In this post I would like to address the child imagery used to depict Laura within pages 126-195 of Wilkie Collins’s The Woman in White. The Freudian concepts of repetition and repression discussed in class are evident features of Laura’s child imagery, which I will come to elaborate on. I pose that this child imagery, when analyzed with a Freudian lens, serves not only to display Laura’s repression of her feelings for Walter, but also creates a stronger connection and physical appearance mirroring Anne Catherick (as child imagery was abundant in her character description in the graveyard seen earlier in the novel).
Mr. Gilmore first brings up one of Laura’s repetitive habits she has had since childhood. When he approaches her regarding the question of whether or not she will marry he observes “Her fingers had a restless habit, which I remembered in her as a child, of always playing with the first thing that came to hand, whenever anyone was talking to her” (141-2). Marian recognizes the fiddling of the fingers again when conversing about her decision to marry Percival Glyde: “twining and twisting my hair with that childish restlessness in her fingers” (164). That night Marian notices the expression of another habit Laura has exhibited since childhood when Mr. Hartright’s drawing book was “half hidden under her pillow, just in the place where she used to hide her favourite toys when she was a child” (165). In Sigmund Freud’s Remembering, Repeating, and Working-Through he states as a psychoanalyst that “repitition is a transference of the forgotten past…remembering at once gives way to acting out…brings out an armoury of the past the weapons with which he defends himself against the progress of the treatment” (Freud 151). Freud essentially states that repressed emotions and thoughts can transfer themselves into repetitive physical actions, for example, Laura using her fingers to play with objects or hiding prized items under her pillow at night.
Recognizing the suggestive, Freudian evidence of her repetitive behaviors, I contend that Laura’s fiddling with objects is an exhibition of her repressed affection for Walter (potentially her desire to ‘play with him’) and her internal wishes to not marry Mr. Glyde, as well as simply the repressed wish that the current conversation would halt. Hiding Hartright’s drawing book under her pillow exhibits her repressed desire to hold on to him, her repressed fear of losing him or that someone will steal him (Glyde, Catherick, or other), and potentially her repressed desire to sleep with him, although due to her chastity and duty to her engagement, she cannot.
Child imagery in regards to Laura continues on 185 when Marian proclaims “poor child- for a child still she is still in many things”. I aim to compare this with child imagery pressed onto Anne on page 94 “harmless, poor soul, as a little child”. Anne’s continued ‘orphan role’ image and obsession with Mrs. Fairlie as a mother figure also play into her child imagery “nobody is like Mrs. Fairlie!” (100). These similarities in child depiction strengthen the assumption throughout the novel that they are physically similar. Extrapolating from this, this imagery also attests to both characters’ innocence and purity in that they “are only children” whether in mental capacity, looks, or social understanding. Percival Glyde’s age of 45 years also gives him a further pedophile-esque quality. It provides suggestions that he is out to control these women as they are merely harmless, supple children. It implies he is or has taken advantage of them- for their bodies, their purity of mind and heart, and in Miss Fairlie’s case, her money (witnessed by Gilmore 151).