The Woman in White

Part 1: Sir Percival Glyde

Sir Percival Glyde…

…is the main antagonist in The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins, and is truly diabolical.

[SPOILER GUARANTEE]

His plan is to marry the naïve young woman, whom he will drive into an early grave and inherit her money. In this he is successful, and manages to avoid murdering his wife to boot.

Instead, he pushes her into a mental asylum. She has a half-sister who escaped from a mental asylum, and dies from natural causes. They resemble each other enough that no-one notices the swap.

This takes up the first third of the novel. In the following two-thirds, our protagonists must uncover the crime and have the young lady’s inheritance re-instated.

So who is Sir Percival Glyde?

He spent his childhood wandering around Europe with his parents, who were very socially reclusive.

His father was exceptionally ugly, and kept mostly to his own house.

His mother was abandoned by her previous husband, who ill-used her.

They were also unmarried, and feared the extra attention that this would bring.

Sir Percival has only a single friend, this being an Italian revolutionary who saves his life before the story begins.

Sir Percival’s lands are in Hampshire. His claim to the area came from bribing the local pastor’s wife to give him the key to the room where the Parish Marriage records are kept.

(This pastor’s wife is the mother of the titular woman, though the pastor is not her father.)

His wife comes from Cumberland. (For non-UK readers, these areas are hundreds of miles apart. In the mid-19th Century, this was an even greater social distance than it was today.)

The marriage itself was arranged between Sir Percival and his future (late) father-in-law. There was probably blackmail involved – the two half-sisters came across each other during childhood.

I could go on. But why am I talking about this individual?

Sir Percival, I argue, is the Proto-Atomised Individual. He has no real community ties. Many of his servants come from outside the country, let alone the county.

I would even go so far as to call The Woman in White a subtle example of Victorian Urban Horror, though most of all it is a detective novel.

The best examples in this genre are Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Grey and Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Curious Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.

I heartily recommend it.

I have also read Collins’ The Moonstone, as well as Dorian Grey and Dr Jekyll.

All three are excellent.