our October 5th book group discussion, will be
available later this month. I will send out an email when
books are available. Until then, lets look at what the
author has to say about the process of writing The
Woman in White.
The following excerpts are taken from a letter written by
Wilkie Collins in 1887 & published in The Globe; it
is assumed this letter was written for publication
and not addressed to a particular individual. It is the
only time that Wilkie Collins may have explained his
writing methods in print.
"...My first proceeding is to get my central idea --the
pivot on which the story turns. The central idea
of "The Woman in White" is the idea of a conspiracy
in private life, in which circumstances are so handled as
to rob a woman of her identity by confounding her
with another women, sufficiently like her in personal appearance to answer the wicked
purpose. The destruction of her identity represents a first division of the story; the recovery
marks a second division."
"My central idea suggests some of my chief characters. A clever devil must conduct the
conspiracy. Male devil? or female devil? The sort of wickedness wanted seems to be a man's
wickedness. Perhaps a foreign man. Count Fosco faintly shows himself to me, before I know
his name. I let him wait, and begin to think about the two women. They must be both
innocent and both interesting. Lady Glyde dawns on me as one of the innocent victims. I try
to discover the other --and fail. I try what a walk will do for me---and fail. I devote the evening
to a new effort---and fail. Experience tells me to take no more trouble about it, and leave that
other woman to come of her own accord. The next morning before I have been awake in my
bed for more that ten minutes, my perverse brains set to work without consulting me.
Poor Anne Catherick comes into the room, and says: "Try me."' "
" I have got my idea; I have got three of my characters. What is there to do now?" My next
proceeding is to begin building up the story. Here, my favourite three efforts must be
encountered.
First effort: to begin at the beginning.
Second effort: to keep the story always advancing, without paying the smallest attention
to the serial division in parts, or to the book publications in volumes.
Third effort: to decide on the end..."
".....The person to be first introduced is Anne Catherick. She
must be already a familiar figure to the reader, when the
reader acompanies me to Cumberland. This is what must
be done, but I don't see how to do it; no new idea comes to
me: I and my manuscript have quarreled, and don't speak to
each other. One evening, I happen to read of a lunatic who
has escaped from an asylum --a paragraph of a few lines only,
in a newspaper. Instantly the idea comes to me of Walter
Hartright's midnight meeting with Anne Catherick, escaped
from the asylum. "The Woman in White" begins again...."
...."I may return for a moment to Fosco. The making him fat was an after-thought; his
canaries and his white mice were found next; and the most valuable discovery of all, his
admiration of Miss Halcombe, took its rise in a conviction that he would not be true to
nature unless there was some weak point, somewhere in his character..."
"...Neither I, nor any friend whom I consulted, could find the right title. Literally in the
eleventh hour, I thought of "The Woman in White." In various quarters, this was declared
to be a vile melodramatic title that would ruin the book. Among the very few friends
who encourged me, the first and foremost was Charles Dickens...."
".....In the meantime, I make my bow and my exit."
Wilkie Collins