Wilkie Collins's intriguing story about a blind girl has the exciting complications of his better-known novels but it also overturns expectations. Using a background of myth and fairy-tale to expand the boundaries of nineteenth-century realist fiction, Collins not only takes a blind person as his central character but also explores the idea of blindness and its implications. His sensitive presentation of the difficulties, disappointments, and occasional delights which follow the recovery of sight by someone blind since infancy is still one of the best accounts in fiction.