Rachel Verinder is a character in
Wilkie Collins
William Wilkie Collins (8 January 1824 – 23 September 1889) was an English novelist and playwright known especially for '' The Woman in White'' (1859), a mystery novel and early "sensation novel", and for '' The Moonstone'' (1868), which has b ...
' 1868 novel ''
The Moonstone
''The Moonstone'' (1868) by Wilkie Collins is a 19th-century British epistolary novel. It is an early example of the modern detective novel, and established many of the ground rules of the modern genre. The story was serialised in Charles Di ...
''. Despite being the heroine, the story is never related from her viewpoint, as it is in turn from the other main protagonists, leaving her character always seen from the outside.
Character
A somewhat spoilt and self-reliant girl, Rachel is in love with her cousin Frankin Blake.
P. D. James
Phyllis Dorothy James, Baroness James of Holland Park, (3 August 1920 – 27 November 2014), known professionally as P. D. James, was an English novelist and life peer. Her rise to fame came with her series of detective novels featuring th ...
saw her as one of the examples of Collins' rare (Victorian) ability to depict women capable of real desire: With her temper, insistence on making her own decisions, and readiness to grapple with the social implications of her passion for a man she thinks of as a thief, Rachel has been seen as a prototype of the
New Woman
The New Woman was a feminist ideal that emerged in the late 19th century and had a profound influence well into the 20th century. In 1894, Irish writer Sarah Grand (1854–1943) used the term "new woman" in an influential article, to refer to ...
, as anticipated in the
sensation novel
The sensation novel, also sensation fiction, was a literary genre of fiction that achieved peak popularity in Great Britain in the 1860s and 1870s.I. Ousby ed., ''The Cambridge Guide to Literature in English'' (1995) p. 844 Its literary forebears i ...
.
Media treatments
''The Moonstone'' has often been portrayed in film.
In the
1934 adaptation,
Phyllis Barry
Phyllis Barry (born Gertrude Phyllis Hillyard; 7 December 1908 – 1 July 1954) was an English film actress. Born in Leeds, West Riding of Yorkshire, England, to Seth Henry and Bertha (née Giles) Hillyard, Barry appeared in over 40 films ...
appears as Rachel (or Ann Verinder, as she was therein called).
See also
*
Paula Powers
*
Protofeminism
Protofeminism is a concept that anticipates modern feminism in eras when the feminist concept as such was still unknown. This refers particularly to times before the 20th century, although the precise usage is disputed, as 18th-century feminism ...
References
Literary characters introduced in 1868
Fictional English people
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