The elderly Allan Armadale leaves a warning for his son to stay as far away from another boy as possible. How can he know who the other boy is? They both have the same name, Allan Armadale. We later find out that the son of the elder Allan Armadale goes by Ozias Midwinter. Confused yet? That's just the beginning of the confusion in Wilkie Collins' Armadale
. Other characters are introduced along the way. Lydia Gwilt is my personal favorite, although she would probably, maybe, kind of, sorta be considered the antagonist of the novel. Just a bit. But I still think she is the most interesting character. Ozias doesn't follow his dad's directions and becomes BFF with the other Allan Armadale, which means that there is a whole lot that can happen in this 679 page novel.
I read this book for class and the first day of discussion I went in thinking it was one of the dumbest books I'd read in my entire life. Everyone else in my class loved and adored it. What carried me through the book was the introduction of a character I have already mentioned, Lydia Gwilt. Lydia is so brutally honest and in a letter to her partner in crime, Mrs. Oldershaw, she says, "I rather doubt whether I am yours, or anybody's, affectionately; but we all tell lies at the bottoms of our letters don't we" (162). I knew I would love Lydia as soon as I read that. But Lydia has got some problems, like the desire to potentially murder people and she might be a little addicted to opium. But you have to feel for her (at least I had to feel for her, the majority of my class didn't feel for her at all) when she says, "Ah, my lady, when you were a few years younger if you had been left to yourself and thrown on the world like me-" (546). I won't tell you what has happened in Lydia's past since it's mystery for the majority of the book, but I did sympathize with her.
And Lydia is a much needed break from dumb and dumber, otherwise known as Allan Armadale and Miss Milroy. Some might say they grow throughout the book. Bah! How can you grow from being two of the dumbest people on the planet? I honestly cringed every time I turned a page and saw these two conversing. Let me give you a little taste:
"'It's a name in three syllables,' he said.
Miss Milroy's downcast eyes flashed up at him like lightning. 'Three!' she repeated in the blankest astonishment.
Allan was too inveterately straightforward to take the warning even now. 'I'm not strong at my spelling, I know,' he said, with his lighthearted laugh. 'But I don't think I'm wrong in calling Midwinter a name in three syllables." (258).
And on and on throughout the entire first half of the book they talk about things. Some people find Allan really lovable though, and I might be apt to dislike him because I have such a strong love for Lydia. Since Lydia dominates the majority of the second half of the novel this probably contributed to my turnaround in opinion of it. Since most people don't like Lydia and do like Allan, this is probably why they loved the book at first and hated it by the end. So overall I enjoyed the last 300 or so pages of this book, but most people started to dislike by the time I started to like it.
Due to the rising and falling emotions towards this novel I'm going to give it a B. We'll just say it's not for everyone.
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