#The Woman in White

[pawswithprose]

Lately 💫💕

[paris-in-space]

The idea for this has been circling around my head since I finished listening to the audiobook.

[viillette]

I had mechanically turned in this latter direction, and was strolling along the lonely high-road – idly wondering, I remember, what the Cumberland young ladies would look like – when, in one moment, every drop of blood in my body was brought to a stop by the touch of a hand laid lightly and suddenly on my shoulder from behind me. I turned on the instant, with my fingers tightening round the handle of my stick. There, in the middle of the broad, bright high-road – there, as if it had that moment sprung out the earth or dropped from the heavens – stood the figure of a solitary Woman, dressed from head to foot in white garments; her face bent in grave inquiry on mine, her hand pointing to the dark cloud over London, as I faced her.

— The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins

[voxiiferous]

**| Final exam down! I now have two sweet, sweet uninterrupted weeks until my summer classes start and I am thrilled! And if anyone us curious to see the cover art I made for one of my classes!

I'm super curious to hear everyone's favourite because they're all super different.

[derangedrhythms]

My mind, in that breathless interval, felt like a total blank. I was conscious of nothing but a painful intensity of all familiar perceptions. The sun grew blinding bright; the white sea birds chasing each other far beyond me, seemed to be flitting before my face; the mellow murmur of the waves on the beach was like thunder in my ears.

Wilkie Collins, from 'The Woman in White'

[literatureaesthetic]

a little classics haul and my current read!!

[lavinaigrette]

Since some people have expressed interest, I've officially decided to re-run The Woman in White Weekly! As the narrative canonically starts on the last day of July, the newsletter will begin on July 31, 2023 and update every Monday.

Here's the sign up link if you didn't get a chance to follow along last year, and sorry for the short notice!

[dodger-chan]

"I am so useless—I am such a burden on both of you," she answered, with a weary, hopeless sigh. "You work and get money, Walter, and Marian helps you. Why is there nothing I can do? You will end in liking Marian better than you like me—you will, because I am so helpless! Oh, don't, don't, don't treat me like a child!"

Having had some health problems, and being the "unemployed" spouse, I really feel for Laura here. She isn't fully well, and there's probably not much materially that she can contribute, but I'm sure they can come up with something she can do. Maybe even add to her responsibilities as she gets stronger.

Her drawings, as she finished them, or tried to finish them, were placed in my hands. Marian took them from me and hid them carefully, and I set aside a little weekly tribute from my earnings, to be offered to her as the price paid by strangers for the poor, faint, valueless sketches, of which I was the only purchaser. It was hard sometimes to maintain our innocent deception, when she proudly brought out her purse to contribute her share towards the expenses, and wondered with serious interest, whether I or she had earned the most that week. I have all those hidden drawings in my possession still—they are my treasures beyond price—the dear remembrances that I love to keep alive—the friends in past adversity that my heart will never part from, my tenderness never forget.

Fuck you Walter. You are doing literally the one thing she asked you not to do. Fuck you, and fuck Marian for letting you. Teach Laura to sweep the floor in your little apartment, it would be better than this.

[costumeloverz71]

Marian Halcombe (Jessie Buckley) Green (or tan) embroidered coat & red vest.. The Woman In White (2018).. Costume by Susan Scott.

[mxcottonsocks]

For those of us reading both Dracula Daily and The Woman in White Weekly, it's possibly just worth noting that the Bloofer Lady's hunting grounds are "in and around Hampstead Heath" and that Walter Hartright first met the woman in white having just crossed the Heath.

Nowadays, Hampstead Heath is entirely surrounded by London, but in the 1850s-90s when The Woman in White and Dracula were written, it was on the edge of the built-up area of London, on the boundary between city and country.

I wonder if this made it a sort of "liminal space", a place which acts as a sort of threshold or border, a place between other places, a place which is partly one thing and partly another, and that it was this liminality which made it a compelling place for writers to set strange goings-on?

[alioshakaramazov]

[paris-in-space]

The Woman in White main characters lineup.

Walter, Anne, Marian and Laura.

I listened to the audiobook over the past few weeks, really enjoyed it, and had an idea for a drawing with these characters, so I did these designs for them first.

[studiotriggerfan397]

Classics Illustrated #61. "The Woman in White" by Wilkie Collins.

[the-busy-ghost]

Love that Wilkie Collins apparently kept getting letters from guys who were convinced that Marian Halcombe must have been based on a real woman, begging him to introduce them because they were desperate to marry her