The Woman in White: Part One

This post shall henceforth also be known as 'The Birthday Post' because, yes, you guessed it, today's my birthday! This has almost nothing to do with The Woman in White, other than the fact that I had to schedule reading it and writing this around it, but still, I thought it was worth mentioning! So, yeah, Happy Birthday to meeeeeeee *puts on party hat* *opens presents* *smiles a lot*.

ANYWAY. Now that the festivities are done with, let's get to the serious stuff. The Woman in White- she is very mysterious, and also possibly crazy- I mean, just because she claims that she isn't, doesn't mean that she isn't, cause that's what a crazy person would say anyway! Her introduction did make me jump a tiny bit though, and I wasn't entirely sure that she wasn't a ghost, to be honest, just one of those new fangled ghosts that can touch things and have just escaped from the asylum, apparently.

So, she's already very interesting. She's nearly the most interesting character so far, but then there's Marian who is clearly awesome and who I'm going to marry some day. I mean, you have to love a girl with that much charisma and natural ease with everyone, who's really shrewd and awesome and can investigate things and generally just walk around being awesome. I can't even tell you how much it bugs me that Walter fancies her much much less interesting sister just because she's, you know, pretty. (Also, can we talk about the fact that she looks so much like The Woman in White? Is that going to be a thing, or should I just stop talking about it now?) This genuinely just makes me want to constantly kick Walter until he admits that Marian is the greatest and that, even though her face is gross (allegedly) she would be the much better companion and that she's just generally the greatest. And, if you'll just let me be really petty for a minute, does Wilkie Collins really have the right to value beauty over everything else? We all saw the dude's forehead, right?

What else? Well, Mr Fairlie is clearly nuts, and that letter written in the third person was about the weirdest thing I've read in a while. Oh, and there's clearly more to Mrs Vesey than meets the eye- she's possibly silently plotting against everyone, and it's only a matter of time before her evil plans come to fruition... Maybe. And, clearly, Sir Percival Glyde has the best name, maybe ever. As an English reader of The Woman in White (and possibly the only English reader in this readalong of it, although I can't be sure about that...) I felt like it was my duty to look up the difference between a knight and a baronet, which, as I'm sure you'll remember, was a thing. And... I'm still not sure. Other than a baronet is a higher honour than a knight (which is why Marian gets all haughty about it) and it's the only hereditary honour which isn't a peerage. Very illuminating, or, you know not.

I totally realise that that last paragraph is going to come back to haunt me when everyone else has figured out what a baronet is, and I'm the stupid person who thought I'd be able to figure it out because of, you know, my nationality. Turns out, it doesn't quite work like that! But anyway- everything's all very mysteriously mysterified, and I'm very intrigued to keep reading. This is as opposed to my feelings last week, where I couldn't be bothered to open it, left it til Saturday evening, and was typing this into Sunday morning (hey, did you all have a good Easter? I probably will/did or something...) So hopefully this newfound enthusiasm will have me reading away like a good little reader this week. We can but hope...

P.S. Did I mention it's my birthday? I enjoy the fact that it's on Easter Monday, because it means I can pretend it's an international holiday just for me, and not for that other dude who died aaaages ago. So enjoy your day off work in my honour!