Reviews for The Dead Secret

The average rating for The Dead Secret based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2016-08-22 00:00:00 Romain Gilson After The Woman in White, this is my second try with Wilkie Collins. While I became his admirer after my first experience of his writing, in second, my interest in his novels only increased further. I have already made a purchase of his classic The Moonstone and soon I am going to start my journey with its characters and plot for having a third-time experience of Collins. What I find most interesting about his novels is the way in which he advances his story. By the time I started and read the first few pages of this book, I had already made my mind to turn its pages till the last. In my opinion, this is the predominant feature that I have found in Collins writing, which makes you force going ahead with the story and probably for the same reason he is placed among the pioneers top authors as long as detective stories are concerned. The story moves around a secret that was written in a letter and the letter was kept hidden in a place, in the Porthgenna Tower. This letter got eventually discovered after 15 years, by the person whose destiny and existence was entirely dependent on this secret and, also adherent to it, was the redemption, fear, and salvation of another person who enshrouded it there. The dead secret was hidden in the Myrtle Room, where the dirt of half a century crusted on the glass; walls red and faded, chairs in confusion, tables placed awry; black bookcase with an open door half drooping from its hinges; ceiling darkened by stains and a floor whitened by dust. dust floating upward, pouring downward, rolling smoothly round and round in still atmosphere. I found the idea of the couple very touching where it is said by Mrs. Frankland that she would give her eyes to her husband Mr. Frankland (a blind gentleman) to see the world and would use his advice as he was more intelligent. The character of Uncle Joseph is very well. Finding the "misanthrope"(another interesting character), for at least once, in his life, in good humor was a good feeling. I read somewhere that Collins maintains a certain sense of dignity with his female characters and I agree on that, he has maintained the same dignity in this novel as well. Though the secret was not "that great a secret" but I liked the way, he plotted those sentiments of two women after the revelation of the secret. A nice read for Wilkie Collins Fans!

Review # 2 was written on 2016-01-17 00:00:00 Gerry Mcguire I don't think anyone would want to claim that The Dead Secret was among Wilkie Collins's finest novels. It's an early work (1856), and you have a sense (as with Basil, 1852, which I read last year) that Collins was still learning his trade. Nonetheless, I still found this an enjoyable read. Some of the elements in the novel are strong, even if the mix doesn't quite come together; and there are all kinds of intriguing anticipations of Collins's more realized later novels, such as Armadale and No Name. Like Basil, The Dead Secret seems an anticipation of the Victorian genre of the sensation novel, channelling the mystery and darkness of the Gothic novel, but within a realist, contemporary setting, and using melodrama as a means of dramatizing social issues. Like Basil, as well, The Dead Secret flirts at points with a purer form of Gothic, incorporating'at least at a psychological level'supernatural motifs such as ghosts and vengeful fiends. In both novels, this hybridity is articulated geographically, with Cornwall serving as an obdurate outpost of Gothic mystery, as it does in Du Maurier's Rebecca. In The Dead Secret, Collins dramatizes this brilliantly through the motif of transport, with characters traveling by rail to Exeter, and then plunging off into an earlier world of stage-coaches, post-chaises, and tramps across desolate moorlands (the novel is set pointedly in 1844, during a brief interval when this was the case.) Collins loves mixing things up in terms of genre and tone. Porthgenna Tower, the Cornish mansion where some of the key scenes in the novel take place, is a splendidly over-the-top monument to the Gothick imagination run riot, with its mouldering, ghost-infested north wing in which the eponymous, long-buried secret lurks. In characteristic fashion, however, rather than giving this pile the creepy, Igor-like custodians it seems to demand, Collins has it looked after by a comic double-act butler-housekeeper duo, the ponderous Mr Munder ("one of those tall, grave, benevolent-looking men, with a conical head, a deep voice, a slow step, and a heavy manner, who passively contrive to get a great reputation for wisdom without the trouble of saying or doing anything to deserve it") and his adoring sidekick Mrs Pentreath, in fact far more intelligent than he. There's a lot of rather delightful neo-Dickensian humor in this book in general (Collins was working closely with Dickens when he wrote it.) Munder and Pentreath aside, I also liked the bit-part scene-stealer Mr Phippen, a "martyr to Dyspepsia" ("'Think of that,' he warns a little girl about to have an extra piece of bread and marmalade at breakfast, 'think of Mr Phippens's clogged apparatus'and say 'No thank you' next time.'") The grungy, grouchy household of the misanthrope Andrew Treverton and his wonderfully named manservant Shrowl was also a lot of fun. One reason why I like Collins is his way with women'a respect in which he seems to me far superior to Dickens. The two main female characters in The Dead Secret, the melancholy and tormented Sarah Leeson and the bright, energetic Rosamund Treverton, are a well-matched and interesting pair, though not quite up there with Collins's finest female creations. Rosamund is intriguingly paired with a blind husband for whom she has to act as guide: a device that Collins exploits superbly for dramatic purposes in one climactic episode in the novel, but which is also interesting in terms of the conjugal dynamic it sets up between them within a world that more typically cast wives in the role of clinging dependents and husbands in that of protectors. There! I was planning to dispatch The Dead Secret in a paragraph, having started by saying that it was not classic Collins; and now I find I had much more to say about it than I was expecting (and without even touching on the main themes of the novel, which I couldn't really do without risking spoilers.) Conclusion: second-rate Collins is still pretty interesting and worthwhile. I'm going to continue my occasional forays into his minor works.