ABSTRACT
The first influential sensation novel, The Woman in White is, at its very center, in its margins, between the lines, and beyond its pages, obsessed with secrecy. In addition to the novel's obsession with secret crimes, secret pasts, secret diaries and letters, secret societies, secret meetings, secret journeys, and secret selves, the multiple narratives draw obsessively on various forms of surveillance spying, watching, eavesdropping. The secrecy involves the control of information, whether limiting access to it, destroying it, prohibiting or shaping its creation, and is intrinsic to social interaction. The Woman in White is nothing more than an elaborate cultural representation of social gamesmanship in which we have just lost spectacularly, Collins's novel invites us rather indeed compels us to consider the inherent complexities of "truth", objectivity, and reliability long after the story has "ended". It engages its readers in a kind of Tom marathon, pushing our mind-reading ability to its limits and making all embarrassingly aware of cognitive weaknesses.
