No Name by Wilkie Collins

[regshoe]

I deliberately didn't look up the publication date of No Name (1862) while reading it, because it was so much fun trying to guess whether it or Armadale came first. (I hesitantly guessed Armadale (1866), and was wrong.) No Name is another excellent, twisty, thrilling, ever so slightly OTT sensation novel, and fascinatingly similar to Armadale, so I highly recommend it to all fans of the latter. Unfortunately it's difficult to talk about without spoilers, and I do recommend going in unspoiled, but I'll say what I can...

Like Armadale, No Name is a dramatic sensation novel in which a woman, cast out from respectable society and believing herself wrongly deprived of part of the fortune inherited by a wealthy man, schemes to get the money back by any means she can, assisted by even more unscrupulous schemer characters. The plot is heavily dependent on legal points, especially around inheritance and marriage law, and lawyers feature as important side characters. Fun as the woman's scheming is to follow, she's not a cackling evil villain; she's a sympathetic character with feelings and weaknesses, who feels genuine remorse for what she does. The difference between the two novels is that they're opposite ways round. In Armadale Lydia, sympathetic as she is, is the villain; her counterpart in No Name is the heroine. Allan—okay, I'm aware some readers find him annoying, but he's basically a decent person and we're intended to root for him—his counterpart is genuinely cartoonishly evil.

Both plots are also largely about the consequences of the past and the sins of the fathers, but in No Name the mechanism of visitation on the children, while it involves quite a lot of contrived coincidence, is entirely mundane; the possibly-supernatural elements of Armadale are absent.

Both novels are partly omnisciently-narrated and partly epistolary, but No Name is more structured about it—the book is divided into omnisciently-narrated sections called Scenes, each taking place in a different location, and these are separated by interstitial epistolary sections—and the neatness of this structure was very pleasing to me. One of my minor favourite things about Armadale is Collins's attention to varied, unusual (how many novels are set on the Isle of Man?), specific and vividly-described settings, and the Scenes here provided even more of that. One of the settings happened to be somewhere I'm fairly familiar with, and it was fun seeing what it looked like in the 1840s.

Other notable non-spoilery things:

• One of the side characters, Matilda Wragge, has a learning disability, and is portrayed sympathetically if not totally seriously; I liked her.
• She also presents a minor linguistic mystery. Dictionaries seem to agree that the literal meaning of the phrase 'down at heel' refers to worn-down heels of shoes, and I think that's what I'd assumed; but Mrs Wragge's bullying husband often berates her for 'having her shoes down at heel' in a way that makes clear it's something that can be fixed in the moment, like having her bonnet askew. My best guess is perhaps it means the backs of her shoes are folded down under the heels of her feet, in the way that's possible with fairly soft shoes/slippers? But then, is that the actual origin of the phrase and the dictionaries are all wrong, or is Collins misusing it/using it in an idiosyncratic way, or is it a legitimate but distinct meaning unrelated to the metaphorical use of the phrase?
• This novel pays attention to the servants' point of view on their masters' and mistresses' drama—sometimes comically, but at one point the plot turns on a servant character having a personality, backstory and agency of her own.
• Wilkie Collins remains rather tiresomely fond of making generalisations about the Nature of Women, despite writing really pretty good female characters as male authors of the time go.

Sensation novels are so much fun. :D The reason it's difficult to talk about this book without spoilers is that most of the plot follows from a big and excellent twist that happens late in the first Scene. As Collins points out in the preface there are no more shocking twists after that, but there is a lot of amazingly dramatic and suspenseful scheming, and I was really gripped by the drama for much of the book, especially the Aldborough Scene where Magdalen and Captain Wragge are playing a complicated tug-of-war with Mrs Lecount over manipulating Noel. I'm not sure I'd say the ending is too conventionally happy, considering, but it was perhaps a bit of a let-down; and the contrived way in which the money ends up coming to Norah after all is kind of unsatisfying after all that scheming.

I love Magdalen. I had heard something about the main plot of the book before reading it—indeed, I picked it up because it sounded like a backwards Armadale—but for most of the first Scene I was puzzled by the question of how that plot was going to develop from this set-up, because none of the characters we'd been introduced to so far sounded anything like that. And yet it is Magdalen, who changes and develops as a character so much—and yet so plausibly from what she is at the start. I was a little bit disappointed when it was established that she never had a thought of trying to murder Noel—I had kind of assumed that's what she was planning all along? but I suppose she just meant to wait until he died of natural causes, with good grounds for thinking it probably wouldn't be long. But perhaps that's why she, unlike Lydia who actually does attempt murder, gets to be redeemed and live at the end of the book.

Miss Garth is introduced as a) an unmarried woman in her forties, b) a governess and c) a northerner in a southern household, so naturally I warmed to her from the first. She doesn't get so much focus later on, but I liked her. It's interesting that the most distinctive feature of her accent is apparently rhoticity—I've heard of old Northumbrian accents having rolled Rs, but am not familiar enough with them to recreate it while reading in my head, so my attempts at her dialogue were all a bit wobbly. Mrs Lecount is an amazingly hateable villain—even more so when you consider that her motivation is more or less the same as Magdalen's—and I am enraged that, unlike Michael and Noel who at least die even if they weren't murdered, she never gets her just deserts but lives happily ever after with all the money she wanted! Infuriating! However, I love that one of her distinguishing characteristics is an interest in science and especially herpetology.

Anyway, where is my crossover femslash???

Comments

[garonne]

I have only read the first and last few lines of this post, and bookmarked it to come back to after I've read No Name myself. You certainly make it sound worth reading!

Anyway, where is my crossover femslash???

You mean between the main character of No Name and Miss Gwilt of Armadale, perhaps? I for one came out of Armadale thinking "Allan and Midwinter are lovely, but so textual (as opposed to subtextual) that I hardly feel like I need fic, and meanwhile what a pity there was no second female character with an interesting dynamic with the fascinating Miss Gwilt."

[regshoe]

:D I hope you enjoy the book!

You mean between the main character of No Name and Miss Gwilt of Armadale, perhaps?

Yes! Aww, I love your appreciation for the textualness of Allan/Ozias (though there is some lovely fic for them, if you ever did want to read it). I have been toying with a Lydia-centric fic idea that might have ended up being Lydia/Neelie, though I'm not sure quite how well that pairing would really work.

[garonne]

though I'm not sure quite how well that pairing would really work.

It's true that it's a pairing I wouldn't find very easy to write, I think. Though I would certainly be intrigued to read it if you do ever write it!

[starshipfox]

I read this book in February, and I'm delighted that the phrase "down at heel" stood out to you as well! I had the same interpretation as you as to what it described, but it stood out as a strange description, especially as it was mentioned so often.

"No Name" was the third Wilkie Collins novel I'd read (after 'The Moonstone' and 'A Woman in White') and, for me, it was the least successful, because I found that some sections of the story just went on too long for my taste -- particularly the part where Magdalen and Captain Wragge are plotting Magdalen's marriage -- but there are some excellent scenes and moments, particularly around Magdalen's characterisation. I like the attention Collins pays to the fate of children of unmarried parents -- and it's interesting in the context of Collins' life, given that he never married but supported two partners and children.

I'm going to read 'Armadale' soon -- it will be interesting to compare them!

[regshoe]

I'm delighted that the phrase "down at heel" stood out to you as well!

Hee, same! And I'm glad you had the same interpretation, that makes me more confident in it.

I don't think I knew that about Collins's personal life, wow. I have read both The Moonstone and The Woman in White but it was a long time ago—I remember them both being very good and should re-read them someday...

I hope you enjoy Armadale :D