Man and Wife by Wilkie Collins (e book reader pc .txt) 📕
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Man and Wife is the ninth novel by Wilkie Collins, and was published in serial form in 1870. Like many of his other novels it has a complex plot and tackles social issues, in this case the then-lax state of the marriage laws, particularly in Scotland and Ireland. As always, Collins deals carefully but frankly with human personal behavior. To avoid offending Victorian morals too greatly, much is implied rather than stated outright. Nevertheless, even dealing with such matters at all led to his novels being derided as “sensation fiction” by his critics. By today’s standards, of course, they wouldn’t even raise an eyebrow.
In Man and Wife, the main character Anne Silvester has fallen pregnant to a muscular and handsome, but boorish man, Geoffrey Delamayn, to whom she is not married. She is working as a governess at a house in Scotland. Anne arranges to meet Delamayn secretly at a garden party and angrily demands that he fulfill his promise to marry her, that very day. He very reluctantly agrees to a secret, private marriage, knowing that a public marriage would badly affect his inheritance prospects. How is the marriage to be arranged quickly but kept quiet? Anne has a plan based on her understanding of the looseness of the marriage laws in Scotland. Naturally, of course, things go badly wrong with this plan and many complexities arise.
Collins is deeply critical of the state of contemporary marriage laws, both in how loosely they were framed, and in how little power over their own lives they gave to women once they were married, even if married to a brutal man. He also uses this novel to denounce the worship of sporting heroes and the obsession with physical prowess rather than mental superiority as a primary indication of male virtue.
Though not as popular as his novels The Woman in White and The Moonstone, Man and Wife received a good critical reception when it was released and was a commercial success.
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- Author: Wilkie Collins
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Irish Marriages (In the Prologue).—See Report, pages XII., XIII., XXIV.
Irregular Marriages in Scotland.—Statement of the law by Lord Deas. Report, page XVI.
Marriages of Children of Tender Years. Examination of Mr. Muirhead by Lord Chelmsford (Question 689).
Interchange of consent, established by inference. Examination of Mr. Muirhead by the Lord Justice Clerk (Question 654).
Marriage where consent has never been interchanged. Observations of Lord Deas. Report, page XIX.
Contradiction of opinions between authorities. Report, pages XIX., XX.
Legal provision for the sale of horses and dogs. No legal provision for the marriage of men and women. Mr. Seeton’s Remarks. Report, page XXX.
Conclusion of the Commissioners. In spite of the arguments advanced before them in favor of not interfering with Irregular Marriages in Scotland, the Commissioners declare their opinion that “Such marriages ought not to continue.” (Report, page XXXIV.)
In reference to the arguments (alluded to above) in favor of allowing the present disgraceful state of things to continue, I find them resting mainly on these grounds: That Scotland doesn’t like being interfered with by England (!). That Irregular Marriages cost nothing (!!). That they are diminishing in number, and may therefore be trusted, in course of time, to exhaust themselves (!!!). That they act, on certain occasions, in the capacity of a moral trap to catch a profligate man (!!!!). Such is the elevated point of view from which the institution of marriage is regarded by some of the most pious and learned men in Scotland. A legal enactment providing for the sale of your wife, when you have done with her, or of your husband; when you “really can’t put up with him any longer,” appears to be all that is wanting to render this North British estimate of the “Estate of Matrimony” practically complete. It is only fair to add that, of the witnesses giving evidence—oral and written—before the Commissioners, fully one-half regard the Irregular Marriages of Scotland from the Christian and the civilized point of view, and entirely agree with the authoritative conclusion already cited—that such marriages ought to be abolished. W. C. ↩
ColophonMan and Wife
was published in 1870 by
Wilkie Collins.
This ebook was produced for
Standard Ebooks
by
David Grigg,
and is based on a transcription produced in 2006 by
James Rusk and David Widger
for
Project Gutenberg
and on digital scans available at the
Internet Archive.
The cover page is adapted from
A Confession,
a painting completed in 1902 by
John Collier.
The cover and title pages feature the
League Spartan and Sorts Mill Goudy
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