Wilkie Collins

Man and Wife Wilkie Collins

Man and Wife was Wilkie Collins' ninth published novel. It is the second of his novels (after No Name) in which social questions provide the main impetus of the plot. Collins increasingly used his novels to explore social abuses, which according to critics tends to detract from their qualities as fiction. The social issue which drives the plot is the state of Scots marriage law; at the time the novel was written, any couple who were legally entitled to marry and who asserted that they were married, either before witnesses or in writing, were regarded in Scotland as being legally married. The novel has a complex plot, which is common in Collins' work.[3] In the Prologue, a selfish and ambitious man casts off his wife in order to marry a wealthier and better-connected woman by taking advantage of a loophole in the marriage laws of Ireland.