4 - Wilkie Collins and the secret of the mother's plot

Summary

What is peculiar to modern societies, in fact, is not that they consigned sex to a shadow existence, but that they dedicated themselves to speaking of it ad infinitum while exploiting it as the secret.

Michel Foucault

It seemed almost like a monomania to be tracing back everything strange that happened, everything unexpected that was said, always to the same hidden source and the same sinister influence.

Wilkie Collins

Walter Hartright, the protagonist, principal narrator, and “editor” of Wilkie Collins's The Woman in White (1859–60), returns from the jungles of Central America in the middle of the novel's action, only to learn of the recent death of Laura Fairlie, the love of his life first made inaccessible through her arranged marriage to the sinister Sir Percival Glyde. Unable to recover from the blow of Laura's new, more permanent inaccessibility, Walter decides to visit her grave, hoping to forsake his ideal woman once and for all. The opposite occurs. He stands by the tombstone, watching as two women walk toward him, one mysteriously veiled:

The veiled woman had possession of me, body and soul. She stopped on one side of the grave. We stood face to face with the tombstone between us. She was close to the inscription on the side of the pedestal. Her gown touched the black letters.

The voice came nearer, and rose and rose more passionately still. […]