by Mann Rentoy www.mannrentoy.com Email: info@mannrentoy.com

1. No Name
by Wilkie Collins
MANN RENTOY

2. William Wilkie Collins
(8 January 1824 – 23 September
1889) was an English novelist,
playwright, and short story writer.
His best-known works are The
Woman in White (1859), No
(1862), Armadale (1866), and The
Moonstone (1868), considered
first modern English detective
novel.

3. Wilkie Collins (named William
Wilkie after his father)
• one of the most influential
authors of the Victorian era, yet
his name is often just a side note

4. • During his lifetime,
his best known
novels were
classified as
“sensation novels”:
early examples of
detective and
suspense fiction.

5. • Collins expanded the form into the full
length mystery
• The Woman in White is his first effort,
containing most of the usual elements;
but it was The Moonstone that is the
fully developed prototype of the genre.
No Name: suspense fiction.

6. Collins and Charles Dickens were close
friends, each influenced by the other,
collaborated on several projects

7. * both shared a concern for social issues,
and brought servants from their roles as
background figures to the forefront as
human, sympathetic characters.
* Dickens was more successful in his
social criticism

8. “sensation
novels”

9. Collins:
- a frustrated lawyer who loved to
dabble in legal issues and problems
brought about by flaws in LAW

10. No Name: suspense fiction.

12. • Basil (1852)
• Hide and Seek (1854)
• The Dead Secret (1856)
• The Frozen Deep (1857), a play co-written with Charles Dickens
• "A House to Let" (1858), a short story co-written with Charles Dickens,
Elizabeth Gaskell and Adelaide Anne Procter
• "The Haunted House" a short story co-written with Charles Dickens,
Elizabeth Gaskell, Adelaide Anne Proctor, George Sala and Hesba
Stretton
• The Woman in White (1860)
• No Name (1862)
• Armadale (1866)
• No Thoroughfare (1867), a story and play co-written with Charles
Dickens
• The Moonstone (1868)
• Man and Wife (1870) (UK 1997)

13. • Poor Miss Finch (1872), dedicated to Frances Minto Elliot
• John Jago's Ghost or The Dead Alive
• The New Magdalen (1873)
• The Law and the Lady (1875)
• The Two Destinies (1876)
• The Haunted Hotel, (1879) a short novel serialized from June to
November 1878
• The Fallen Leaves (1879)
• Who Killed Zebedee? (1881)
• The Black Robe (1881)
• Heart And Science (1882-1883)

14. • The Evil Genius (1885)
• The Guilty River (1886)
• Legacy Of Cain (1888)
• Blind Love (1890 – unfinished, completed by Walter Besant)
Screen adaptations of his novels
• The Moonstone (1934)
• The Woman in White (USA 1948)
• The Moonstone (UK, 7 episodes, 1959)
• The Woman in White (UK 1997)

17. Plot Structure
- Linear
- Mimicing a Play: divided into
“Scenes” and each scene divided
into “Chapters”
- In between Scenes, narrative
continues with LETTERS, Diary
Entries, Newspaper Ad

19. * First 100 Pages:
- setting the stage
- introducing the characters
- describing lifestyle in Combe
Raven: Watching a Concert, Staging a
Play (“The Rivals”)

20. basic plot is driven by a legal issue.
The parents are not legally married,
because the father entered a
disastrous young marriage abroad, but
was unable to obtain a divorce.

21. The parents lived together as husband
and wife, but never made it legal until
the first wife died.
After the legal marriage, but before
they can make a new estate plan, both
die under tragic circumstances.

22. This leaves the girls disinherited and
with NO NAME.
Due to previous family quarrels, the
nearest relative, who inherits the
fortune, casts away the girls,
considering himself morally justified as
the “divine retribution” for the sins of
the parents.

23. As the family lawyer, Mr. Pendril says,
“I am far from defending the law of England as it
affects illegitimate offspring. On the contrary, I think
it a disgrace to the nation. It visits the sins of the
parents on the children; it encourages vice by
depriving fathers and mothers of the strongest of all
motives for making the atonement of marriage; and
it claims to produce these two abominable results in
the names of morality and religion.”

24. CHARACTERS

25. Andrew Vanstone
Mrs. Vanstone
Norah and Magdalen
Ms. Harriet Garth
Francis Clare
Mr Clare
Captain Wragge
Mrs. Wragge

26. In Aldborough
Norah
Magdalen (Susan Bygrave)
Ms. Harriet Garth
Michael Vanstone
Noel Vanstone
Mrs. Lecounte

27. In St. Crux
Norah and Magdalen
Ms. Harriet Garth
Admiral Bartram
George Bartram
John Loscombe

28. In St. Crux
Norah and Magdalen
Ms. Harriet Garth
Captain Kirke
George Bartram

29. Magdalen Vanstone and family living a
prosperous and happy life
Magdalen and Francis Clare love affair
Francis is sent to London, then to China.
Failures in both.
Andrew Vanstone dies in a railway accident

30. Mrs. Vanstone dies in premature child labor. The
baby inside her dies as well.
Lawyer Pendril then reveals the complete
background of the whole story:
Illegitimate children
NO NAME
No inheritance
All their wealth goes to Michael Vanstone

31. The rest of the story is about how Magdalen tries
to recover the family’s wealth from the older
sinister brother of Andrew who had a history of
bitter quarrel with him
Norah stays with Miss Garth, their staunch
friend, and becomes a governess.
Magdalen earns her living on the stage, runs
away to York.

32. She encounters a disreputable cousin by
marriage, Captain Wragge, an amiable villain
and his pathetic, simpletonic wife
Her career, managed by Wragge, is a great
success.
Michael Vanstone dies, leaving no will,
Magdalen appeals to his physically and mentally
feeble son Noel.

33. She receives a dismissive reply from his
formidable housekeeper Mrs Lecount.
Determined on revenge, she visits Noel in
London, disguised as Miss Garth. Her request
for half the fortune is rejected. Mrs Lecount sees
through her disguise and snips a piece of cloth
from her dress as evidence.

34. Magdalen now decides to retrieve her inheritance
by marrying her cousin Noel - her engagement to
Francis Clare has been broken off.
With Wragge's help, she follows Noel to
Aldborough and is introduced as Wragge's niece,
Susan Bygrave. Mrs Lecount is again suspicious
but Wragge lures her away to her family in
Zurich with a forged letter.

35. Noel is fascinated by Magdalen and
proposes. Magdalen, horrified at the prospect of
marriage to a man she loathes, buys a lethal dose
of laudanum and contemplates suicide, but
finally goes through with the match.

36. Mrs Lecount returns and convinces Noel that he
has been deceived into marrying his
cousin. Finding Magdalen's bottle of laudanum,
she also persuades him that Magdalen planned to
poison him.

37. Noel alters his will, leaving the fortune to a
cousin, Admiral Bartram, with a secret letter
passing the inheritance to the Admiral's son
George Bartram, on condition he marries within
six months.
Noel, who has a weak heart, collapses and dies.

38. Magdalen, convinced that the legacy to Admiral
Bartram conceals a secret intention, disguises
herself as a maid, and takes a position in the
Admiral's house.
She narrowly fails in an audacious attempt to
find the secret letter and escapes to London.

39. Penniless and desperately ill, she is nursed back
to health by Captain Kirke, whom she first met at
Aldborough. They fall in love and marry.
Meanwhile Norah, without knowing anything of
the will, has met and married George Bartram.

40. ANALYSIS/EVALUATION

41. “… laborious in its set-up and long-
winded in its execution. The elaborate
plots and counterplots and the “she
knows that he knows that she knows”
machinations were entertaining but
could be skimmed through without
risking the loss of either comprehension
or pleasure…”

42. Force of Language

43. seaside scene-setting:
It was a dull, airless evening. Eastward,
was the gray majesty of the sea, hushed in
breathless calm; the horizon line invisibly
melting into the monotonous, misty sky; the
idle ships shadowy and still on the idle
water. Southward, the high ridge of the sea
dike, and the grim, massive circle of a
martello tower reared high on its mound of
grass,

44. closed the view darkly on all that lay beyond.
Westward, a lurid streak of sunset glowed
red in the dreary heaven, blackened the
fringing trees on the far borders of the great
inland marsh, and turned its little gleaming
water-pools to pools of blood. Nearer to the
eye, the sullen flow of the tidal river Alde
ebbed noiselessly from the muddy banks; and
nearer still, lonely and unprosperous by the

45. bleak water-side, lay the lost little port of
Slaughden, with its forlorn wharfs and
warehouses of decaying wood, and its few
scattered coasting-vessels deserted on the
oozy river-shore. No fall of waves was heard
on the beach, no trickling of waters bubbled
audibly from the idle stream. Now and then
the cry of a sea-bird rose from the region of
the marsh; and at intervals, from

50. Strength of the Novel:
characterization

51. Towards Magdalen:
pathetic
to impressively heroic
to bold and daring
to edge-of-the-seat vengeance
to sorrow and sympathy
to celebratory relief

52. Towards Capt. Wragge:
irritated
pathetic
to impressively heroic
to bold and daring
to genius
to hero

53. Themes

54. Illegitimacy
Laws of Inheritance
Women Empowerment and
Emancipation
Love and Real Love Tested by Trials
and Travails
Pietas: Love of Family