The little white attic

Samuel Richardson’s Pamela is foundational for the epistolary form. Not the first epistolary novel ever written, but the one to start the c...

Dickens’s detractors always say his characters are caricatures, not complex, multifaceted, and lifelike like Tolstoy’s or Jane Austen’s or G...

Of Jane Austen’s novels, Mansfield Park is the least popular. I’ve been rereading the book lately. In this blog post, I’ll respond to the c...

1/ It’s interesting that Captain Wragge completely steals the scene in Scene 4, but when he’s gone, in Scene 6, Magdalen becomes prominent a...

Several years ago, discussing No Name , Tom at Wuthering Expectations wrote this post about ethics:  http://wutheringexpectations.blogspot....

The Woman in White is a reminder that when it comes to literature, you can’t rely on other people’s judgment or even summary of the plot, y...

1/ If you place lots of importance on the social/ political aspect of a novel, No Name is interesting in its examination of stupid inherita...

1/ Can anyone read the scene of private theatricals in No Name without thinking about Mansfield Park ? The concern is the same, Norah Vanst...

Why am I reading Dracula when the horror genre isn't my thing?  The same way I can't help comparing her to Tolstoy, Flaubert and J...

i.e. those moments when I don't understand how some readers interpret a book in a certain way or why they see or don't see certain t...

In Dracula , everyone keeps notes of some sort (mostly journals) and nobody tells anybody anything. The plot of Dracula depends on the char...

Dracula makes me think of The Woman in White .  Both are novels-as-documents. How many novels of this type have I read lately? Frankenstei...

I'm reading Frankenstein , the 1818 text. What can I say now that hasn't been said about Mary Shelley's novel? Perhaps nothing. ...

Escape from mental asylum, hindered love, mercenary marriage, eavesdropping, spying, stalking, theft, debts, illness, sedation, fraud, kidna...

So people*, here and there, tell me that in The Woman in White the sweet, gentle, innocent, trustful but boringly passive Laura Fairlie, th...

1/ Count Fosco's scheme works well. The Woman in White can drag for a while, mostly through Marian's narrative, but becomes fascina...

Earlier I wrote about Marian's stupidity.  Wilkie Collins needs other tools for his novel.  Consider all the descriptions: I believe ...

1/ Burns Walter's letter for fear of it being read by someone else, and writes about it in her diary? 2/ Realises that Sir Percival is...