When I first started reading The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins, I began to formulate a question in my mind on the true views of the author. I was curious on whether Wilkie Collins would portray the women of his novel in a stereotypical Victorian way: men being superior to women in numerous rights and aspects of life.
At first, I was convinced that Wilkie Collins’ views were similar to William Rathbone Greg’s opinions on women, which were rather degrading. In his essay entitled “Why Are Women Redundant?”, Greg described single working women of England as people who were “wasting life and soul, gathering the scientist subsistence, and surrounded by the most overpowering and insidious temptations” (158). Meanwhile, in one passage in The Woman in White, Collins has one of the female characters, Miss Marian Halcombe, state, “Women can’t draw – their minds are too flighty, and their eyes are too inattentive” (37). Also, Collins’ other female characters such as Anne Catherick and Laura Fairlie are shown as emotionally unstable. Both Greg and Collins seem to portray women in their writings as fragile, careless, and incapable of performing certain tasks of life. After reading such words, I came to believe that both writers were sexist towards women.
However, after delving deeper into the story of The Woman in White, I noticed that the personalities of women, especially that of Miss Marian Halcombe, did not represent female characters as the dim, meek people I had expected Collins to portray them as. Rather, Marian and her half sister, Laura, are shown as strong characters protesting against the cruel regime of men in Victorian society. This is most evident during the weeks leading up to Laura’s dreaded wedding ceremony with Sir Percival Glyde. Marian, fed up with the selfish decision makings of their uncle, Mr. Fairlie, and Sir Percival, exclaims, “No man under heaven deserves these sacrifices from us women. Men! They are the enemies of our innocence and our peace – they drag us away from our parents’ love and our sisters’ friendship – they take us body and soul to themselves, and fasten our helps lives to theirs as they chain up a dog to his kennel” (181). Such words are powerful and bold because they blatantly explain the unequal statues that women suffered during the Victorian Era.
After reading the outcry of Marian, I changed my opinion on Collins, now viewing him as a potential advocate on women’s rights. However, it is still debatable on what Collins’ true intensions were due to other passages (such as the one mentioned before about women being incapable of drawing) that do not exactly portray women as equals to men.
This is similar to what I wrote about, I too was confused about Marian’s role in Collins’ portrayal of women. That is, she is one of the most intelligent, capable, and overall likable characters in the novel, however, she is a complete contradiction to the ideal Victorian woman. At first, I too thought that Marian would be an evil character simply because she is described as being rather unattractive, however she ends up being the (arguably) bravest characters in the novel. As to whether or not Wilkie Collins is sexist or feminist, one would have to consider the fact he lived during the Victorian era, an era whose morals greatly contradict those we hold dear today. I think that for the time, adding Marian Halcombe into the novel was a rather progressive move, and displays some kind of subtle feminism.
After reading this post and the blog post “Badass Lady with a ‘Satche” I spent a lot of time thinking about the character Marian and how she relates to representation of Victorian woman. While she is a strong woman, I can’t get over the fact that she is described as having “masculine” features (Collins 35). It bothers me that the only woman who Walter takes serious has to be described as manly in some way. The more I think about it though the more I realize this description of her could be more of a reflection on Walter as a character than of Collins as a person. I remember in class how we discussed how Marian might be a better representation on Collins’s thoughts then our first narrator. I think from that perspective Collins is a feminist and Walter is the sexist. Walter has to describe Marian as being manly in order to justify to his Victorian audience Marian’s power over him in, regards to her telling him to leave Limmeridge House.