“The most wretched of her sex, if she must give herself in marriage when she cannot give her love” (171) L
“She will be his Laura instead of mine! His Laura!” (185) M
“I [have] just come back from a stolen look at Laura in her pretty little white bed . . . My own love!” (194) M
“My poor, faded flower! my lost, afflicted sister!” (478) W
“In the right of her calamity, in the right of her friendlessness, she was mine at last! Mine to support, to protect, to cherish, to restore. Mine to love and honor as father and brother both. Mine to vindicate through all risks and all sacrifices” (414) W
“If I am to fight our cause with the Count, strong in the consciousness of Laura’s safety, I must fight it for my Wife.” (559) W
In simplistic terms, Laura Fairlie is the object of desire that The Woman in White works toward possessing.
Laura is loved and desired by Walter Hartright; she is sought and desired by Sir Percival Glyde; she is kissed and loved by Marian; she is stolen from Blackwater; she is cared for and coveted by both Walter and Marian in their tangled ménage á trois. In all these cases, syntactically as well as contextually, Laura is the object of desire: she is passive, the desired rather than the desirer. Similarly, she is spoken about as the possessed object – but not by Percival Glyde or Count Fosco, the ostensible villains of her life: by Walter and Marian, her husband and sister.
In the six excerpts above, Laura gets ten possessive pronouns (or, in keeping with the Laura’s syntax and context, ten are given to her). Laura is “my” love, “mine,” or “his.” She is not her own Laura; she is discussed as an object passed around from hand to hand. Marian discusses her marriage to Glyde in almost economic terms, as if Laura’s marriage is a transaction involving a change of possession. Laura herself, describing marriage, uses the phrase “give herself,” reinforcing the possessional aspects of marriage as a contract and a relationship.
Perhaps the worst instance of Laura as an object of possession is Walter’s in-narrative monologue. He refers to Laura as “mine” four times; the paragraph’s anaphora enforces the possessional language, enhancing the concept of Laura as an object of possession which Walter as “at last” gotten into his own hands.
The description of a spouse as “my wife” doesn’t seem especially ominous until connected with the numerous other instances of possessive language. Walter insists to Marian that he wants to marry Laura because it will enhance his position as Laura’s guardian angel, savior, chevalier, knight in armor, etc. – not because he loves her or is attracted to her, but because his possession of her legally will make it easier for him to “save” her (return her to her legal identity, stolen by SPG and CF through AC’s resemblance). We know this through Walter’s umpteenth use of “my” to describe Laura.
Furthermore, Laura is never given her own narrative; not once, except in her (relatively rare) dialogue, does Laura speak in her own voice. The utter exclusion of Laura as a major figure of the action reinforces her presentation as an object; she is handled, desired, passed around, and exchanged, but she does nothing, acts as nothing, performs nothing. The possessional language consistently applied to her reduces her to a possessed object, and the refusal to let her speak as herself reduces her to a thing.
Laura is reduced and possessed throughout The Woman in White. Whether or not Collins is a feminist, whether or not TWIW is meant to argue for better women’s rights, whether or not Marian is supposed to be an example of a “freed” woman – Laura is an object, through the novel’s syntax as well as its contexts. Her objectification and possession are the root of the novel’s dilemma, and her submission to these concepts is the product of them.
This post could have a nice conversation with “House work and the Independent Women” by Stephanie, in the sense that there are marked differences between Laura and Marian. Marian in the sense is the more active character as she deals with Laura’s legals affair and tries to relieve her as from the sinister clutch of Percival and Fosco. Laura on the other hand, is yes, treated like this object. She is possessed by Walter, by Laura, by Percival Glyde, even Fosco at times. Although she may have something to say, she isn’t too active and usually acts as the damsel in distress.
Marian on the other hand is a super active character. She helps Laura, she writes to people to help Laura, she breaks her out of the asylum, she even eavesdrops. Now why are these two drastically different characters ending up in the same place? And why does the more active character not get the happy ending with a baby Walter? What does this say about Victorian culture in general?
I found this post very interesting, as the descriptions of Laura throughout the book is something that I have been noticing as well. When Walter discusses Laura’s assumed death, he describes her as a “wife” and a “daughter”- both identities indicating her belonging to a male. She is always “his” wife or “his daughter”- she is very rarely, if ever, referred to as her own person with some sort of agency. The post titled “Walter Hartright’s Hart-On: Unpacking his Conception of Love” touches on this as well, as the author brings up Walter’s, “rather possessive tricolon.”
I think this post is complemented very well by the post “Laura is Basically Walter’s Dog”. Both the posts make the same point they just uses different means to get there. This post focuses on the words used surrounding Laura and the lack of words Laura herself has. “Walter’s Dog” also points out Walter’s specific ownership he gives himself over Laura in equating the actions of there relationship to that of a dog and owner. “Walter’s Dog” also points out Laura’s similarity to Mrs. Vesey. This post points out this same idea but not explicitly saying, “…she does nothing, acts as nothing, performs nothing”. I think this relation between Laura and Mrs. Vesey could be interesting to explore. It would be interesting to see how deep their similarities run as well as what that says about the Victorian woman.
I also find it interesting that Marian and Walter actively deceive her into believing she has agency, when they pretend to sell her drawings and tell her she is contributing to the household economy. They recognize her need to take control over her own life again after having it so completely stripped from her, everything from her title to her name to her memory, and yet they play at giving her a way to help, just as Count Fosco made her believe she was able to escape, only for her to learn that Marian was not waiting for her as she had supposed.
Even in proving her own identity she can do nothing, for she has no memory of the events that would show it. She requires someone else to assert her identity for her, the ultimate stripping of power from a person.
This passage was fascinating because I immediately thought of Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita. Only, in Nabokov’s novel, the “woman in white” is only a 12-year-old girl. Humbert Humbert narrates the novel and its storyline is questionable because he is quite clearly a pedophile who needs to lie in order to preserve his image within society. Humbert marries a woman who is childlike in order to satiate his desire for children, but his attempts to quell his lust are fruitless. Thus, possessive pronouns within The Woman in White are extremely alarming and they reminded me of Humbert’s frequent referral to Lolita as his Lolita.
I love (hate, really. It’s a messed up idea but the discourse is Great) that you noticed how often Laura is used possessively and connected it to personhood. I find it totally fascinating that Laura really has no identity or agency other than being pretty and benign. In my first post I talked about how this might be a reflection of an ideal feminine role, but you make a lot of great points of objectification that go beyond that. In the novel, Laura is used as a pawn to be moved around and manipulated for financial gain. Her identity is so insignificant that it can actually be briefly killed by Fosco and Percival. Whether Collins meant this as a giant metaphor for marriage still doesn’t hide the fact that she is used by everyone that comes into contact with her.
Absolutely. I wonder if she is actually the eponymous character instead of Anne; the “pure,” static object around which everything and everyone revolves. The blog post “Laura is Basically Walter’s Dog” takes a look at a passage that describes her in terms of being a pet. She needs to be taken out for walks, she is distraught when her “master” leaves, she relies on him for happiness, etc. The passage where Walt keeps saying that Laura is his makes it seem that it is primary duty in life to protect and save her. Even though we can all interpret their relationship as one transforming from romantic to familial (and an unequal father/daughter dynamic), could it be even worse than that? Is Walt trying to “train” her into becoming the woman he wants her to be?