including our 5 new members! A thought provoking discussion, different viewpoints shared,
admiration for Marion Halcombe expressed, appreciation for the bad guy Count Fosco,
a sharing of perspectives - today versus 150 years ago....
Our time together with The Woman in White comes to an end but yet I have a few more items
to share with the group. The following brought a smile to my face -- from the readership
of GoodReads, Grace Tjan (October 2009) shared the following:
"What I learned from the book:
- Italians are excitable, dedicated to the opera, and most likely to be involved with organized crime.
- Beware of fat, jolly Italian counts with submissive wives and fondness of white mice and canaries.
- Watch out if your newly wed husband lives in a stately pile with an abandoned wing full of creepy Elizabethan furniture. If the said ancestral house is surrounded by dark ponds and eerie woods, expect the worst.
- A Baronet is not always noble, and his impressive manor and estate might be mortgaged to the hilt. Instead of being the lady of the house, you might be forced to pay HIS debts. Make sure that the marriage settlement is settled in your favor before marrying.
- Never marry for convenience or enter into any legal agreement when you are:
- under age;
- sentimental and easily persuadable;
- prone to swooning and fainting.
- under age;
- Intelligent, resourceful women are likely to be mannish, and even actually HAVE a mustache, but are strong and have good figures. They can also be relied on to provide intelligent conversation when your beautiful but fragile wives are too busy swooning.
- Shutting yourself up in a medieval vestry full of combustible materials with a candle for lighting is NOT advisable. Always have your minions do the dirty work.
- Being 'feeble in mind' is enough reason to get you committed into an asylum for the mentally ill. So is knowing some secret that you might accidentally blurt out to strangers.
- You CAN marry someone who is legally dead. Nobody bothered to check the civil registry records in those good old days.
The Woman in White.
County Fosco controls it all,
but Marian wins!
(rretzler)
And thus we say goodbye to The Woman in White and to Walter Hartright whose shadowy
meeting with a woman dressed all in white changes his world forever..........