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A review by ohnoflora
Armadale by Wilkie Collins, John Sutherland
4.0
I will never get tired of Wilkie Collins' subversion of the matrimonial climax. For him marriage is not the be all and end all: in fact it is often written as being fraught with danger. It's the spaces between that interest him: the flux of friendship and love and the lines drawn between them. It's no coincidence that his novels often end with a ménage-a-trois - a triangle of people who balance each other out - or a strengthening of the same-sex relationship that has held the novel together.
In this case the novel ends with Allan Armadale on the point of marrying the rather insipid Neelie Milroy (who he has fallen in and out of love with on a regular basis throughout the novel) while at the same time affirming his lifelong devotion to Ozias Midwinter:
"I know that if you take to Literature, it shan't part us, and that if you go on a sea voyage, you will remember when you come back that my house is your home".
In this case the novel ends with Allan Armadale on the point of marrying the rather insipid Neelie Milroy (who he has fallen in and out of love with on a regular basis throughout the novel) while at the same time affirming his lifelong devotion to Ozias Midwinter:
"I know that if you take to Literature, it shan't part us, and that if you go on a sea voyage, you will remember when you come back that my house is your home".