The Woman in White, by Wilkie Collins

"Frailty, thy name is woman!" Hamlet Act 1, scene 2

Wilkie Collins doesn't hold women in much higher regard, despite his ability to paint a strong, able, intelligent Marian. Yet even she succumbed to severe illness, brought on by a cold and fever. Okay, they didn't have antibiotics, and they had to wear corsets, but please! Poor Laura was brought down by the mere sight of her friend's illness. Too much of the story hinges on this frailty.

But don't let my impatience on this minor point hinder you from a gripping tale. It is a "sensation" novel. It does have well drawn characters (Fosco). Every chapter leaves you hanging. It would have been fascinating to receive every installment in serial form.

Our discussion Thursday, January 21, plumbed this subject and others. Group members, add comments and posts here! Be sure to read Page Turner's review on her blog, Lines from the Page.

What Would Jane Do?

Today's readers tend to appreciate Austen despite her didacticism rather than because of it. She can be positively priggish, and that is an embarrassment. The contemporary reader who loves Jane Austen sort of blips over the moralizing sections and tells himself that they don't really count. It is possible to ignore this aspect of her work, just as it is possible to discuss a religious painting with hardly any reference to the artist's religious intent. But this seems absurd: Ignoring a writer's central concern is a strange way to attempt to appreciate and understand her.

The question arises, then, of how to reconcile Austen's moralism with modern sensibility. To address this problem, it would be useful if we could find someone with this modern sensibility who actually reads Austen for her moral instruction (in addition to the literary pleasure she provides). How convenient that we have someone who fits that description available to us: me.

By James Collins, from A Truth Universally Acknowledged (Random House), excerpted in the Wall Street Journal