No Name by Wilkie Collins

MANN RENTOY

William Wilkie Collins (8 January 1824 – 23 September 1889) was an English novelist, playwright, and short story writer. His best-known works are The Woman in White (1859), No Name (1862), Armadale (1866), and The Moonstone (1868), considered the first modern English detective novel.

Wilkie Collins (named William Wilkie after his father) • one of the most influential

authors of the Victorian era, yet his name is often just a side note

• During his lifetime, his best known novels were classified as “sensation novels”: early examples of detective and suspense fiction.

• Collins expanded the form into the full length mystery

• The Woman in White is his first effort, containing most of the usual elements; but it was The Moonstone that is the fully developed prototype of the genre.

 No Name: suspense fiction.   Collins and Charles Dickens were close friends, each influenced by the other, collaborated on several projects both shared a concern for social issues, and brought servants from their roles as background figures to the forefront as human, sympathetic characters. Dickens was more successful in his social criticism

  Collins and Charles Dickens were close friends, each influenced by the other, collaborated on several projects 

 * both shared a concern for social issues, and brought servants from their roles as background figures to the forefront as human, sympathetic characters.

* Dickens was more successful in his social criticism

“sensation novels”

Collins:- a frustrated lawyer who loved to

dabble in legal issues and problems brought about by flaws in LAW

No Name: suspense fiction.

• Basil (1852)• Hide and Seek (1854)• The Dead Secret (1856)• The Frozen Deep (1857), a play co-written with Charles Dickens• "A House to Let" (1858), a short story co-written with Charles

Dickens, Elizabeth Gaskell and Adelaide Anne Procter• "The Haunted House" a short story co-written with Charles

Dickens, Elizabeth Gaskell, Adelaide Anne Proctor, George Sala and Hesba Stretton

• The Woman in White (1860)• No Name (1862)• Armadale (1866)• No Thoroughfare (1867), a story and play co-written with

Charles Dickens• The Moonstone (1868)• Man and Wife (1870) (UK 1997)

• Poor Miss Finch (1872), dedicated to Frances Minto Elliot• John Jago's Ghost or The Dead Alive• The New Magdalen (1873)• The Law and the Lady (1875)• The Two Destinies (1876)• The Haunted Hotel, (1879) a short novel serialized from June to

November 1878• The Fallen Leaves (1879)• Who Killed Zebedee? (1881)• The Black Robe (1881)• Heart And Science (1882-1883)

• The Evil Genius (1885)• The Guilty River (1886)• Legacy Of Cain (1888)• Blind Love (1890 – unfinished, completed by Walter Besant)

Screen adaptations of his novels• The Moonstone (1934)• The Woman in White (USA 1948)• The Moonstone (UK, 7 episodes, 1959)• The Woman in White (UK 1997)

Plot Structure- Linear- Mimicing a Play: divided into

“Scenes” and each scene divided into “Chapters”

- In between Scenes, narrative continues with LETTERS, Diary Entries, Newspaper Ad

* First 100 Pages: - setting the stage- introducing the characters- describing lifestyle in

Combe Raven: Watching a Concert, Staging a Play (“The Rivals”)

basic plot is driven by a legal issue.  The parents are not legally married, because the father entered a disastrous young marriage abroad, but was unable to obtain a divorce.

The parents lived together as husband and wife, but never made it legal until the first wife died.  After the legal marriage, but before they can make a new estate plan, both die under tragic circumstances.

This leaves the girls disinherited and with NO NAME. Due to previous family quarrels, the nearest relative, who inherits the fortune, casts away the girls, considering himself morally justified as the “divine retribution” for the sins of the parents.

 As the family lawyer, Mr. Pendril says,

“I am far from defending the law of England as it affects illegitimate offspring. On the contrary, I think it a disgrace to the nation. It visits the sins of the parents on the children; it encourages vice by depriving fathers and mothers of the strongest of all motives for making the atonement of marriage; and it claims to produce these two abominable results in the names of morality and religion.”

CHARACTERS

Andrew VanstoneMrs. VanstoneNorah and MagdalenMs. Harriet Garth

Francis ClareMr Clare

Captain WraggeMrs. Wragge

In Aldborough

Norah Magdalen (Susan Bygrave)Ms. Harriet Garth

Michael VanstoneNoel VanstoneMrs. Lecounte

In St. Crux

Norah and MagdalenMs. Harriet Garth

Admiral BartramGeorge Bartram

John Loscombe

In St. Crux

Norah and MagdalenMs. Harriet Garth

Captain Kirke

George Bartram

Magdalen Vanstone and family living a prosperous and happy life Magdalen and Francis Clare love affair

Francis is sent to London, then to China. Failures in both. Andrew Vanstone dies in a railway accident

 Mrs. Vanstone dies in premature child labor. The baby inside her dies as well. Lawyer Pendril then reveals the complete background of the whole story:

Illegitimate children NO NAMENo inheritanceAll their wealth goes to Michael

Vanstone

 The rest of the story is about how Magdalen tries to recover the family’s wealth from the older sinister brother of Andrew who had a history of bitter quarrel with him  Norah stays with Miss Garth, their staunch friend, and becomes a governess.   Magdalen earns her living on the stage, runs away to York. 

She encounters a disreputable cousin by marriage, Captain Wragge, an amiable villain and his pathetic, simpletonic wife Her career, managed by Wragge, is a great success. Michael Vanstone dies, leaving no will, Magdalen appeals to his physically and mentally feeble son Noel. 

 She receives a dismissive reply from his formidable housekeeper Mrs Lecount.   Determined on revenge, she visits Noel in London, disguised as Miss Garth.  Her request for half the fortune is rejected.  Mrs Lecount sees through her disguise and snips a piece of cloth from her dress as evidence.

 Magdalen now decides to retrieve her inheritance by marrying her cousin Noel - her engagement to Francis Clare has been broken off.   With Wragge's help, she follows Noel to Aldborough and is introduced as Wragge's niece, Susan Bygrave.  Mrs Lecount is again suspicious but Wragge lures her away to her family in Zurich with a forged letter. 

Noel is fascinated by Magdalen and proposes.  Magdalen, horrified at the prospect of marriage to a man she loathes, buys a lethal dose of laudanum and contemplates suicide, but finally goes through with the match.

 Mrs Lecount returns and convinces Noel that he has been deceived into marrying his cousin.  Finding Magdalen's bottle of laudanum, she also persuades him that Magdalen planned to poison him. 

Noel alters his will, leaving the fortune to a cousin, Admiral Bartram, with a secret letter passing the inheritance to the Admiral's son George Bartram, on condition he marries within six months.   Noel, who has a weak heart, collapses and dies. 

Magdalen, convinced that the legacy to Admiral Bartram conceals a secret intention, disguises herself as a maid, and takes a position in the Admiral's house.   She narrowly fails in an audacious attempt to find the secret letter and escapes to London. 

 Penniless and desperately ill, she is nursed back to health by Captain Kirke, whom she first met at Aldborough. They fall in love and marry.   Meanwhile Norah, without knowing anything of the will, has met and married George Bartram.

ANALYSIS/EVALUATION

“… laborious in its set-up and long-winded in its execution. The elaborate plots and counterplots and the “she knows that he knows that she knows” machinations were entertaining but could be skimmed through without risking the loss of either comprehension or pleasure…”

Force of Language

seaside scene-setting:It was a dull, airless evening. Eastward, was the gray majesty of the sea, hushed in breathless calm; the horizon line invisibly melting into the monotonous, misty sky; the idle ships shadowy and still on the idle water. Southward, the high ridge of the sea dike, and the grim, massive circle of a martello tower reared high on its mound of grass,

closed the view darkly on all that lay beyond. Westward, a lurid streak of sunset glowed red in the dreary heaven, blackened the fringing trees on the far borders of the great inland marsh, and turned its little gleaming water-pools to pools of blood. Nearer to the eye, the sullen flow of the tidal river Alde ebbed noiselessly from the muddy banks; and nearer still, lonely and unprosperous by the

bleak water-side, lay the lost little port of Slaughden, with its forlorn wharfs and warehouses of decaying wood, and its few scattered coasting-vessels deserted on the oozy river-shore. No fall of waves was heard on the beach, no trickling of waters bubbled audibly from the idle stream. Now and then the cry of a sea-bird rose from the region of the marsh; and at intervals, from farmhouses far in the inland waste, the faint winding of horns to call the cattle home traveled mournfully through the evening calm.

Strength of the Novel:

characterization

Towards Magdalen:

patheticto impressively heroicto bold and daringto edge-of-the-seat vengeanceto sorrow and sympathyto celebratory relief

Towards Capt. Wragge:

irritatedpatheticto impressively heroicto bold and daringto geniusto hero

Themes

IllegitimacyLaws of Inheritance

Women Empowerment and Emancipation

Love and Real Love Tested by Trials and Travails

Pietas: Love of Family