The Woman in White, some BSG recs, and statistics

[selenak]

You know, I've yet to encounter a version of The Woman in White, except for a German tv miniseries, which does not change one crucial plot element. (The Woman in White, dear readers, is a Victorian mystery/thriller written by Charles Dickens' pal Wilkie Collins, the Thomas Harris of his day, who was a rather unorthodox gentleman living with two women. He also had a thing for laudanum but that's almost standard for the time.) No matter whether it's the black and white version, or the more recent one with Simon Callow, or the new Andrew Llyod Webber musical - they just aren't content with the nature of Sir Percival Glyde's secret, the secret he committed a number of dastardly crimes to protect. (Glyde being the main villain of the saga.) They all change the secret. Mostly, I guess, because of the era we live in, but also for one other reason.



See, in the novel, the secret is illegitimacy. His parents weren't really married. Which means Sir Percival has no right to his estate, title, or money. Mrs. Catherick found out, blackmailed him about it, and unfortunately her feeble-minded daughter Anne once heard the "do this or I'll tell your secret!" theat and repeated it without ever knowing what the secret actually was. This doomed her and sets the plot of the novel in motion.

The problem every film producer has when encountering this revelation is, I guess, that the impact of illegitimacy in the 20th and 21st century just isn't there anymore. He's a literal as well as figurative bastard, so what? To convey why this would ruin Sir Percival asks for some serious set-up in 19th century mentality, not some filmic or theatrical short hand.

The other reason why this kind of secret is regarded as ill-fitting today is probably because it actually invites some sympathy. It is not something which Sir Percival's fault, after all. Every other crime he committs is his fault, but he's hardly responsible for the circumstances of his birth. And if a villain has a secret, and it comes out in the showdown, it should better be some sinister deed of his own.

Hence, I venture, all the plot changes in the various variations of The Woman in White. In most cases, Sir Percival Glyde turns out to have raped Anne Catherick. In the recent tv film, she was a child when he raped her. In the ALW musical, she was an adolescent, but had a baby which he killed. Now while this is clearly a crime a modern audience can understand, and can understand why it should not be discovered, it poses a problem in a 19th century context. Unless I'm totally off base, a gentleman having sex, voluntary or enforced, with a working class girl, would not have been spoken of, but the working class girl would have had no chance to be believed if she accused him of rape. Especially if she were a servant. She'd just have been dismissed, and would have found it hard to get another job. Child-killing would have been a criminal offense, of course, but Sir Percival needn't have bothered - he could just have thrown the poor girl out on the street and accused her of loose living.

All of which goes to say: produce any version of The Woman in White, and you're bound either to dissapoint your audience with the punchline or to be anachronistic. It's better to give up and read the novel instead. Collins is one of the few writers I know who successfully pulls off the trick of using various distinct individual voices for his narration. (The text consists of the journals and letters of various characters.) Pick up the book at any point, and you can tell whether it's Walter Hartright speaking, or Marian Halcombe, or Laura Fairlie's hypochandriac of an uncle, or the most fun of all Victorian villains, Conte Fosco. He and Marian (Laura's independent half-sister) are the most memorable characters of the story; Collins clearly is much more invested in them than in the typical Victorian lovers whose very names a gentle satires/puns (Walter of the right heart, and Laura the Fair indeed) , or even in his main villain, Sir Percival Glyde. (Who is a dull dastardly and moustache-twirling fellow, whereas Fosco with his mice and his wit and his open admiration for his opponent Marian is endlessly unpredictable.) And Collins can write page turners. My favourite of his is Armadale, but The Woman in White is a good point to start.

***

I can't tell you how happy the growing enthusiasm for Battlestar Galactica makes me. Here is a fun summary of the reactions to Bastille Day, the episodes Americans got to see on Friday. (Meanwhile, I can't wait till the Brits see the last season ep on Monday, because then I will get my next installment of episodes from the good and kind hmpf.) And behold, if creative American folks watch something and like it, there shall be fiction for the rest of us. I already pimped rheanna27's fabulous Five Deaths about Laura Roslin; here is a very short miniseries vignette about my new favourite President (sorry, Mr. Batlett). No spoilers.

And lastly:

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Comments

[searose.livejournal.com]

I've only read the book (long time ago), and I've never seen a production.

They changed that? I don't consider it so hard to understand, especially if the audience is *told* the gentleman would lose his status, his property and his money to a legitimate heir (no matter how distant, or to the Crown/government). That seems reason enough for motivation.

In these productions with the substitution of a rape - is this rape a witnessed thing? I mean, a servant's word against a gentleman in those days - the gentleman could easily destroy the character of his accuser in public.

I don't know if this was true or common practice, but Michael Crichton in The Great Train Robbery made mention of male sufferers of sexual diseases searching out virgins since having sex with a virgin was a spurious cure for those ailments. The scene in the book had a young but experienced prostitute selling her 'virginity' to a gentleman in need of a cure. (The movie substituted Leslie Ann Down's character for this act, which did not even near completion. Nor mention the venereal disease aspect, iirc.)

[selenak.livejournal.com]

Well, I don't consider it hard to understand, either, but then I am a history buff.

In these productions with the substitution of a rape - is this rape a witnessed thing? I mean, a servant's word against a gentleman in those days - the gentleman could easily destroy the character of his accuser in public.

Exactly! One of the film versions (the one with the 12, 13 years old Anne raped as backstory) had her writing about it and depositing the pages in the late Mrs. Fairlie's coffin (as a substitution for the church registry proving Glyde was illegitimate, plot-wise, for the showdown). The ALW musical had Anne raped at age 16 and pregnant, but neither case provided a witness other than herself, in which case, as I said above, Sir Percival would never have worried.

The German tv series which is the only one I saw that kept the original secret was also the only one which kept Mrs. Catherick as a character. And of course once you eliminate Anne's icy mother from the stage (and she's one of the most memorable characters, with her Glyde-provided cash and her vicar-approved respectability), the logic of why Glyde would have worried at all becomes even more thin.

[searose.livejournal.com]

I'm trying to think (ha!), a way to make the past rape fit logically.

If Anne *hadn't* been a servant, if she'd been, say, a relative of the next-in-line (young wife?). But then it wouldn't be Collins' story, even if the accuser had the status to back up her allegations and make them a hard threat. (Would a society woman break silence, though?)

The history buff thing. I've never seen a production of Pride and Prejudice that *didn't* have the entailed estate mentioned, meaning that the sisters would be destitute once their father died. That seems to work there; people recognize the dilemma.

[selenak.livejournal.com]

Not to mention that if you change Anne's social status you lose the pathos of her being Laura's illegitimate half-sister, lookalike and opposite in everything.

Whether a society woman break silence: I'm trying to think of a precedent at the time, in England, and can't. Centuries earlier it was a big, big scandal in Italy when Artemisia Gentileschi did it, and she had to go through some horrible treatment during the trial, but she's the only case that comes to mind right now of a woman accusing a man of rape with both of them being of the same reasonably good status in society, and bringing it to court.

Back to England and some decades earlier you have Lady Byron versus Lord Byron, but then Annabella never accused him of rape (nor did he rape her) in the separation proceedings. It was the threat to bring up incest and homosexual affairs that was used, and in a circumstantial way.

Anyway, I can only make this work for me if the story changed so much that Anne had powerful relatives to back her up. (Annabella had them.) Then the threat to talk would be a genuine one. Far more likely, though, that they would have tried to get her married as quickly as possible.

I recently watched the audio commentary for Sense and Sensibility, and Emma Thompson and Lindsey Doran both mention they had to explain to Ang Lee and to Sydney Pollack why the girls couldn't just get a job. (Other than becoming governesses, and why becoming a governess was Not A Good Thing to be in Victorian England.) But I haven't met anyone who wondered about this, either. So yes, some discussion of the results of illegitimacy discovered (which they did include in the German version) would probably do the job.

[searose.livejournal.com]

Emma Thompson and Lindsey Doran both mention they had to explain to Ang Lee and to Sydney Pollack why the girls couldn't just get a job.

Yes, doing what, making what kind of money to live on? After having been trained to be ladies only.

Same thing sort of applies to gentlemen, since some levels of society had gentlemen who did not work, per se. Managing their estates, if they did, yes. But professions?

Enough people have read Jane Eyre to get some idea of the status of governesses. (Especially the scene where the ladies of society mock Jane/governesses within earshot as if her listening in accounted for nothing.) Then again, maybe because of Jane Eyre there's a romantic air about that profession.

[selenak.livejournal.com]

Jane Eyre was the first governess described in sympathetic terms, I believe. The previous governesses were described much as the ladies deride them in Jane's presence. With no sympathy for the in between status of a governess - not quite a servant, not quite a member of the family - as well.

(Much like you can differ between the description of nurses pre-Florence Nightingale - vulgar women with a penchant for drinking, a la Sarah Gump as written by Charles Dickens - and post-Nightingale nurses - angels of mercy.)

But Jane Eyre the novel changed all that, and yes, I think ever after, there was an aura of romance around the profession. Which Charlotte, who after all knew as did her sisters that teaching wasn't one bit romantic because she had tried it herself, probably never intended...

[kalypso-v.livejournal.com]

I must say, I've seen only one TV version, about 20 years ago (Alan Badel as Fosco and Diana Quick as Marian), and I'm pretty sure Glyde's Awful Secret was simply the one in the church registry.

Fosco is wonderful. I was sorry to read that the current musical treats him merely as a comic turn.

[selenak.livejournal.com]

Oh, that one I hadn't seen.

Fosco in the musical: I've just listened to it, not seen it on stage, so of course I'm not 100% sure, but he's not just comic relief. He's still the man with the plan, and the sparring with Marian is good. Still, the stunning ruthlessness and horrid implications of what he's capable of does not come across as vividly as the comic elements, plus he's short of a wife. (Which helps reduce the darker side of Fosco, as the subdued Countess serves to illustrate the nice witty Italian man isn't as harmless as he seems from the get-go.)

My problem with the musical is rather that it's not very inventive musically. There is just one song that amounts to something, Marian's "All for Laura", and that's not in the Don't cry for me, Argentina or Music of the Night class. Fosco and Marian have always the same melody and variations of same in their encounters, which gets old, and the other characters are musically indistiguishable from another.

[londonkds.livejournal.com]

There's an essay in one of John Sutherlands series of "literary questions and plotholes" books that started with Can Jane Eyre Be Happy? on The Woman in White which deals with this same issue. As I recall, Sutherland argues that it's scary how well the paedophilia speculation fits with Glyde's actual portrayal in the book. He also finds internal evidence which he thinks was deliberately put there by Collins to suggest that Fosco's explanation of Anne's death in his confession is highly rose-tinted and self-serving.

[selenak.livejournal.com]

It's not that Glyde isn't utterly loathsome, but not all loathsome men are by default pedophiliacs. (Can't recall any scenes with him and children in the book at all, but it has been years.)

Fosco's account of Anne's death: well, I never thought that the "the poor dear was better off dead anyway, and it offered such a splendid opportunity to switch her with Laura without actually killing Laura" wasn't self-serving. For one thing, Fosco loves showing off his inventiveness, for another, the confession was written for Marian and he has an interest in demonstrating he did something for her (i.e. not kill her sister). This being said, I also think the bones of the matter - i.e. the Anne/Laura switch being Fosco's idea - are true, because Sir Percival wasn't bright enough to think of it, and Laura alive gave Fosco an ace if he ever needed something of his own to hold over Glyde (remember, he never learns the secret). Mind you, what they did to Laura was ghastly enough. I remember having nightmares about being locked up in a madhouse afterwards when first reading this.

[londonkds.livejournal.com]

Sutherland suggests that the force with which Glyde claims that there is no chance whatsoever of him and Laura conceiving implies some kind of questionable sexual tendency on Glyde's part.

[selenak.livejournal.com]

Good lord. And here I thought it just implied they didn't have sex. Which in turn could imply anything between impotence, him not wanting to get her pregnant because he's planning to do away with her and get her inheritance anyway, or her having the stomach to refuse him after the wedding night.

Anyway - I browsed through Sutherland's book once and thought it amusing in parts, but no more than that. I think I missed the WiW parts because I looked up Jane herself, being much of the "Rochester is a cad and fleeced Bertha Mason of her inheritence" persuasion anyway. But then, Wide Saragossa Sea said so many years earlier...

[merkuria-lyn.livejournal.com]

There is a German adaptation? Which one is that? When is it from?

As I'm working on representations of the victorian age on television I am obviously quite intrigued!!


I read The Woman in White years ago as a teenager and loved it, then reread it a few years ago and realised that unlike some other novels it had stood the test of growing up... I still adore it. :) That said, I actually really liked the British tv adaptation - not because I was so incredibly impressed by the rewriting of Sir Percival Glyde's secret, but because I think that visually it's very very beautiful, not in a merchant ivory, but instead in a very thoughtful kind of way. It was possible to 'read' the representation of an age and it's presence in film / tv through the adaptation's mise-en-scene...

[selenak.livejournal.com]

Die Frau in Weiss (http://mitglied.lycos.de/derkommissar/str_weiss.htm). One of the most successful German tv productions of all time, in fact. Well acted, too. The same company later did Armadale as Der rote Seidenschal.

True, the looks of the British productions were very atmospheric. And I liked Simon Callow as Fosco and Tara Last-name-escapes me as Marian.

[buffyannotater.livejournal.com]

I've become so interested in seeing Battlestar Galactica after hearing your raves that I started taping it on my TiVO. I got all the episodes that aired so far here, but they didn't rerun the miniseries/pilot, so I put it on my Netflix queue, although that said it had a Very Long Wait, which could be months. I didn't want to wait that long, so I finally gave in and bought the DVD at Best Buy the other day. Can't wait to start watching and catch up! I think I'll start tonight.

[selenak.livejournal.com]

Rob, you make my evening. I can't wait to hear your impressions, either, and good for you about the DVD, because I only found out this morning that the broadcast version of the miniseries shown in the US got truncuated. (Grrr, arggh at the censorship.)

Ugh...

[buffyannotater.livejournal.com]

because I only found out this morning that the broadcast version of the miniseries shown in the US got truncuated.

Same thing with the first season of Farscape here. Every first season episode was missing five minutes, which I always found really strange since it was a SciFi series, like this show is, and SciFi was more worried about adding extra commercials than airing their own series in their entirety! I had to wait for the DVDs to see the missing parts.

[avrelia.livejournal.com]

They changed the secret? That was pretty pointless in my opinion. Actually both versions I’ve seen didn’t change it – one was a BBC version, another was a Russian TV movie (so not widely familiar outside) ;)

I first read The Woman in White at twelve, and though the revelation of the secret was rather anticlimactic for me, it was even more shocking to have all this devious plans to cover the secret that wasn’t so terrible in my opinion (I did get the legal implications, but still wasn’t properly terrified). Even in terms of the story, the heroes can’t use it – not even if sir P. Glyde would have survived.
When I re-read it this summer, I found myself a Marian/Walter shipper (I was always a huge fan of Marian.) and mostly bored with both villains in the story.

I also read The Law and the Lady this summer, which I quite liked, especially for the fact that there were no villains there – just more or less screwed-up people with their flaws and interests. Interesting, however, how mush influence has a physical appearance on a characterization and the plot in both stories.

[selenak.livejournal.com]

As I always found Walter rather dull, I could never 'ship him with Marian. (Who belongs with no one, because she's just splendid on her own, but should have regular sparring/flirting sessions with Fosco.)

Oh, agreed that all the devious plans - and the lengths towards everyone went to cover it up - were far more terrifying than the actual secret, but I wonder whether that wasn't the point.

[avrelia.livejournal.com]

I have to say that I don't want them together as much as I noticed the mutual attraction beyond the regular friendliness, which makes me wonder about their life together. Though I agree, walter is way dull compared to Marion.

I don't know about Fosco - by the end, they all reached a point "either he or they" where staus quo sparring/flirting was impossible.

[wychwood]

I've posted *fifty* comments on your LJ?!? Damn you and your interesting posts :)

I must re-read The Woman In White, you've sparked my interest.

[selenak.livejournal.com]

Aww, come on, you know you love me.*g*

And reread away!

(BTW, a week or two ago saava asked wether anyone at all in B5 fandom liked Jeffrey Sinclair. Since she and her sister didn't, and all the other commenters in her journal agreed with them. I said I did, and pointed to you as a co-Sinclair-liker. Just in case you hear from her.)

[wychwood]

Cool :) Always willing to spread the love, as you know ;)

[illmantrim.livejournal.com]

Most directors, especially in the shows and movie adaptations I haev seen in the last ten or so years, seem to want to change thinsga nd "leave a mark" or something. It is often at the cost of something that changes the feel of the show...