ABSTRACT
The Woman in White is a novel of the rare old sort which must be finished at a sitting. No chance of laying it down until the last page of the last volume is turned. We have lately got into the habit-strange for these fast days-of reading our novels very leisurely. They are constructed on the principle of monthly instalments, and we read a chapter on the 1st of every month, quietly sauntering to the end of the story in about a couple of years. Even the novels which are published complete in three volumes are for the most part built on the same model. It is possible to open the volume at any page and to read right on without embarrassment. These works of fiction profess to be natural,and therefore avoid the intricacies of a too elaborate plot. The authors take life as they find it, and spend their strength rather in the elucidation of character than in the unravelling of a subtle intrigue. In so doing they are apt to underrate the advantages of a good plot, and to despise the talent that is required for its construction. The greatest of all dramatists borrowed his plots unblushingly from the Italian novelists, and was so careless in the arrangement of his stories that in one of his masterpieces-the tragedy of Othello-it is impossible to say whether the action represented occurs within a few days or is spread over weeks. Why, then, should not lesser men be equally unmindful of the plot, and give their whole attention to what is at once the most interesting and the most difficult of all studies-human character? A character is a character under all circumstances, and is equally true to itself whether there is or is not a story to be unfolded. The story, therefore, is in danger of being neglected-because it is not necessary; and there are critical formulas which even go further, and would establish the dogma that it is impossible for a novel in which character has full play to be a good story. We shall not afflict our readers by dwelling on the fashionable German jargon as to the relations of the subjective and the objective in fiction-as to the doctrine of freewill, or the victory of man over circumstance, implied in a feeble plot; and as to the doctrine of necessity, or the conquest of man by circumstance, implied in a good plot. We must be
content to ask, in the name of common sense, why great characters should not be mixed up with romantic incidents and complicated events. There is really no incompatibility between good characters and good plots, though, as a matter of fact, it must be admitted that we do not often see the two in conjunction. Certainly we do not see the combination of both excellencies in the present novel of Mr. Wilkie Collins. But neither do we see why the story should not be as clever as it is, and should not at the same time delineate character better than it does.
