Armadale (novel)

infobox Book |
name = Armadale


image_caption =
author = Wilkie Collins
cover_artist =
country = England
language = English
series =
genre = Mystery Novel, Sensation novel
publisher = Cornhill Magazine
release_date = 1864
media_type = Print (Hardback & Paperback)
pages =
isbn = NA
preceded_by = My Miscellanies
followed_by = No Thoroughfare

"Armadale" (1866) by Wilkie Collins is a 19th-century semi-epistolary novel. Some chapters consist of letters between the various characters, while other chapters record the events as the characters perceive them.

Plot Summary

The novel has a convoluted plot about two distant cousins both named Allan Armadale. The father of one had murdered the father of the other (the two fathers are also named Allan Armadale). The story starts with a deathbed confession by the murderer in the form of a letter to be given to his baby son when he grows up. Many years are skipped over. The son, mistreated at home, runs away from his mother and stepfather, and takes up a wandering life under the assumed name of Ozias Midwinter. He becomes a companion to the other Allan Armadale, who throughout the novel never discovers the relationship. But Ozias is constantly haunted by feeling that he might harm Allan, first after he reads the letter left for him, and then again after they spend the night on a shipwreck off the Isle of Man--the ship turning out to be the same on which the old murder took place (the murderer locked his victim in a cabin as the boat filled with water). On the boat, Allan has a mysterious dream involving three characters. This dream fills Ozias with foreboding, its three scenes becoming fulfilled in the course of the novel.

Allan inherits estates at Thorpe-Ambrose in Norfolk after the mysterious death of three of the family. He is unused to wealth, and falls in love with the sixteen-year-old daughter of Major Milroy, to whom he has rented a cottage. This love affair is for a period thwarted by the machinations of Miss Milroy's governess, Lydia Gwilt.

Lydia, who is thirty-five but looks twenty-something, is the villain of the novel and her colourful portrayal takes up much of the rest of the story. Originally Allan’s nurse as a baby, she is a fortune-hunter and, it turns out, a murderess. Unable to alienate Allan's affections from Miss Milroy, she settles for marrying Midwinter, having discovered his name is the same. She plots to murder Allan--or to have him killed by her ex-husband, a Spanish desperado--and, since she is now "Mrs. Armadale," to impersonate his widow. Allan escapes the desperado's attempt on his life--he is supposed to drown in a shipwreck--and returns to England. Lydia's plans are thus foiled. Her last shot is to murder Allan herself--the weapon being poison gas, the scene being a sanatorium run by a quack called Doctor Downward--but it's no go. Midwinter and Allan have switched rooms, and she can't bring herself to murder her true husband, for whom she does have a streak of kindness. At the end of her tether, she goes into the air-poisoned room and kills herself. Allan marries Miss Milroy; Midwinter, still his best friend, becomes (what else?) a writer.

The novel is enlivened by many minor characters including Mr Bashwood, an old failure of a clerk who is infatuated with the beautiful Lydia; his son, James Bashwood, a private detective; Mrs Oldershaw, an unscrupulous associate of Lydia’s; the Pedgifts (father and son), Allan's sometime lawyers; and the Rev Decimus Brock, a shrewd and rational clergymen who brings Allan up but who has to be kept out of the way for much of the book

Is the dream to be interpreted rationally or superstitiously, as Midwinter does? The question is never resolved. “The distortions of the plot, the violent and irrational reactions of the characters, reflect and dramatize the ways in which his readers’ perceptions were distorted by the assumptions and hypocrisies of the society in which they lived," writes Catherine Peters.

In the end, the novel teaches that the sins of the fathers are not visited on the children, and the son of the murderer can turn out good. Collins was to take this up again later in The Legacy of Cain.

Adaptations

A play by Jeffrey Hatcher based on the novel premiered on 23 April 2008 at the Milwaukee Repertory Theater.

Major Characters in "Armadale"

*Allan Armadale – Chief protagonist and hero of the novel
*Ozias Midwinter – His friend and a major narrator
*Lydia Gwilt – Forger and laudanum addict, the anti-heroine of the novel

Minor characters in "Armadale"

There are many minor characters who, besides advancing the plot, add complexity or comic relief to the novel. They include:
*Decimus Brock – A priest and friend of Alan Armadale and Ozias Midwinter. He is a correspondent of Ozias Midwinter and privy to his secret
*Mrs Maria Oldershaw – Lydia Gwilt's partner in crime
*Allan Armadale (1st) – Father of Allan Armadale (2nd)
*Allan Armadale (2nd) – Son of Allan Armadale (1st) and father of the main character Allan Armadale
*Allan Armadale (3rd) – Father of Ozias Midwinter and murderer of Allan Armadale (2nd)
*Mr. Neil – Stepfather to Ozias Midwinter

Publication history

Armadale was first published in serial form in Cornhill Magazine in 20 monthly installments. The first installment appeared in the November 1864 issue and the last in the June 1866 issue. It also appeared in Harper's New Monthly Magazine in America in serial form between December 1864 and July 1866. It first appeared in book form as a two volume "literary edition" in [May 1866] .

External links

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