Man and Wife
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Product Description
ON a summer’s morning, between thirty and forty years ago, two girls were crying bitterly in the cabin of an East Indian passenger ship, bound outward, from Gravesend to Bombay.
They were both of the same age–eighteen. They had both, from childhood upward, been close and dear friends at the same school. They were now parting for the first time–and parting, it might be, for life.
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This was really a fun read. It’s an anti-mother-in-law book. It’s also about divorce. Despite the Victorian horror of the theme, I can’t help thinking that we modern folk could learn something from this book. Small things mostly, like avoiding temptation and not placing your spouse in temptation. Probably the largest thing I learned was not to have your mother-in-law live with you. Excellent advice in any age.
Reader’s Rating: 4 / 5
This was the first book by Wilkie Collins that I read and I painstakingly loved it. I have now bought all of his additional books!
Reader’s Rating: 5 / 5
Man and Wife is a novel of two generations of marriages that end in disaster. But, the novel is much more than the tale of a helpless Victorian bride at the mercy of her despotic spouse. As a replacement for, Man and Wife explores the complex laws surrounding Irish and Scottish marriages in the nineteenth century. Wilkie Collins’s interest in the law, especially marriage and divorce, lead to a novel with endless officially authorized loopholes concerning what constitututes a marriage and what doesn’t.
The lives of two generation of friends named Anne and Blanche are forever changed by the laws concerning man and wife. The first generation Anne and Blanche are childhood friends. Anne Vanborough’s Irish marriage is confirmed null and void by English law. She dies broken hearted and entreats her dearest friend, Anne, to look after he daughter also named Anne. As Anne lay dying she thinks of her daughter and wonders “will she end like me?”.
After Anne’s death, Blanche raises small Anne as her own. Small Anne and Blanche’s daughter also named Blanche become best friends. But, history is determined to repeat itself in a much more tragic manner.
Another marriage comes under scrutiny. Another woman is forced to become an outcast by the officially authorized system. Anne and Blanche are destined to relive the events that cursed their mothers. I absolutely recommend this novel to all WC fans. Many parts of the novel will go you to tears, others will place you enraged. In my opinion, Man and Wife features the most despicable character I’ve ever encountered in a Collins novel. An brilliant read!
Reader’s Rating: 5 / 5
This is a fantastic book about the powerlessness of women in Fantastic Britain, circa 1850, and how young Anne Silvester was finally able to overcome a looming hideous fate and triumph in the end. Equally as thrilling as “The Woman in White.”
Reader’s Rating: 5 / 5
*Man & Wife* is a wonderful mystery novel, except that as a replacement for of the whodunit format, the time frame is reversed and the crime is unfolding as we read. With exciting prose and plotting, Collins produces in the second quarter of the book a pursuit sequence nearly as riveting as *Dracula’s* 1897 mountain chase. The misdeed is largely psychological and societal: a woman promised but not agreed marriage becomes pregnant, and she has to be very resourceful in identifying a way to keep her baby legitimate as she hides her condition under the bustles of Victorian dress codes. So far, shades of Hardy’s *Two On A Tower,* except this is not a romance. Rather, it is an excoriation of Victorian male-female privilege disparities using bizarre, and actual, Scottish marriage laws of the time.
It was written after Collins’ blockbuster 1860s novels. As a result, it has the more keenly nuanced understanding of human scenery that he honed until his very finest novel (*The Evil Genius* comedy). But, it was composed in 1870, and the proximity to his very purple sensation novels like *Armadale* and *Woman In White* place *Man & Wife* turning in the last quarter to a jep novel that is a sensation style but not as campily over-the-top as the 60s volumes. Fortunately, there is keenly-experimental satire and comedy to lighten the mood most of the way. It is stronger than that additional hidden gem of Collins, *Hide & Seek* and more believable than *The Moonstone.* So cinematic, I’m surprised it hasn’t been made into a Gosford Park-style treat.
Reader’s Rating: 4 / 5