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Poor Miss Finch is a domestic story written by Wilkie Collins, published in London in 1872. The novel is sensational and adapts a distinctive style of storytelling, with love triangles, disability, secrets, identity deception, cure of disabilities (blindness in this novel), marriage, etc. The novel brings the transformation of identities even in the character's colour, i.e, blue colour.
The protagonist of the novel is a young lady named Lucilla Finch who is in her early twenties. She lost her eyesight in childhood, as a toddler. Collins brings a burning question to the readers regarding her disability of sight whether she can marry? However, one of the abilities of Lucilla's disability is to recognize colours by just touching, further loathing dark colours which will bring a change in the plot. Lucilla's hatred for all the dark colours will bring difficulties in the lives of the characters in the novel.
The narrative portrays the romantic relationship of Lucilla Finch with an intelligent and soft-spoken guy named Oscar Dubourg. The cause of Miss Finch's blindness is an operation for removal of her cataract, but it ruie her vision and she became blindness. When she was engaged to her Fiance, Oscar, she became a prey of facing identity issues when Oscar's twin brother Nugent arrives and competes for Lucilla's affections. In her blind state, Lucilla started hating dark colours, it can be symbolic of her blindness (darkness) which is hated. The situation became problematic when Oscar fell ill of epilepsy and he started receiving its treatment containing silver nitrate which stained his skin a dark blue colour (a colour that Lucilla hated). It was due to a skin discoloration called agryria. Oscar refers to Lucilla's this queerness as her 'strongest antipathy', that is, a purely imaginary antipathy to dark people and dark shades of colours of all kinds." Because of the silver nitrate treatment and getting the dark blue colour, Oscar was afraid that Lucilla would reject him if she saw his skin colour. His secrets get darker than his dark skin which will set the problems, difficulties and confusion in all the character's lives in the text.
The central struggle of the novel begins when Oscar takes help from Lucilla's friend and companion Madame Pratolungo. The motive of her help was just to hide his dark blue skin colour from Lucilla as she was scared of dark colours. However, the love becomes a triangle with the entry of Oscar's twin brother, Nugent. Nugent was identical to Oscar in everything including his tone of voice but what differentiate him is moral character. Oscar had inner goodness in his dark blue coloured skin while Nugent had inner evilness and self-motives in his white skin. The evil twin schemes to take away Lucilla by eloping her impersonating his good brother, Oscar. Due to Lucilla's fear of dark colour, Oscar tells her that his twin brother is blue, referred to by his neighbours and not him.
The colour blue has a significance in the novel. It further highlights the aim of the story: whether a blind should marry a blue person? That's impossible because no person has blue skin, it's a strategy of Collins to revolve the colour theory in the 19th century adapting technological change. Moreover, Wilkie Collins could use the character of Oscar and his blue skin to focus on the irrelevant relationship of race and colour in the world. Collins also used Lucilla's blindness portraying the reaction of the world towards colours. Colour has cultural significance in society among race, sexuality and gender which was prevalent too in the Victorian period. Although Oscar's colour transformation seems sensational, it is grounded in the Victorian time of medical practices. Till the mid-nineteenth century, the physicians continued to prescribe the silver nitrates to treat certain ailments, whether it's blindness, gonorrhoea, epilepsy, etc even after knowing its side effects in skin discoloration as seen in Oscar's life.
To cure Lucilla's blindness and marry her, Nugent arranges two German surgeons which helps Lucilla to gain vision though gradually. This is the situation when confusion arrives as she finds out that Nugent is white and it's Oscar who is prey of skin discoloration and has dark blue skin. Nugent impersonates Oscar and convinces Lucilla to marry. But Lucilla realised that she no longer loved Oscar (Nugent impersonating as Oscar). At the end of the novel, Lucilla again loses her vision and becomes blind but she is apprised of Nugent's plot and Oscar's fatal condition, agreeing to the marriage as planned. Conclusively, it was clear that the medical surgery didn't treat Lucilla Finch but it deteriorated her life's inner peace, happiness and thrusted her in danger to marry the wrong man. It was her blindness which allowed a happy domestic situation full of romance. The blueness in the novel signifies, 'otherness'.
