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Armadale (1864-66) by Wilkie Collins is his longest and most ambitious novel — a story about two men named Allan Armadale (one the legitimate heir to an estate, one his illegitimate cousin) who meet as young men and become friends, and about Lydia Gwilt, the novel's villainess, who is probably the most fully realized female villain in Victorian fiction. The novel is organized around a dream — the Armadale Dream Narrative — which one of the Armadales receives and which seems to prophesy a murder; the question of whether the prophecy can be avoided, and who will be its victim, drives the narrative through its enormous length. Lydia Gwilt is the character who makes Armadale extraordinary: a convicted poisoner, a bigamist, a woman of extraordinary beauty and intelligence who has survived a life of catastrophic misfortune by using every resource available to her, and who falls genuinely in love with the wrong man in the novel's most unexpected emotional development.
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Armadale (1864)
Complete Armadale Book List
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Armadale
Wilkie Collins·1864
Armadale — Frequently Asked Questions
Who is Lydia Gwilt, and why is she such an unusual character?
Lydia Gwilt is a convicted poisoner, a forger, and a woman who has used every available means to survive in a society that offered women of her class and circumstances no legitimate options. She is extraordinarily beautiful, highly intelligent, and capable of genuine feeling (her diary, which Collins uses to show her consciousness from the inside, reveals a woman who is fully aware of what she is doing and is not entirely at peace with it). She falls genuinely in love with the younger Armadale in the novel's most emotionally complex development, and her eventual self-sacrifice to save the man she loves is both unexpected and, within the novel's logic, completely consistent with the character Collins has built. She was attacked by Victorian reviewers as a degraded and immoral character; she is now recognized as one of the most sophisticated characterizations in Victorian sensation fiction.
What is the Armadale Dream, and how does it function in the novel?
One of the two Allan Armadales receives a dream that seems to prophesy events involving the other Armadale — the dream is the novel's central mysterious element and its most Gothic feature. Collins uses it to create suspense about whether the prophesied events can be avoided, whether the dream is genuinely prophetic or coincidentally accurate, and who will be the victim of whatever violence it seems to foretell. The dream divides readers: some find it the novel's most interesting structural element, others find it an unnecessary Gothic overlay on a realistic story that doesn't need supernatural machinery. In either case, it drives the plot and gives the novel its distinctive quality of prophetic dread.
Is Armadale Collins's best novel after The Moonstone and The Woman in White?
Many Collins enthusiasts think so, though it is the longest and the least immediately accessible of the three. Its length (it is significantly longer than either of the other major novels) means that it demands more patience; its plot is more complex and its characters more numerous; and the presence of two major characters with the same name creates obvious complications. But it contains Collins's most fully developed characterization (Lydia Gwilt) and his most sustained exploration of fate, coincidence, and the relationship between character and destiny. It is the choice of Collins scholars who want the fullest expression of his imaginative range.
How does Collins handle the problem of two characters with the same name?
The two Armadales are distinguished throughout the novel by calling one 'Ozias Midwinter' (the name the illegitimate Armadale was raised under) and the other 'Allan' or 'young Armadale.' This is partly Collins's practical solution and partly thematically relevant — the question of which Armadale is which, and what name each has a right to, is central to the novel's legal and moral concerns. The name confusion is also used deliberately for comic and dramatic effect at various points, and the resolution of the naming question (which Armadale will keep the name?) is part of the novel's final resolution.
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