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La casina nera (1881)

di Wilkie Collins

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1596170,523 (3.21)15
Classic Literature. Fiction. HTML:

In The Black Robe, a strikingly original novel from master storyteller Wilkie Collins, what starts out as a night of fun and games turns tragic when a dispute over a card game leads to murder. Desperate to atone for his sin, the perpetrator tries to offer assistance to the victim's family, but instead finds himself enmeshed all the deeper in a web of falsehoods and intrigue. Will he ever be able to extricate himself and move on with his life?

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» Vedi le 15 citazioni

I realised part way through that I had read this book before but couldnt remember what happened.

This is the story of a troubled man, whose life and soul are literally torn between his wife and the catholic priests who are attempting to convert him to Catholicism (in order to gain the lands he inherited that had been removed from the Church by Henry VIII).

Big power struggles, points of law between UK civil and Catholic law (when are people married and divorced? and what happens if someone dies in-testate). People seeming to run around half of Europe in the matter of hours (Paris one day, London the next - we havent got much better with the Chunnel, really have we?). Great to have money innit?



( )
  nordie | Oct 14, 2023 |
The Black Robe by Wilkie Collins is a very 19th Century novel in some ways but it shows signs of Collin's innovative pioneering as well. Collins, a friend of Charles Dickens, was credited with writing one of the first mysteries. The Black Robe is a kind of mystery, though nobody is murdered. Or are they? The story begins with a duel where the main character, who didn't want to fight a duel at all, shoots and kills his opponent. Tormented by this he begins to hear voices that haunt him. The tormented man is the current owner of an ancient estate that was a monastery before Henry VIII confiscated it and gave it to Mr. Romayne's ancestors. The Church wants it back and a Jesuit priest strives to get Mr. Romayne to give it back to the Church through trickery. The priest as villain makes this seem to be a somewhat anti-catholic book. However there is nothing that seems particularly pro-protestant here. There are sympathetic and decent characters of the Catholic faith portrayed also. So the mystery is will the Priest succeed in getting hold of the estate? Will he get Romanye to leave his wife and join the Roman Church? Will someone intervene and will other surprising things show up? ( )
  MMc009 | Jan 30, 2022 |
Not one of Wilkie Collins' better works. The characters are artificial and predictable, with the exception perhaps of the devious Father Benwell and to some extent Bernard Winterfield. Collins turns the pivotal moment of Jane Eyre on its head, with a false marriage revealed on the very steps of the church, but it is far less effective here. Overall the plot is rather forced and the anti-Catholic undertones aren't kind (even though I'm not Catholic). Collins also betrays a condescending view of women which is unusual for him... "But where is the woman who can intimately associate herself with the hard brain-work of a man devoted to an absorbing intellectual pursuit? She can love him, admire him, serve him, believe in him beyond all other men — but (in spite of exceptions which only prove the rule) she is out of her place when she enters the study while the pen is in hand" (112–13). Okay Wilkie, you think that... ( )
2 vota atimco | Nov 15, 2016 |
This was my second Collins book and I'm still trying to figure out why all the hype. This is the story of a very feeble minded (selfish in my opinion) man who has a nervous condition and is preyed upon by the Catholics to convert and hand over his estate to the Church. Of course, this entails leaving his wife, which he does. Father Benwell is very devious! Not a bad story, but lacks a punch! ( )
  Tess_W | Oct 3, 2016 |
So I had this whole, wonderful review all written out the other day. Quotes galore. And my computer shut down because of the security program and the whole thing was wiped out. In vain I looked all over for a copy of it, but it’s well and truly gone. I’m so pissed. I put a lot of work into it and now it’s for nothing. That will teach me to write these things locally instead of somewhere on the web with auto-save. Oy.

Why am I bothering to re-write it? Because so few reviews of this book seem to exist. Collins’s more famous books The Moonstone and The Woman in White have tons, but not his lesser-known novels. It seems a lot of his writing was in exploration of other themes. In The Legacy of Cain it was the nature/nurture debate as applied to behavior and mental conditioning. The Black Robe is basically an anti-Catholic novel, albeit a pretty mild one. The villain is a scheming manipulator, but he’s not a gore-stained fanatic in a basement Inquisition torture chamber. At its core, the plot revolves around the efforts of Father Benwell to get rich, estate-holder Lewis Romayne, to leave him or the Church his valuable property. His justification? Because the estate had once been a monastery, but was victim of the Dissolution under Henry VIII and was given to Romayne’s ancestor. Of course the thing really belongs to the church and he’ll do anything to get it back to its rightful owners. (Actually I wrote frightful there, and it might still be appropriate.)

Romayne himself is a wimp with so little insight into human nature and actions that I laughed at him a lot and mostly felt he deserved what he got. The whole duel thing was a trap and he couldn’t see that for what it was and instead donned the hairshirt over it when he came out victorious. He starts hearing a voice in his head that torments him into becoming more of a recluse than he was. Isn’t it a good thing these kinds of tragic events only happen to rich people in novels. Poor people equally traumatized would, I don’t know, have to go on living? You know, working, eating, raising kids, making their own beds. The kind of stuff that Romayne is too weak in the knees to manage for himself. Ugh.

But he does get his head out of his ass long enough to meet Stella who has already fallen in love with him. Most of the sympathy I had for the situation was for her. Collins didn’t make her as limp a fainting female as a lot of his characters though she was no Marion either. I did connect with her through her ideas about marriage which Collins has her admit are “odd ideas for a woman to have...” Stella says to Romayne when they’ve reached an understanding that she will marry him - “Marriages, as I think, ought to be celebrated as privately as possible - the near and dear relations present, and no one else.” This comes as a huge relief to Romayne who just minutes before had this reaction to her announcing that her mother would want a spectacle - “He receives his shock without flinching; and, in proof of his composure, celebrates his wedding with the gallows by a breakfast which he will not live to digest.” What a fantastic sentence. I wonder how many grooms over the centuries have felt the same way over the prospect of their elaborate and expensive weddings. Ha.

So yes, he and Stella do marry, but that’s not the happily ever after it usually is in these kinds of novels. Instead we have a spy in the house and Stella isn’t the most intimate companion Romayne has. Those roles are contained within one person - Penrose, Romayne’s secretary. What a weird and twisted relationship that became. I’m not sure if Collins was trying to point out that being Catholic with it’s ban on priestly marriage, is a cause of homosexuality, or that people with homosexual tendencies are the ones most attracted to the church. Either way it was creepy and unsettling. Both men had a sickly sort of instant love for each other and there were plenty of little gooey scenes where declarations of love and devotion were couched in the most nauseating terms. I mean, these two guys hadn’t been through a war together or some other major catastrophe. Just how they got so besotted is more than I can figure. To wit - “Think of me sometimes. When I leave you to go back to a lonely life. My poor heart is full of your brotherly kindness at this last moment when I may be saying goodbye forever.” “Oh, my more than friend - my brother in love - !” (Penrose to Romayne) Oh and how’s this for histrionic? - “In spite of his fortitude, the tears rose in his eyes. He hurried out of the room. Romayne sat down at his writing-table, and hid his face in his hands.” It’s really unhealthy and weird.

But Penrose is just a tool for Father Benwell to use to drive Stella and Romayne apart. He’s a duplicitous jerk who’s guiding principles are that the ends justifies the means and that men are at risk of becoming “instruments in the hands of women”. Mostly he manipulates people, steals private papers and listens at open windows - “And could I help it, if the talk found its way to me through the ventilator, along with the air that I breathed?” A crime Collins condemns Stella for doing in another scene, except excuses her because she’s just a morally weak woman. Nice distinction. Oh and here’s another one “There is something quite revolting to me in a deceitful woman.” Something on which Father Benwell muses as he schemes, lies and manipulates in order to steal property away from its owners. Another nice distinction. It serves to illustrate how conveniently he can warp the very canon he claims to represent. All those ‘thou shalt nots’ don’t apply to him.

Yeah, there’s a lot of stuff in this novel, and others of its type, to make a liberated woman cringe. At one point Father Benwell says “A lady’s religious prejudices are never taken seriously by a sensible man.” During the initial separation of Romayne and Penrose (again, this is so creepy) “It was a new trial to his resolution to be working alone; never had he felt the absence of Penrose as he felt it now. he missed the familiar face, the quiet pleasant voice, and, more than both, the ever-welcome sympathy with his work. Stella had done all that a wife could do to fill the vacant place; and her husband’s fondness had accepted the effort as adding another charm to the lovely creature who had opened a new life to him. But where is the woman who can intimately associate herself with the hard brain-work of a man devoted to an absorbing intellectual pursuit?” Oy vey. It’s so utterly stupid that men shunt women off in this way. Fear is such a controlling factor.

The plot did have a bit where it came off the rails a bit. Another area Collins explores in this book is the idea of marriage and exactly how and when two people are indeed wedded. First when it comes to Stella’s back-story and her near-miss with Winterfield. She literally left him at the church door just before the ceremony was to begin. His still-living wife surprised them by popping up out of revenge after declaring herself dead when he threw her out of the house for being a drunk. Thinking him as at fault as her, Stella runs away and her reputation is preserved through cover-up. Later, when the wife is really dying, she writes a confession and intends to get it to Winterfield upon her actual death. Instead the papers are stolen by none-other than the loony brother of the kid who got killed in the duel at the beginning of the novel. The very same brother whose voice Romayne hears in his head accusing him of being an assassin. Um...really? That kid ends up with the confession? Yeah, that’s a bit of a stretch.

And then of course, Father Benwell ends up with it and uses the information to convince Romayne that he’s not really married to Stella at all because she’s really married to Winterfield. Of course, not in the eyes of the law which as we know, doesn’t apply to the church. Instead he uses a kind of twisted logic and emotional blackmail to convince Romayne his marriage is a fraud. Because he’s such a weakling and has all the zeal and mindlessness of the recently converted, he rushes headlong into a bid for priesthood, leaving Stella high and dry. And pregnant. Of course. But Father Benwell prevents all knowledge of the kid from getting to Romayne and by the time he does find out, he’s dying. Which, really, is the least he can do now that the marriage snafu misunderstanding has been cleared up between Winterfield and Stella. So after a touching little scene of domestic might have been with Romayne, there is a light at the end of the tunnel for Stella and Winterfield. It wouldn’t be a true Victorian melodrama otherwise.

Anyway I enjoyed it. The characterizations, the scheme, the strange little scenes with terrific dialog. It is a bit darker and more downbeat than some novels of this kind, but not too much. I pretty much tore through it because it was fun. ( )
  Bookmarque | Mar 10, 2013 |
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Classic Literature. Fiction. HTML:

In The Black Robe, a strikingly original novel from master storyteller Wilkie Collins, what starts out as a night of fun and games turns tragic when a dispute over a card game leads to murder. Desperate to atone for his sin, the perpetrator tries to offer assistance to the victim's family, but instead finds himself enmeshed all the deeper in a web of falsehoods and intrigue. Will he ever be able to extricate himself and move on with his life?

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