The woman in white blog post #1
By Omar Andre
I am about 130 pages into The Woman in White, here’s what happened so far:
The beginning of the book, after acknowledgements and stuff, starts with an introduction telling us that the story is told through multiple narrators, and that the author hadn’t read this done before, so I guess it was pretty new at the time. The introduction, along with some dialogue from the first chapter tells us that this story is told for some sort of trial for someone. The actual story starts with the out of job drawing teacher Walter Hartright introducing us to his eccentric friend Pesco, an Italian immigrant who loves his new country of residence so much that he tries to be as English as he can. Throughout the narration, Walter describes Pesco as doing an Englishman imitation accent, or imitating an Englishman presenting a show. Pesco is also very much indebted to Walter because he had saved him from drowning, and because of this, Pesco is very vocal about liking Walter, often going into how great of a person he is in the middle of his speeches. The main plot is kicked off by Pesco recommending Walter as an art teacher to a pretty high-status person. Walter gets a bad feeling about it, but because it is a great opportunity with no real drawbacks, he gets pressured by Pesco, his mother and his sister into accepting the job. After accepting the job, he runs into the woman in white, a distressed and mysterious woman whom he helps to walk and get a cab. It is also worth noting that the woman in white talked about having lived in the house that he’s going to work as a teacher in, and after he left her in a cab, two people came to a police officer asking about a woman in white having escaped their asylum. The latest thing I’ve read is Walter meeting the first sister, which is described as very elegant but ugly.
I don’t really have many thoughts about the plot yet, because I haven’t read enough and the novel is just starting. The first thing I noticed about the novel is how much longer it was than the last book I read, Oedipus Rex & Antigone, which were, combined, maybe like 80 pages. Another thing worth mentioning is that it is briefly mentioned that Pesco left Italy for some political reason, which is probably foreshadowing for something. Another thing I thought was interesting is how regretful Walter’s narration is sometimes; throughout his narration, especially during his meeting with the woman in white, he speaks outside the current narrative and says something along the lines of: “if only I knew what this would lead to, I would have never done this”. He also does the same thing with Pasco, but in his case it’s a little more “gentle”, he says it in a way that makes us think it wasn’t Pasco’s fault, that the bad thing that will happen in the future was partially Pasco’s fault only by accident. This, contrasted with how Walter talks about the woman in white in retrospect, causes some distrust in the woman in white from the reader’s perspective.
I’m not enjoying the book right now that much, but I’m also pretty sure that it’s just because the book is still setting up the story and characters, and that it will get more interesting later on, but for right now, the book gets a:
