The Woman in White: The Beginnining

You think the title of the post is a typo, but it is not.

THE WOMAN IN WHITE APRIL READALONG HAS BEGUN.


Today is the day we discuss our preconceptions and how ridiculous we think Wilkie Collins is.
As mentioned in the sign-up post, I thought this was a ghost story for basically forever. Because it sounds like one. When is there ever an ALIVE "Woman in White"? Lady in Red, I'll grant you. I quote from an obviously completely reputable website called "Bizarre Bytes": Many, many, MANY cultures have a White Lady figure in their mythology.  In medieval times in England, The White Lady would act as a harbinger of death – appearing night and day in a home where someone is about to die.
So just to beat this putrefying horse further into the ground (aww), it sounds like there should be a ghost, and I am put out about this. But enough people have said "OMG WOMAN IN WHITE I ENJOYED IT SO" that it is ok.

Wilkie Collins. I look on him with suspicion because he was BFFs with Dickens, and because of his great big bushy beard and giant forehead. BUT, all this is obviously him as a person. I actually expect to fully enjoy his writing. I mean, look, Dickens was a tool, but he was a hilarious tool.
Not knowing ANYTHING about the plot other than that there's apparently a big fat man played by Michael Crawford in the musical version is a bit exciting, as so much of the time we know the whole plot of Victorian novels before reading them due to their pervasiveness in the culture. Maybe people in the UK are more up on Collins, but he's definitely not completely mainstream here.
The reading schedule is here, and for NEXT MONDAY, we're doing the Preface through Chapter XV, the End of Hartright's Narrative. If you're at the end of someone else's narrative, you're in the wrong spot.
Meanwhile, who is Hartright? Is it a dude? It sounds like a dude. Will we like him? Oh, I kind of hope not.
And for those of you NOT doing the readalong and for whom this post was therefore a bit not-quite-completely-awesome, here's some more Jennifer Lawrence for you: