Customer Reviews

Blind Love

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This last of Wilkie Collins' novels is far more readable than one might suppose, given the relatively mediocre quality of his late work. Readers should be warned not to expect the same high level of intricate villainy, mystery, and subtle plotting that distinguished Collins' earlier, more famous books, and they will also have benignly to overlook some unnecessarily heavy-handed narrative intrusions from the author and his absurd harping on differences between the Celtic and Saxon temperaments (to the detriment of the former). But "Blind Love" is lively and full of incident, the heroine's predicament touches on serious moral issues, and the core events in the story are told with drama and zest. A young lady named Iris Henley defies friends and family to marry the ne'er-do-well scion of an Irish noble house, Lord Harry Norland, to whom she is irresistibly attracted (the "blind love" of the title). Charming, handsome, and reckless, Harry is not really a bad sort at heart, but he lacks the backbone to make something of himself, is prone to rash action and to running through money, and finds it far too easy to grasp at any expedient if his back is to the wall. When the married couple's financial resources start to grow slim in Paris, Harry lets himself be tempted to a series of criminal acts by his unscrupulous associate Dr. Vimpany, who has conceived a nefarious plan for filling their coffers once more. Out of loyalty to her husband, but ignorant of the true nature of his deeds, Iris yields to Harry's persuasion and becomes his reluctant accomplice in the final stage of Vimpany's plot, the commission of an insurance fraud. But remorse quickly burdens her tender conscience and the happiness of the marriage is irrevocably destroyed. To say more would be to spoil what small surprises lie in store for the reader. In "Blind Love" suspense arises not from the need to unavel what took place, and how, but from the interaction between the characters. The first third of the novel is marred by the almost comic implausibility of the scenes between Harry and Iris, who is vainly striving to resist her natural impulse to fling herself into his arms, whereas the conclusion is flawed by the summary, just-winding-up-the-plot retribution meted out to the evil-doers and Iris' foregone consignment to a staid new marriage with her formerly rejected suitor, the patient and unwavering Hugh Montjoy. But the central portion of this novel, where Collins probes the Norland menage and its tell-tale tensions, and then implacably details the criminal scheme, is as absorbing as any Collins admirer could desire.

Most dying writers leave behind a mere scrap of a posthumous novel to torment their devoted readers. Not Wilkie Collins. When he saw his bad health worsening, he wrote a detailed fifty-page synopsis of the remaining chapters of his novel in work. Walter Besant finished Blind Love for Collins at his request, following the outline minutely. Blind Love appeared in 1889, not long after the author's death.

Collins wrote forty-eight chapters; Besant, sixteen. The transition, quite smooth, is clearly indicated in this Broadview edition.

The psychology of the love interest is spot on. As we've all observed, good women often fall for no-good guys! Iris Henley, a well-bred young Englishwoman, marries ne'er-do-well Lord Harry despite all warnings. Her "wild Irishman" is irresistibly charming but morally lax. We watch Iris's principles suffer from association - to our escalating horror. Where will it all end?

But the real heroine of the novel is Iris's maid, Fanny Mere, a fallen woman whom Iris hires despite her past. Fanny's gratitude turns into a obsession with protecting Iris from her enemies, husband foremost. Fanny is a wonderful character, weirdly pale and undemonstrative, an intense man-hatter and just the devious detective needed to save the day.

There are other engaging characters too, and the plot is rich in crime and passion, not to mention Irish politics. The wild lord has ties to extremists in Ireland's independence movement.

This is my third reading of Blind Love over the years and my best experience yet, thanks to the excellent introduction. The editors give us background on the English-Irish conflicts of the period. They describe the famous fraud of the 1880s that inspired the pivotal crime in Collins's plot. They follow the complex saga of the writing of Blind Love. And they discuss Collins's feminism, remarkable in his time, as revealed in his anti-traditional female characters.

Blind Love is not The Woman in White, but why should it be? As the author's final novel, it exerts a unique fascination for a Collins fan like me. And it's a good solid example of the Victorian sensation novel, my particular literary weakness! I highly recommend the Broadview edition.

This book is definitely not another Woman in White or The Moonstone, both wonderfully well-written mysteries. For those who absolutely have to read every word that Collins wrote, this book is recommended. The plot is fairly boring and the characters fairly uninteresting. Overall, a slow and somewhat dull read.

Wilkie Collins created some fun women. The character in "No Name," and characters in W"oman in White" and "The Moonstone" were well-developed and strong. In the more obscure "Poor Miss Finch," Collins creates a blind woman who falls in love with the perfect man. Her only "quirk"--she hates dark colors. Unfortunately for him, he has terrible epilepsy and the only cure the Victorians had was mercury, which dyed the skin dark blue. . . Tragedy ensues.

Perhaps even more annoying than Poor Miss Finch is the Eve in "Blind Love." You want to strangle her. She is unusually strong-willed, but an idiot. Dickens just could barely create strong characters--perhaps the nearest equivalent was in "Great Expectations" with Stella and her demented Miss Havisham. Or the Countess in "Bleak House." Dickens liked soppy women; hated neglectful, stupid mothers' idolized virgins==even old ones. Dickens' novels have variety and liveliness, but too often his young women are either too good or too bad--just occasionally angry and effective.

Wilkie Collins liked women in real life. He ended up with two households and two wives/mistresses. His will left property to the illegitimate children he had fathered, revealing his attachment to their mother. Dickens of course, disapproved!

Trollope's women are usually just as convincing as the men in his stories and vary in their wisdom or foolishness. They hold up over time.

Collins offers a lot of insight into the plight of women in Victorian England, but you often have to WORK for it by reading things like "Blind Love."