The Woman in White Themes

If you've ever watched a daytime soap opera, you're probably familiar with plotlines like amnesia, mistaken identity, and long-lost secret twins (possibly with amnesia). Melodramatic identity crise...

There are lots of different kinds of power in the world: political power, physical power, legal power, monetary power, power yoga. In The Woman in White, power is largely about control and the abil...

The Woman in White is definitely concerned with the difference between right and wrong. (Collins actually studied law for a time.) But while people run around pursuing justice in this book, they ra...

Wilkie Collins was a fan of women's rights. He even opposed marriage because he thought that, as a legal institution, it was unfair to women. But the feminism in The Woman in White is all sorts of...

Throw your notions of proper Victorian nuclear families in the garbage where they belong. The Woman in White alone features half-siblings, illegitimate kids, abandoned spouses, and highly unconvent...

If you think all Victorian novels take an after-school special attitude toward lying, think again. Granted, the moral police pop up fairly often in The Woman in White, but the book actually makes l...

Marriage in The Woman in White is more like "tying the noose" than "tying the knot." Marriage is powerful in this book—it has the power to alter fates, to change people, and to expose people (esp...

The Woman in White is like an exercise in memory. Memory is tied very closely with storytelling in this novel: from Marian's diary to the testimony of various characters, telling a story is largely...