Connotations 18.1-3 (2008/2009)

68
PHILIPP ERCHINGER
might be read as a retrospective arrangement of exactly these legal
proofs, detailing the background, planning and intricate plotting of
the case in terms of “one complete series of events,” to come back to
Walter’s introductory lines. Indeed, for many critics the achievement
of Collins’s art mainly consists in the entertaining architecture of his
novel. What defines The Woman, according to this view, is that the
text’s apparently inscrutable flurry of signs, puzzles, particulars and
possible insinuations is always underpinned by a coherent logic of
events. The novel forces its readers through a nerve-racking mist of
seemingly confusing details but actually never loses control of its plot.
“At the end comes the explanation,” an anonymous reviewer writes in
the Saturday Review (25 August 1860). “The secret spring is touched—
the lock flies open—the novel is done” (Anonymous 83).
Again, I would like to contest such readings. They presuppose that
Walter himself, in his function as chief editor, plays by the rules of the
same law that he uses to model his narrative case. There is, however, a
fair amount of textual evidence that strongly discredits the propriety
of Walter’s editing, pointing to an immense potential of further secrets
and unexplained cases that a restricted focus on the official plot version
he presents us with must unfortunately discard. Therefore, contrary
to an exclusive “reading for the plot,” as Peter Brooks calls it, I
would rather draw attention to the possible side paths and by-ways of
interpretation, the “catalysts” (Barthes 112) or “satellites” (Chatman
54), like the little lake at Blackwater Park, that point out towards the
potentially fertile, though unknown, territory off the high road of
what common sense calls the main plot. In this sense, Fosco’s insistence
on the existence of unreported crimes may also be read as a
methodological call for a hermeneutics of suspicion, deliberately
exploring what is not necessary for comprehending the story, but may
still be part of the text. Most irritatingly, for example, judging from
Walter’s account, it is anything but plain that it is indeed Laura rather
than Anne who has been rescued from the asylum to live in London
with Marian and Walter, as his narrative would have us believe, and
that it is Anne rather than Laura who has died in the course of the