Welcome to my The Classics Circuit  post, in which I discuss two books by Wilkie Collins: “Poor Miss Finch” and “Hide and Seek”.   Yes, that’s right, I volunteered to read and review two books for my tour stop, even though I had never read Collins before.  Why two books?

I was intrigued that both books had disabled characters in them, and I wanted to see how Wilkie Collins portrayed these characters.   Since I’m discussing two books here, I’ll try to keep summaries of both brief (without spoilers, I hope), and then I’ll go into what I thought of both of them.

I read “Poor  Miss Finch” first, although it was published nearly twenty years after Collins’ “Hide and Seek”.   The Miss Finch of the title is Lucilla Finch, a young woman who has been blind nearly all her life.  The narrator of this book, Madame Pratolungo, was hired as a lady’s companion to Lucilla, and Madame Pratolungo is a sharp (and often amusing) observer of Lucilla’s life, and the people surrounding Lucilla.  

Lucilla falls in love with Oscar Dubourg, who happens to have an identical twin brother, Nugent.  Lucilla and Oscar become engaged, but Nugent has also fallen in love with Lucilla, and plots to win her.   Things become complicated when Lucilla undergoes an operation that should restore her eye sight.  Will Nugent still be able to carry out his plan to substitute himself with Oscar?

I thought that  Collins portrayed Lucilla as a real person, who just happened to be blind.  Lucilla’s strong character is evident throughout the book.  For example, after she has her surgery and has her eyes unbandaged after the recovery time period, she is very insistent that the unbandaging is done with friends and family in the room.  She is convinced she will be able to recognize Oscar once she lays eyes on him:

” ‘No!’, she cried obstinately, with a childish stamp of her foot.  ‘I insist on showing everybody that I can pick out Oscar, the moment I open my eyes’.”

Of course, it’s not as simple as that.  Not having seen for most of her life, Lucilla doesn’t understand what she is seeing once her eyes are unbandaged.  She is still dependent on her other senses, such as recognizing people by touch.

Collins had some knowledge of blindness (due mainly to research on his part), so several of the blindness incidents in the book made sense to me.  I once worked with a deaf and blind man, who always recognized me simply by his touch of my hands.   Another deaf and blind person recognized me by my smell (the perfume I wore, I think) and knew whenever I was approaching.  Lucilla states in the book that she knows Oscar by the touch of his hands.   It also makes sense that Lucilla is unable to recognize what she sees, post-operation, rather than miraculously being sighted again.  With my cochlear implant, it has been nearly a year since the operation and I’m still working on understanding and recognizing sounds that I barely heard (or almost not at all) throughout my life.

I also liked Collins’ way of describing his characters.  He often describes them in such detail that I had no problem picturing them.  Here is a description of  Lucilla’s stepmother, when Madame Pratolungo meets her for the first time:

“I…found myself confronting a large, light-haired, languid, lymphatic lady — who had evidently been amusing herself by walking up and down the room, at the moment when I appeared.  If there can be such a thing as a damp woman — this was one.  There was a humid shine on her colourless white face, and an overflow of water in her pale blue eyes….”

Overall, I liked  ”Poor Miss Finch”.  So, what did I think of the next Collins book I read, “Hide and Seek”? 

Because ”Hide and Seek” is an earlier work (published 1854), the layout seems weaker overall, but it’s still a worthwhile read.  “Hide and Seek” starts out a bit slowly.  The first part of the book takes its’ time with the story; for example,  it takes a lot of time describing most of the characters.   The second part is mainly plot-driven and moves along at a faster pace.   

A painter, Valentine Blyth, visits the circus and encounters  a deaf girl called Mary who is about ten years old,  who is a circus performer.  Since she is apparently an orphan, he decides to adopt her and bring her home to keep him and his invalid wife company.  Mary– called Madonna by her adoptive parents– grows up to be a young lady.  At that point, her background is still a mystery; until there are encounters with two other characters, Zack Thorpe (a young man that Valentine Blythe has taken under his wing) and a man who also has a mysterious background that Zack has befriended.  These two help solve the mystery of who Madonna really is.

I did not feel that the character of Madonna was as well-developed as Lucilla in “Poor Miss Finch”.  Madonna seemed to be more in the background of this story.  I am not sure that was Collins’ initial intention.   It seems like the other characters somehow managed to take over the story. 

 Madonna is often referred to as “deaf and dumb” or “deaf-mute”, which was commonplace back then (and even in recent history).  Additionally, I question Madonna’s sudden loss of speech in this story.    She was deafened at about age seven in the circus accident; and lost her speech at about the same time.   If she was not able to hear herself talk, the quality of her speech would have gradually declined, but not disappeared altogether unless she chose not to speak.  Madonna communicates by writing on a chalkboard that she carries around with her everywhere.  With her adoptive parents, she uses the “deaf and dumb alphabet”  and also some type of sign language (probably a “home sign language”; which are signs invented in order to communicate).

Madonna also has a fear of darkness (because then she can’t see as well as being unable to hear), which is played up into a pivotal scene in the book.  I know that for most hearing-impaired people, myself included, light is all-important!

There are occasionally times in the book that Madonna is somewhat condescended to (sometimes a fact of life for those who are disabled), but generally not by the main characters.  There is a party scene in the book in which several women crowd about Madonna:
“The Dowager Countess was one of Madonna’s warmest admirers; and now expressed that admiration by pouncing on her with immense affection and enthusiasm from the painting-room door-way.  Other people, to whom the deaf and dumb girl was a much more interesting sight than ‘Columbus’ or ‘ Golden Age’, crowded round her; all trying together, with great amiability and small intelligence, to explain what had happened by signs which no human being could possibly understand”.

Even though Madonna isn’t as prominent a character in this book, Collins does observe that people can tend to over-compensate themselves when they are around disabled people.

In Catherine Peters’  introduction  to the Oxford World’s Classics edition  of ”Hide and Seek”, she states that Collins had an “apparent obsession with varied forms of physical and psychological handicap or deformity, often seen as perverse”.  The introduction also points out that “physical handicap is presented not simply as a means for evoking sympathy, but handled as a positive attribute and a spur to active happiness”.

It has often been mentioned that, by Victorian standards, Collins was ahead of his time regarding the rights of women; it seems like this may also be the case for those who were disabled.  Before I can really determine that, I need to read more books by Collins.  Since I just read these two books in a relatively short time, it probably will be a while before I pick anything up by him again.   But I’ll definitely do it eventually.  I like what I’ve read of Wilkie Collins so far.   It will be hard to decide which of his books to read next!

Be sure to visit more of Wilkie Collins, and the beginning of the Elizabeth Gaskell blog tour, at The Classics Circuit.  I look forward to participating in the Edith Wharton tour in January!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 18th, 2009 at 6:45 AM and is filed under The Classics Circuit, blog tours, books, deafness. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.