The tendency persists to separate the artful storyteller in Collins from the less successful thesis novelist. Like Wells and, to a lesser degree, Lawrence, Collins developed too strong a sense of mission. Beginning with Man and Wife, his novels seem encumbered with social protest. Collins's “old-fashioned” opinions, especially the remark that the “primary object of a work of fiction should be to tell a story,” are frequently quoted to reduce the skilful storyteller to a mere entertainer. Storytelling in The Woman in White is, of course, superb; but for once the novelist of sensation and suspense utilized his narrative skills to advance an idea important to himself and of consequence nationally: his conviction that the worship of propriety had become, by 1870, one of the besetting evils of Victorian life. In The Woman in White, Collins combines his talent for melodrama with just enough of the social critic, even if the Victorian eventually upstages the dissident moralist: the way things happen, the novelist argues, is ultimately determined not by propriety, man's law, but by providence, which may by God's.

中文翻译：

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威尔基·柯林斯的《白衣女人：天意对抗礼仪之恶》

这种倾向始终将柯林斯的巧妙讲故事者与不太成功的论文小说家区分开来。与威尔斯以及劳伦斯（程度较轻）一样，柯林斯也产生了过于强烈的使命感。以。。。开始夫妻，他的小说似乎充满了社会抗议。柯林斯的“老式”观点，尤其是“小说作品的主要目标应该是讲故事”的评论，经常被引用，以将熟练的讲故事者贬低为纯粹的娱乐者。讲故事在白衣女子当然是一流的；但这一次，这位感性和悬疑的小说家利用他的叙事技巧提出了一个对他自己很重要、对全国也具有重要意义的想法：他坚信，到 1870 年，对礼仪的崇拜已经成为维多利亚时代生活中困扰的罪恶之一。在白衣女子，柯林斯将他的情节剧天赋与足够多的社会批评家结合起来，即使维多利亚时代的人最终抢了持不同政见的道德家的风头：小说家认为，事情发生的方式最终不是由礼数、人法决定的，而是由天意决定的，天意可能会神。