I finished reading The Woman in White last night and haven’t been able to stop thinking about Pesca’s reentry into the narrative of the story in the eleventh hour. Although we can’t know for certain, I keep wondering whether Wilkie Collins intended for this to happen from the very beginning. On the one hand there were a few clues which lend me to believe that this was intended. For starters, Pesca states multiple times in the beginning of the story that his life is indebted to Walter for saving him and that Walter can ask for any favors in return. This seems significant and it makes sense that Walter should return to Pesca for a favor at a future time. There was also fact that Pesca didn’t speak in particulars about why he was in England/in “exile” from Italy. Additionally, there were the clues on the side of Count Fosco: the hints about not knowing much about him, as well as the subtle mention that he inquired about whether there were any Italians in the neighborhood around BlackWater. If we look at these clues alone, they seem to suggest that Collins planned Pesca’s role in the end from the beginning. It wasn’t just that the two characters were both Italians. And yet… it just seems ridiculously convenient that the one other Italian that Walter knows just so happens to be the one person that Fosco fears.
Beyond being ridiculously convenient, it was also the way that Walter prefaces the reintroduction of Pesca into the narrative that made it feel like it was decided at the last second. The more he tried to convince me that he had purposefully excluded Pesca from the narratives because he wasn’t relevant even though Pesca is of course still his BFF and they hang out all the time and he’s been really supportive to Walter, the more I didn’t believe it. Where’s the evidence, Walter? It just seems strange that everything is so meticulously detailed and that there are a lot of details that aren’t important to the larger goal of writing these documents as legal documents to prove Laura’s identity, and yet any mention of Pesca was completely omitted?
I also just really felt bad for Pesca. He’s tried so hard to escape his past and he makes it clear to Walter that he doesn’t want to talk about it or be forced to act on anything in regards to the Brotherhood, and still Walter uses him. Then later we see that Pesca had been completely changed after these events. He helped Walter prove Laura’s identity, but at his own personal cost. This further has me thinking about the morality in this story as well. Is he justified in hurting Pesca in this way, unintentional as it was, if it helps Laura? Surely Pesca knew what was in the contents of that letter. I bet he didn’t sleep at all that night. Of course this was the only thing that could be done, and arguably Pesca had put this burden on himself by joining the Brotherhood in the first place, but it seemed unfair to take away his autonomy like that. He seemed less like a friend and more like a device to propel the plot forward, both in the beginning and the end.
#PescaDeservesBetter #ButThenAgainALotOfCharactersDo #Laura #Anne #Marian
Thanks for reading! Until tomorrow,
Dessi