The story begins when drawing master Walter Hartright encounters a distressed woman dressed entirely in white on a moonlit road to London. This meeting entangles him in the affairs of his pupils, Laura Fairlie and her sister Marian Halcombe. The plot follows the schemes of Sir Percival Glyde and the eccentric Count Fosco as they attempt to steal Laura’s inheritance through identity theft and forced confinement in an asylum. Multiple narrators provide testimony to uncover how legal loopholes and social structures allow for the erasure of a woman's civil existence and property rights.
Readers of Victorian sensation fiction and legal thrillers choose this book to see how intricate criminal conspiracies operate within the domestic sphere. The text appeals to those interested in early detective methods and the historical vulnerabilities of women under nineteenth-century marriage laws. A reader finishes the book with a technical understanding of the "rule of evidence" and an awareness of how Victorian villains utilized institutional power to manipulate truth and inheritance.
- Published
- 1860
- Language
- EN
