ABSTRACT
Man and Wife has probably by this time been read by most readers of fiction, and it has been largely commented upon by critics, so that it is unnecessary to enter into the details of a story which everybody knows. It is one of those tales founded on actual public grievances, which Mr. Dickens, we believe, was the first to bring into fashion, but which have been more boldly and successfully carried out by Mr. Charles Reade than by any other writer. Mr. Wilkie Collins has done it also; but his strength, which lies in plot and complication of incident, does not lend itself successfully to polemics. Man and Wife, however, is more distinctly didactic than any of his former works. Its motif is the abuse and irregularity of the laws of marriage-an abuse, however, of which he in-directly and unintentionally shows the limits, by proving beyond doubt that only a thoroughly heartless and unscrupulous villain could make them work real harm; and villains thoroughly unscrupulous are, thank heaven! not very common in the world. Mr. Wilkie Collins’s strength is at the same time his weakness. To secure the necessary complications in his plot, he annuls the characters of his personages with the most extraordinary hardihood, and makes them act contrary to the commonest laws not only of conventional morality but of ordinary reason. For instance, in the apologue to this book he brings in a fine lady, a woman of rank, and, so far as he informs us, of unimpeached character, permitting her actually to see with her own eyes and hear with her own ears that the man who has been making a profession of love to her hasvilely deceived by a false marriage an honourable and good woman, who has for many years believed herself to be his wife. Yet as soon as the fraud is fully proved, and the heartbroken woman has been thrust into a corner to die, Lady Jane marries this monster, with no more than a pretty fie fie at his naughtiness! Has English society fallen so far, and English ladies become so indifferent to the distinction between virtue and vice, as to make this possible? or are we expected to believe it only because it was necessary to the plot?
