A Novel Ahead of Its Time

Themed issues are a sort of art in their own right: there’s a delicate balance in curating a themed issue, and it’s difficult to predict what will strike a chord with writers. Zoetic Press is a collaborative press made up of writers, which is helpful: when planning out our themed issues, it’s both helpful and fun to ask ourselves What would I want to write about? (This can also be wildly frustrating when our theme gives us a great idea that we can’t exactly submit to ourselves for publication.) Every issue of NonBinary Review thus far has been themed on a classic work available to the public through Project Gutenberg. While many of the works in the public domain fall into what academics call “The Canon,” we try to select works that skirt the perimeter of the canon: works that have an enduring allure to readers and writers alike, but don’t necessarily “toe the party line” of patriarchal binaries. We’ve explored fairy tales, fables, myths, and groundbreaking novels—and this issue is no exception, with a unique history of its own.

Published in 1859, The Woman in White is widely regarded as the first true example of “detective fiction”—much like Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is often touted as the first true science-fiction novel. Though the primary narrator isn’t himself a detective, he employs many of the traits, characteristics and affectations that nearly 30 years later would come to define Sherlock Holmes, detective fiction’s most recognizable hero. Wilkie Collins made creative use of his background in law to create a novel that was altogether unique at the time of its publication: a “whodunit” mystery, presented in several narrative threads, allowing the reader to see a complexity of the story that each character cannot. Not only was the mystery story a new type of literature—at the time, it was dubbed a “sensation novel”—and instead of being a novel intended strictly for the upper class, this was one a work of fiction intended for audiences from all social strata. The 19th century saw the birth of the steam-powered rotary press that made industrial printing possible, which opened up the possibility for a whole new class of readers, who before would not have had access to reading material that they could afford. Published as a work of serial fiction, it allowed for entertainment that could be shared at a cost that made it within the reach of the working class. In a way, you could call The Woman in White one of the first pulp fiction novels, or a predecessor of the mass-market paperback.

Structurally, The Woman in White contains a lot of elements that we as readers take for granted these days, because they’ve become the industry standard and defined genre conventions. At the time of its publication, these conceits and construction elements were wholly unique, making the novel ever more remarkable. The writing style was accessible to readers of the working class, and many characters whose voices contributed to the plot were recognizable to the target audience as a reflection of themselves. The style of the writing relied heavily on Wilkie Collins’s background in law, which, in a way, makes it an early example of a crime procedural—think of it as the great-great-great-grandfather to Law and Order. The shifting POV from which the narrative unfolds allowed Collins an unprecedented amount of flexibility with the story—things could be withheld from characters and revealed to the reader in order to advance the mystery.

And there’s one other way that The Woman in White was distinctive for its time: the plotline is in part driven by the limited rights of women in society, especially the disadvantageous position of married women, whose husbands control all money and property, including wealth that came from their wives’ families. As a white, professional man in the mid-19th century United States, this position of empathy in literature is in itself a unique theme to use as the driving force of a story intended for readers of all classes. The fact that Collins would revisit this theme in later works suggests that The Woman in White was one of the early examples of social justice themes being incorporated into literature. The fact that the story was published as a serial in Charles Dickens’ magazine All The Year Round (Dickens, you may remember, was another early author who incorporated themes of social justice into work intended for consumption by the working class, as well as the upper class.) Though Dickens and Collins may not have themselves changed the plight of the working class during the mid-19th century, their work accomplished some of the aims of social justice: it allowed the working class to discover themselves in the literature, and assured them that their struggles, challenges, and humanity was both seen and regarded as important. It served to educate while entertaining: people without access to legal counsel were able to pick up useful information by reading the narrative. Likewise, upper class readers, who may never have considered the consequences of the disparity of marital rights between the sexes with regard to property, were able to see a perspective outside their own through the characters. Finally, the reception of stories changes the social attitude in small, but real, ways. Though fiction doesn’t dictate social policy, it does have the power to influence people who create social policy. Though The Woman in White didn’t immediately change how married women were treated by the law with regards to property, it definitely influenced other authors, politicians, lawyers, and eventually, suffragettes, by turning the spotlight towards a social injustice.

At Zoetic Press, we’re fascinated by the innovators, the origin stories, the writers on the avant-garde. We brought you the King in Yellow because it was the cornerstone of the Lovecraftian Cthulu mythos. We brought you fairy tales from across the world because every culture builds its own mythology in the stories passed down over time. We brought you The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, itself an American fairy tale of sorts. In the next year, we’ll also be bringing you A Study in Scarlet—a work that arguably might never have existed without The Woman in White breaking new ground and demonstrating that there is an audience for every kind of story. We search the world’s literary histories for stories that were sleeper hits, slow burns, or have endured the test of time—stories that still inspire 21st century authors to explore their nuance, continue the story, revisit the characters, or re-direct the narrative. We hope that in this issue, you’ll discover some of the elements which drew us to choose The Woman in White as the anchor text for a collection of authors to draw upon for inspiration, exploring the story in ways that Wilkie Collins might never have envisioned.

Allie Marini