No Name

By Wilkie Collins and C W Whistling

Book Overview

"Shall I tell you what a lady is? A lady is a woman who wears a silk gown, and has a sense of her own importance."

Wilkie Collins's investigation of illegitimacy and 'the woman question' in No Name (1862) compels with a wholly different order of suspense from that of The Woman in White or The Moonstone. For its family secret - the Vanstone daughters' illegitimacy, their consequent disinheritance and fall from social grace - is revealed early on, and as Magdalen Vanstone struggles to reclaim her identity, the plot uncovers many a moral, social and legal skeleton in the cupboards of Victorian society. Mercurial and unscrupulous, Magdalen is Wilkie Collins's most exhilarating heroine, one of the rare subversives in Victorian fiction and a woman dazzlingly versatile in her powers of self-transformation. Through her, with great comic vigour, No Name exposes how social identity is constructed, and how it can be dismantled, buried, borrowed or invented.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B000K852I2
• ISBN13: 9780140433975
• Release Date: July 1995
• Publisher: Penguin Classics
• Length: 640 Pages
• Weight: 0.92 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 5.2" x 7.5"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Grade 12 and higher

Customer Reviews

"Mr. Vanstone's daughters are Nobody's Children"

4 1/2 stars, but I rounded up. No Name is the story and portrait of Magdalen Vanstone... or as Wilkie introduces his novel in the preface, "Here is one more book that depicts the struggle of a human creature, under those opposing influences of Good and Evil, which we have all felt, which we have all known." It's a fairly accurate description as throughout the course of the story, we see the evolution of the character of our heroine; we see her heading down a shady path, but yet somehow from a 21st century perspective, Magdalen manages to make it seem not so immoral. Often times I see her trying to act as morally as she can in the unmoral situations she chooses to involve herself in. Part of No Name's strength, arises from the deftness in which Collins creates Magdalen. She posseses such an enormous range in character and emotion that if No Name were ever to be made into a movie, actresses would vie to have her role. When Magdalen and her sister's inheritance are taken away due to unexpected familial circumstances, Magdalen resolutely follows a reckless path of revenge. While not exactly your Victorian equivalent of your "Kill Bill," the novel seems closer in spirit to Alexander Dumas's novel: The Count of Monte Cristo. Of course it doesn't have the swashbuckling quality of Dumas's novel as there are no fight scenes to the death. Collins's novel is set in a domestic scene with a female protagonist and the action is far tamer. It is equally gripping though because it's the chase of the revenge that's the fun part; the deceit and swindling involved, the careful measuring of your enemy's abilities that is part of charm. Collins was genius to embroil a female in a revenge type of plot and I'm just amazed at how much free agency Collins bestows upon Magdalen - a female living in Victorian times. He completely cuts her off from the ties of society and gives her free reign. While I was reading, I felt that the novel could be loosely separated into 3 quite different parts - each with it's own distinct pacing and mood. It goes quite well with the divisions of the triple-decker novel they had long ago. I'm not spoiling much because the novel covers such massive ground, but the first part covers the idyllic times of the Vanstone family and we come to see how the inheritance is stripped from the Vanstone daughters. The second part (the best and my favorite) follows Magdalen as she pursues her revenge with the superior help of the rogue Captain Wragge, a self-proclaimed, "moral agriculturist" (I'll leave you to discover what he means by it). Wragge is one of Collins' best creations (he even beats out Count Fosco in my mind). A short, brown eyed, green eyed creature with enormous talents and verbal abilities, he is very resourceful, calculates very well, and is able to adapt quickly to whatever is needed in each situation. One of the highlights of No Name resides in Wragge's chronicle describing Magdalen's progress. The other crowning achievement is the ca

tons of fun

This is the best-plotted book I have ever read. The intricacies of the ingenious cat-and-mouse game kept me unable to put the book down (despite its length, and my general impatience as a slow reader). Unlike other books I've read by Collins, this one is also extremely funny, largely because of one character who is an incredible rascal and scoundrel. This is really one of the most enjoyable novels I've ever found.

A piercing look at social mores

It is to Wilkie Collins' credit that more than a century after he wrote his novels, they still engage the reader and make sense in social terms. In "No Name," two sisters by the last name of Vanstone find out that they are illegitimate. Their formerly comfortable lives are disrupted to the core as their lose their places in society, their friends, their inheritances, and even, literally, their names. Collins makes their predicament alive and vital despite the fact that today this sort of news would barely stir a social ripple.

The job of a highly intelligent first-rate artist.

This book is much less known than its famous brothers, "The Woman in White" and "The Moonstone" (I have read them both). It was written between them, and I think it is a very worthy companion to the pair. Mr. Collins was the son of a well-known painter and you perceive his gifted eye for describing characters and environments. He also had a great talent for devising plots and producing very vivid, human and interesting characters. So, your reading enjoyment can be very rich and multidimensional. You can almost feel in the background the presence of the writer's very powerful mind behind the story, carefully describing very realistic scenes, with dashes of humor, irony and eccentricities, while keeping you keenly interested for almost 750 pages. Some of the characters and scenes in the book are gems, as the one of the rich and extreme miser, Mr. Noel Vanstone, in the agony of agreeing on the amount to inherit to his lifelong housekeeper, Mrs. Lacomte (who has been almost his mother). And this, while she is dictating to him the terms of his will ! Mrs. Wragge, his swindler husband, Magdalen and the Admiral are greatly portrayed. This is one of the few books that after finished, most probably will keep growing with you, and will keep its attraction in your memory for a long time. Mr. Collins's main works are so high-quality, that you'd be a much more selective reader afterwards. I would recommend also his "Armadale" (this I haven't read yet, but soon will).