Jess: The Modern Marian?

One would think I am trying to win the prize for Primeval nerdiness.

The sad part about my post today is that probably even less people know about The Woman in White than they do about Wuthering Heights (whose character Cathy I compared to Helen previously). This is also sad because The Woman in White (by Wilkie Collins) is quite a good story. To compensate for any lack of knowledge about this novel, here is what you need to know about Marian. She is the half-sister to Laura, whom you might say is the heroine of the novel. Laura goes through some Gothic-ish danger because people want her money, and Marian helps to save her and uncover the mystery of the novel. Marian's help comes in the form of Walter Hartright, the sisters' former drawing teacher who also eventually marries Laura.

So Marian is an intellectual character in a Victorian novel. She is very much the antithesis of Laura, who is pretty and fairly flat of a character. Marian is more developed, but she is also described (very starkly) as ugly. You see how it works?

The reason I compare Primeval's Jess to Marian is obviously for physical appearance. It's because Jess is also intellectual; she knows computers backwards and forwards and is very good at her job as team coordinator. Sometimes it seems like she's team leader, not just coordinator: she organizes so much of what goes on. So she gets things done in just as hands-on a way as Marian does, letting nothing stop her and never being intimidated by other people.

The difference is that Jess is not a Victorian character. The Woman in White addresses a lot of women's issues, and I think the contrast between Marian's ugly/intellectual self and Laura's pretty/one-dimensional self is intentional as a part of this. But Jess is able to take both sides of Marian and Laura. She is smart and bold, but she is also pretty and very girly (and wears wonderful outfits). In a sense, Jess is what Marian and Laura (particularly Marian) are not allowed to be in Victorian society.

The Woman in White

I'd been wanting to read this for a while, after coming across Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical version of the book. Not that I ever got to see the musical, I just watched some clips and fell in love with the song "I Believe My Heart." (You can see the musical version of it here and the one by Keedie and Duncan James here. I'd love to have Josh Groban and Hayley Westenra sing it together . . .)

The Woman and White and author Wilkie Collins never seem to be in the forefront of the classics, and I really wondered why as the first parts of this book completely enraptured me. There's something tender and innocent about it, which is captured quite nicely in "I Believe My Heart." But then the emotional pull started to get tiring. The middle of the book was draining to read. Then what follows, while interesting, is driven by figuring out the facts of a mystery. Mystery isn't exactly my genre. I get a little bored if it lasts too long. And The Woman in White is a long mystery at 620 pages.

Here's my brief comment on those 620 pages: this book definitely has its moments and I'd recommend it as a good read, but the plot-driven state seems to leave it a little bare in other areas, so I can't make it a great favorite.