No Name (Penguin Classics)

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But I don't know why I kept postponing starting this novel, which had been in my shelves for quite a long time. Interestingly, while Magdalen's quest to recover her fortune by any means available was quite understandable and, even to the most establishment bound Victorian reader, somewhat justifiable, she is not a particularly likable heroine.

Far from being a purely gothic or atmospheric mystery, NO NAME is astonishingly realistic and down to earth.A sanguine, disappointed and much more conventional Norah resigns herself to her fate and takes up a position as governess to support herself. This unusual family situation presents a very serious dilemma for them as the laws of the time do not allow them to entitlement of their father’s inheritance. They became a bit tedious and I lost interest from time to time, which is why I'm only giving the novel 3 stars.

Having read several of Collins novels, and long been aware of his close friendship with Charles Dickens, I must say this is the one novel where I could spot Dickens’ influence most readily. He refers to women's natural inclination to cunning, jealously, impulsiveness, suspicion, and so on, and refers to a question as being 'no easy question for a woman to understand'. Two other characters who come into play and are key to the plot are Captain Wragge (self-pr Collins presents this story with what one can tell, his opposition to the laws of the court which will govern these girls destinies.Tan solo un par de personajes me gustaron realmente, entre los que destaco sin duda al MARAVILLOSO Capitán Wragge, por su mera presencia, las 700 páginas de este libro merecen la pena, ¡Porque menudo personajazo! V. Magdalen and Wragge visit Vanstone, but during the night Mrs Lacount guesses Magdalen’s true identity.

I’m the opposite – although I do usually like Dickens, I’ve always found Collins much more readable and more enjoyable. The Admiral becomes ill and dies, but the Trust cannot be found, so all his money and estate goes to George. There are however a couple of serious problems lying at the heart of events and centred on Magdalen’s motivation. The main purpose of these dramatisations was to preserve the author’s copyright on the story, since under the law at that period a novel was not protected from piracy unless the author had first registered his own adaptation. The descriptive writing paints a complete picture of the events and characters of the story; the cleverly executed plot and smooth flow of the story hold fast the readers to the story; the touch of humour here and there adds a bit of lightness to otherwise a grave story; the compassionate writing where Magdalen was concerned, emotionally moves the readers.The Novel is based on suspense and fear of what happens to Magdalen by her actions that takes her to shocking lows and nearly destroying herself in the process. The two sisters are therefore denied their ‘natural’ right to inherit their father’s wealth, and they are evicted from their own home – by a combination of English inheritance law and the greed of their relatives. Under English law therefore, his entire estate goes to his next of kin – his estranged brother Michael, who heartlessly makes no concessions or recompense towards the two orphaned nieces, Norah and Magdalen, whom he regards as bastard children. Unlike many of the other minor characters, she definitely has a character arc and there is a complexity to her, perhaps more so than any other character. The current Mr and Mrs lived together as husband and wife, finally made legal when the first wife died.

While I’ve read Collins’s more famous The Woman in White and The Moonstone, both several times, I hadn’t read the other two of what are considered his four major sensation novels: No Name and Armadale. Two sisters in Victorian England: the sensible and compliant Norah and the somewhat spoilt Magdalen Vanstone come from a good family. Lecount sees through her disguise and cuts a bit of cloth from the hem of her brown alpaca dress as evidence of Magdalen's deception. I could probably still have squeezed some enjoyment out of that if only it hadn’t been so unnecessarily long!I don't read many classics these days, and this was my first Collins, which I read because it was chosen for a discussion in the Reading the Chunksters group which has been in progress for the last couple of months. Catherine Peters, The King of Inventors: A Life of Wilkie Collins, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014. He shows that Magdalene sees the reason of her follies under the kind guidance of her sister and her new love and that she was repentant at the end and is determined to become a better person worthy of her sister and husband. From the early 1850s he was a friend of Charles Dickens, who produced and acted in two melodramas written by Collins, The Lighthouse and The Frozen Deep .