diagrams) about why he’s a genius, damn it! At this stage, I’ll stroll up to him, give him a little pat on the arm and tell him:

“Poe darling, we appreciate your contributions to the fields of gothic literature, detective novels, and poetry. You’re already a literary great! Now go and enjoy a scotch on the rocks and smile smugly down at anyone that tries to second-guess the totality of your stories.”

All in all, both were thoroughly enjoyable reads.

What I found to be far more enjoyable, however, was The Tell-Tale Heart. At only four pages long, the narrator jumps out at me as he/she plots the perfect murder due to the (quite common) motive of “the old man’s eye scares me.”

Whereas the previous stories closed all the gaps (as detective stories should have), this one, like Poe’s other work, leaves us with questions that resonate with us for far longer than it takes to read the story. Who is the narrator? Who is the old man to the narrator? Is the old man’s murder justifiable if, in fact, his eye was evil? Why didn’t the police get suspicious when the narrator started prancing around like a lunatic? Finally, how on earth is staring at a sleeping old man every night for a week conducive to planning the perfect murder?!

Ah, Poe: a genius I tell ya.