We need to talk about Rachel

I will get to my usual numbered points in a minute, but whoa you guys.

Everyone in this book has gone on and on about how Rachel couldn't possibly be guilty of stealing her own diamond -- "if you knew our Rachel" blah blah blah. There were some serious crimes of Telling Not Showing being committed in this book. And all the while, Rachel was acting guilty like sin.

AND THEN, Wilkie drops the bomb. I NEVER saw this coming; I would never have guessed that she saw Franklin take it (oops, spoiler). Insanity. And it totally explains all her behavior, which I really could not make sense of.

Get yours! Be a cool kid!

And once again, I'm left thinking that Wilkie has used "bad writing" (or just dull/cliche writing) deliberately as a red herring. "Once again" because in Woman in White I had a similar reaction once the craziness broke loose of Walter "Boring" Hartright's initial narration.

Well, well, well.

1. How tempted was I to change the name of this blog to "Rampant Spinster"? Most excellent.

2.

For a week I and my people waited, encamped on the borders of a desert.

Once again, Wilkie sends his heartbroken hero out on some sort of ludicrously adventurous quest in order to forget his lady love. REAL TALK: Franklin Blake and Walter Hartright, in reality, would have just spent several months moping around their mothers' basements. But no, Wilks sends them to the ends of the earth.

3. Oh, Betteredge.

"Facts?" he repeated. "Take a drop more grog, Mr. Franklin, and you'll get over the weakness of believing in facts!"

4. I thought Rosanna's letter was fairly harrowing, myself. Maybe because it was so incredibly long? Girl held nothing back. Her bitterness about Miss Rachel not being all that pretty...

5.

"By-the-bye, Mr Franklin, you will be sorry to hear that the little doctor has never recovered that illness he caught, going home from the birthday dinner. He's pretty well in health; but he lost his memory in the fever, and he has never recovered more than the wreck of it since. The work all falls on his assistant. Not much of it now, except among the poor. THEY can't help themselves, you know. THEY must put up with the man with the piebald hair, and the gipsy complexion--or they would get no doctoring at all."

Setting aside the fact that this is OBVIOUSLY going to be become significant (could a South Asian complexion be mistaken for "gipsy" in WilkieWorld?) how ridiculous is this? How is Mr Candy still a doctor?

6. Also, on what planet is "Ezra Jennings" an ugly name? Oh Wilkie.

7. I can't even comment on the ridiculous characterizations of Indians in this book. Victorians: so special. And racist.

8. Also, LOL women.

But women, as you may have observed, have no principles. My family don't feel my pangs of conscience. The end being to bring you and Rachel together again, my wife and daughters pass over the means employed to gain it, as composedly as if they were Jesuits.

Somehow, whenever Wilkie writes this kind of thing, he manages to do it in such a way that it sounds like he's teasing his female readers: you know, throwing something really outrageous out there to ruffle some feathers and see what happens.

9.

After the lapse of a minute, I roused my manhood, and opened the door.

That's FILTHY.

10.

I saw her, and heard her, no more.

WHAT?!

Just pretend it says "next week" instead of "manana".