About the book
BOOK SUMMARY
A chance encounter with a mysterious woman dressed in white draws Walter Hartright into the lives of Laura Fairlie and her half-sister, Marian Halcombe. Told through a succession of witnesses, their story uncovers a conspiracy involving identity, inheritance, and the powerful men who control their futures.
Published 1860
Gothic Mystery
720 pages
A great mystery that takes its time
October 13, 2026
The Woman in White is incredibly intricately plotted, which I found to be both a good and a bad thing. Although I loved how carefully everything unfolded and how all the details came together, I also thought it was way longer than it needed to be. Drawn-out Victorian prose and a suspenseful mystery are definitely a tough pairing.
I really loved the way Collins told the story through different characters’ perspectives, with each person recounting the events they witnessed in chronological order, almost like they were giving testimony at a trial. It was a clever way to tell a mystery, especially one with so many moving parts. And the whole book had this beautifully haunting atmosphere.
So we have a great plot and an effective structure, but I think the best part of the book was actually the characters. Even the minor ones are endearing. There’s Professor Pesca, a charming little man we think we’ve left behind in the first chapter, only to discover that he has a somewhat illicit past that turns out to be surprisingly useful. Or Mr. Fairlie, who’s a heartless grouch on the surface, but part of me couldn’t help thinking that all this guy wants is to be left alone, and he never signed up for any of this.
Drawn-out Victorian prose and a suspenseful mystery are definitely a tough pairing.
Among this whole cast of fantastic characters, Count Fosco might be my favorite. He’s a completely terrible person, but Collins makes his irresistible charm so convincing that it’s hard not to be taken in by him. I especially loved his admiration for Marian, who was another brilliant character.
Speaking of Marian, I really wanted her to have a bigger role in how everything was resolved. Even though she’s the one who initially rescues Laura, the two women ultimately have to rely on Walter to make everything right. Walter seemed like a great guy, too, but after spending so much time with Marian and hearing her identify and articulate the gender inequalities of the time, I really wanted to see her get the chance to deliver some justice herself.
Overall, I thought the story was fantastic, the characters were wonderful, and the commentary on women’s rights was especially interesting. I just think I would have enjoyed the book a lot more if it had gotten to the point a little faster.
As an aside, I marked a few passages that made me laugh because they seemed like hilariously elaborate Victorian ways of expressing things we still say today. For example, here’s Walter spending an entire paragraph describing Marian as what we’d now call a “butterface”:
“The instant my eyes rested on her, I was struck by the rare beauty of her form, and by the unaffected grace of her attitude. […] The easy elegance of every movement of her limbs and body as soon as she began to advance from the far end of the room, set me in a flutter of expectation to see her face clearly. She left the window—and I said to myself, The lady is dark. She moved forward a few steps—and I said to myself, The lady is young. She approached nearer—and I said to myself (with a sense of surprise which words fail me to express), The lady is ugly! Never was the old conventional maxim, that Nature cannot err, more flatly contradicted—never was the fair promise of a lovely figure more strangely and startlingly belied by the face and head that crowned it.”
Or this description of Walter as the classic guy who’s been “friendzoned”:
“I had long since learned to understand, composedly and as a matter of course, that my situation in life was considered a guarantee against any of my female pupils feeling more than the most ordinary interest in me, and that I was admitted among beautiful and captivating women, much as a harmless domestic animal is admitted among them.”
And finally, this observation that women have always appreciated a man who knows how to talk to them (and, presumably, listen):
“Women can resist a man’s love, a man’s fame, a man’s personal appearance, and a man’s money, but they cannot resist a man’s tongue when he knows how to talk to them.”