Basil is one of Collins's first suspense novels, and one of many Collins works to examine issues of marriage and legality. The eponymous narrator is second son in a wealthy upper-class family; his older brother Ralph, as the story opens, has just returned to England after becoming dissipated on the Continent. Their sister Clara stays at home being a pure, tender light to her family. Their father is remote, cold, and overwhelmingly concerned with Family Honor.
That being the case, Basil has no choice but to fall in love at first sight with Margaret, the entirely unsuitable, smoking-hot daughter of a linen-draper. The girl's greedy father, pleading her youth, wrings from Basil an agreement not just to a secret marriage, but also to leave the marriage unconsummated for a full year. During this whole time he may visit his lawfully wedded wife at her parents' house, so long as they are always chaperoned by a third person, usually her mother. Meanwhile, the father's confidential assistant, Mr. Mannion, hangs about, outwardly respectful but secretly plotting the frustration of Basil's hopes. Sexual humiliation—family ties cut—brain fever—typhus—revenge—remorseful man pursued by grim-visaged Fury of his own making—tears of a faithful sister—reformed elder brother manfully assists—the Imperishable Throne—angel choirs.
This book offers much fodder for psychoanalysis. The name of the guy that's figuratively castrating Basil, while also doubling him, is Mr. Mannion—more of a MAN than Basil is. There's another double, or another shadow, in the opposition between sister Clara (the pure, innocent Madonna) and Margaret (the dark, selfish, sexy whore). Early on, they appear as two opposed figures in a dream of Basil's, one a woman robed in light, the other in mist. He ignores the one that's pure and shining:
I was drawn along in the arms of the dark woman, with my blood burning and my breath failing me, until we entered the secret recesses that lay amid the unfathomable depths of trees. There, she encircled me in the folds of her dusky robe, and laid her cheek close to mine, and murmured a mysterious music in my ear, amid the midnight silence and darkness of all around us. And I had no thought of returning to the plain again; for I had forgotten the woman from the fair hills, and had given myself up, heart, and soul, and body, to the woman from the dark woods.
Secret recesses and dusky folds, indeed! The hero is erotically fixated, and completely ignores his beloved's dim cupidity, preferring to believe in his vision than in reality. The novel never really notices or examines the fact that of the hero's two love objects, one is his own sister.
When Basil's brother Ralph appears on the scene, he's quite the breath of fresh air. He winningly refers to his mistress as Mrs. Ralph, for instance. He doesn't subscribe to the rest of his family's overwrought emotions and instead gets straight to the point, bringing some welcome common sense and energy to the story:
"Just listen to me, now. In the first place, remember that what my father said to you, he said in a moment of violent exasperation. You had been trampling the pride of his life in the mud: no man likes that—my father least of any. And, as for the offer of your poor little morsel of an income to stop these people's greedy mouths, it isn't a quarter enough for them. . . . Nothing but money will do; money cunningly doled out, under the strongest possible stipulations. Now, I'm just the man to do that. . . . Write me the fellow's name and address; there's no time to be lost—I'm off to see him at once!"Whew. Of course, nothing gets resolved quite that easily, and Basil seems to like it that way, preferring the torture of high emotions to Ralph's easygoing sense. In the end, virtue prevails, but I found myself wishing I could read more about Ralph and Mrs. Ralph: better company by far, I'm sure, than Basil and his pure sexless sister.
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