The portrayal of the nameless lady in Christina Rossetti’s poem In an Artist’s Studio evokes, in many ways, Laura’s representation in the Woman in White. These two female figures are, in fact, similarly objectified and described as the center of male desires and of their own projections.
Portrayed differently in each painting, as “a queen in opal or ruby dress”, “a nameless girl”, “a saint” or “an angel” (Rossetti 5,6,7), the woman of Rossetti’s poem has been completely deprived of her real identity in order to become a mere reflection of the painter’s desires. This description seems to match almost perfectly Laura’s in Collins’ novel. The last verse of the poem, in fact, could be easily referred to her character, since Walter shapes Laura in the same way the painter depicts his lady: “not as she is, but as she fills his dream” (Rossetti 14).
Walter’s objectification of Laura, although veiled, can be seen since the beginning of the novel, when on their first meeting he describes a water colour drawing he made of her instead of describing her directly. Walter therefore portrays Laura as he sees her and as he wants her to be, while the real Laura is silenced. A perfect example of how he makes Laura “even more hazy and less individualized” (Donaghy, 393) can be seen a few pages later when he says “think of her as you thought of the first woman who quickened the pulses within you that the rest of her sex had no art to stir…Take her as a visionary nursling of your own fancy; and she will grow upon you, all the more clearly, as the living woman who dwells in mine” (Collins, 52). Laura is here generalized and her emptiness of character is seen as necessary, since she functions as a center of projection of the other characters’ desires.
Therefore, the two figures of Laura and of the nameless woman in Rossetti’s poem, seem almost to overlap, as both their identities, although in different ways, have been completely annihilated by a male figure. In fact, both the painter, through his work, and Walter, through his actions and narration, objectify the two women whose role is merely reduced to “a blank to be filled by male desire” (Donaghy, 393).