An uneasy combination of admiration and fear characterizes Marian’s reception of Count Fosco in the second epoch of The Woman in White. Having long wanted to meet him herself, Marian initially describes Fosco with admiration, as “the magician who has wrought this wonderful transformation… a man who could tame anything” (217). She portrays him in positions of power: he is a magician performing awe-inspiring magic, a ringmaster taming his “once wayward” wife (217). However, Fosco’s splendid power is tinged for Marian with an anxiety over the extent of his control. She writes of him in her diary:
“I am afraid to confess it, even to these secret pages. The man has interested me, has attracted me, has forced me to like him” (217).
“What is it that makes me unable to blame them [his peculiarities], or to ridicule them, in him?” (217).
“They [his eyes] have at times a cold, clear, beautiful, irresistible glimmer in them, which forces me to look at him, and yet causes me sensations, when I do look, which I would rather not feel” (218).
“He has… that secret gentleness in his voice… which we [women] can none of us resist” (219, all above emphasis mine).
The language Marian uses to describe Fosco collectively demonstrates her fear, the sense that he is acting on her, against her will, to produce a certain end—one that she cannot resist, and that she does not desire. He “forces her” to feel and to look, “causes her” to feel a certain way, and even “makes her unable” to blame him for it. She is stripped of agency in her interactions with him. Though she may not have the modern vocabulary to describe it, Marian’s diction is somewhat evocative of acquaintance rape: anxiety, social pressure, force, and finally silence—in Marian’s inability to “blame” Fosco, and a fear that somehow, even in the secrecy of her journal, he will discover her fear and become sure of his advantage over her.
This sense of oppressive force and underlying anxiety concerning Count Fosco heightens the audience’s sense of uncertainty about where his loyalties lie, or what his motivations are. Is he a friend, or is he simply waiting to force his aims upon the sisters? The unease evident in even Marian’s praise of him frames him for readers as a skilled manipulator, thus furthering the impression that we cannot see through his actions any more than she can (at least until he adds his postscript to her diary).