The gaze is central to The Woman in White. In the first section, Collins frames a supposedly objective testimony through a drawing master’s narrative, someone whose job is primarily looking. Walter Hartright frequently affords his reader extensively self-indulgent visual descriptions, but in his relationship with Laura, these descriptions take a turn:
“Not a day passed, in that dangerous intimacy of teacher and pupil, in which my hand was not close to Miss Fairlie’s; my cheek, as we bent together over her sketch-book, almost touching hers. The more attentively she watched every movement of my brush, the more closely I was breathing the perfume of her hair, and the warm fragrance of her breath” (Collins 63).
Because Hartright is first and foremost a painter, it makes sense that he is alarmed at the literalized foreshortening of his life’s picture plain: Laura is much closer to his than he initially realized. He describes his experience first through negatives: “not a day,” “not so close,” when he is in control of the action, perhaps to emphasize the extent of his restraint in this “dangerous” relationship with (the formally addressed) “Miss Fairlie.” However, when they act “together,” or when Laura is the actor “watch[ing]” him, he more freely admits his desire. Though he cannot see her, as he is focusing on his work, he gages her “attentive” gaze by her proximity, her smell. Hartright assumes their equal attraction in the next parallel phrase: the “more” attentive she is, the “more” intensely he breathes her in. They are close enough to equally exchange air, but Laura’s “perfume” and “fragrance” dominates the space (I will note, uncontrollably) at the culmination of this multi-clause, breathless phrase.
Even when Laura is “attentive” to Hartright, she is watching “every movement of [his] brush,” not him. The brush undoubtedly has sexual or phallic connotations for both parties which extend to another moment of gaze. As Hartright prepares to leave Limmeridge House,
“She turned her head away, and offered me a little sketch, drawn throughout by her own pencil, of the summer-house in which we had first met. The paper trembled in her hand as she held it out to me—trembled in mine as I took it from her” (Collins 126).
While Hartright is allowed to express his desire for Laura in his retrospective account, Laura cannot do the same. Without looking at him (and without touching him), she gives him a “little” (note Hartright’s diminutive) “drawing” which can yield a few interpretations. First, that her desire cannot be voiced, and is therefore only communicated through another object, (the paper). Second, that that the pencil in a woman’s (“trembling”) hand will never be as mighty as the brush in a man’s, we take it, steady one. But if we lean into the phallic interpretation, just like Hartright’s drawing, she has independently drawn on the canvas and given it to Hartright – perhaps she is voicing her own mirrored desire for Hartright. However, I would suggest that another reading is possible here: Laura’s trembling hand and inability to meet Hartright’s gaze hints at her insincerity. Painting from Hartright’s perspective is often linked with heterosexual desire, so (it might be crazy but) could this moment also allude to how Laura is merely mimicking heterosexual desire as she mimics Hartright as a painter?
Works Cited:
Collins, Wilkie. The Woman in White. Edited by John Sutherland, Oxford, Oxford University Press, [1860] 2008.
Your question is fascinating, especially when put in conjunction with the conversation that we had at the end of class today. If Laura is simply mimicking heterosexual desire, it seems like it might be worthwhile to reconsider the close relationship she has with Marian. Though Laura and Marian are said to be sisters, it does seem like there might be something more under the surface there, even if it is never openly stated. In some ways, the relationship that Laura and Marian have with each other reminds of the relationship that Laura and Lizzie have in Christina Rossetti’s “Goblin Market.”
Your post is really interesting on how Laura’s gaze might be mimicking Hartright’s heterosexual desire. I wonder how that plays into the section where she admits her feelings for Hartright to Sir Percival Glyde. I feel like this is the one moment so far in the novel where she has acted on her own accord but if you are saying that she might be simply mimicking Hartright’s desire, then do you think that she is still not acting with her own agency in this section?