Week 42 – Heaven knows I’m Mazeyable now.
“Take the outside of her and she’s as straight as a poplar; take the inside of her, and she’s as crooked as Sin. Such a fine-grown girl, too. What a pity! what a pity!”
Well, well. That’s another fine mess you’ve gotten in to, Magdalen. Her actions are increasingly futile, her foes increasingly humane and her goal increasingly distorted. Before our eyes, Magdalen has become the villain of the novel. There are no evil machinations being plotted against her, just a combination of sympathy and a healthy distrust. Can she ever return to being the hero again? Just a few weeks left to find out.
Incidentally, it feels like Collins has become very aware of the impending end as he crams in ANOTHER scene change and throws in some all-too convenient plot developments. I feared last week when Magdalen conveniently found a complete set of keys lying around that No Name had jumped the shark, now we find she herself is a land-shark. Or a poplar. To be honest Mazey seems a little unsure what she is, only that she has a mesmerising waist. Obviously.
And so another plan goes to waist -sorry, waste – and we’re off to another scene. But where? It occurred to me this week how linear the plot is, insomuch as characters seem to rarely return. Obviously the dead aren’t coming back (so far I reckon a bodycount of five, with the admiral possibly making six), but we’ve also apparently seen the last of Frank, his father, various lawyers, housekeepers, maids etc, the Wragges (sob) and Captain Kirk who’s boldly gone. In other Collins’ novels the departed return through their narrations written after event, providing an inherent sense of wrapping up throughout the text; here the disappearance of each character feels more of a loss. Miss Garth seems to have hung on through her letters between scenes, but it’s been a remarkably long time since we’ve seen her break out of an interval.
So place your bets on what happens next. Will the Admiral’s slipperless somnambulist stroll be the death of him? Was Mrs Tyrrel right to suspect him of deliberately causing offence? Where will the final showdown occur? And will the Wragges return to join Norah and Magdalen’s team in the twice-cited “Family Misfortunes”? Our survey says…
Collins No Name Reading Project 
I think I will disagree with Pete on Magdalen’s becoming more the villain in this installment. What I see is good society, represented by the Admiral, casting her as the villain. “Mrs. Noel Vanstone” is now one of those women not to be spoken of, a woman to whom it would be a disgrace to be connected to by marriage, as George would be by marrying her sister.
But that’s just the Admiral, whose views Miss Garth disparages as prejudices and Mrs. Tyrrel condemns as worldly and selfish. I feel encouraged to swing my sympathies behind Magdalen again as she is cast out of the house and left to feel stupefied and bewildered. Good society is the source of the very problem this book is about (the disinheritance of illegitimate children); I’m not inclined to take their side, so if Magdalen is now the disreputable Mrs. Noel Vanstone, I feel more not less inclined to side with her.
And I expect Captain Kirke to return and marry her, after she has seen the error of her ways.
I agree society is the greater villain here, and that certainly seems to be Collins’s intention. And I certainly agree that we should sympathise with her. But…I maintain that her actions are those you would expect of a villain. Swindles, false disguises, burglary…she has taken to a life of crime. So long as Noel and Lecount were around we could argue she was the lesser of two (or three) evils, but with them gone Magdalen’s desperate schemes do not reflect well on her. If she just stopped, things would be better. Of all the characters remaining, it is she who is doing most harm and she who must be stopped for there to be a happy ending for everyone else: she is the villain. Society may be to blame but Collins has chosen to illustrate that idea precisely by showing the steady decline of his heroine’s morals as a consequence.
Mind, she is not lost. Her unwillingness to contest Mazey’s story and reputation shows, tragically, that her morals are still in there, though buried under a mountain of blind determination. And of course we have been told time and again that she has turned to her life of crime for Nora’s benefit. What will she do when she discovers the awful truth of how her masterplan has harmed, not helped, her sister?
I like this notion of Pete’s that to show the failings of society Collins is depicting the steady decline of Magdalen’s morals.
Of course, Norah’s morals didn’t decline … it’s the two paths again: how should you face adversity, even villainy: by fighting it or by just moving on? Norah moves on, and seems to have, well, moved on. Magdalen has got herself stuck and has even married Noel Vanstone, one of the chief villains in the story. She could hardly have done more to put herself on his level, to join herself with him.