In William Rathbone Greg’s pamphlet on “the redundant woman,” he makes claims about acceptable celibacy, saying that this choice should not be made as “a mere escape from the lottery of marriage” (Greg 159). Two words stand out: “mere escape.” “Escape” denotes his understanding that the marriage market is a cyclical institution, one which perpetuates itself, while “mere” connotes trivializing the woman’s desire next to the power of the institution. Greg fails to account for women who might have to “escape” from the institution of marriage, out of necessity. This is a side of marriage available to readers in The Woman in White. As The Norton Anthology notes, a married woman’s legal protection was extremely limited, with restrictions on property, child custody, and conditions of divorce (“Victorian” 991).
One condition under which middle- and upper-class woman could claim a divorce was by proving a husband’s cruelty (“Victorian” 990). In The Woman in White, Marian is clearly aware of this clause and acts practically when Laura reveals evidence of domestic abuse:
“She showed me the marks. I was past grieving over them, past crying over them, past shuddering over them. They say we are either better than men, or worse. If the temptation that has fallen in some women’s way, and made them worse, had fallen in mine at that moment—Thank God! my face betrayed nothing that his wife could read. The gentle, innocent, affectionate creature thought I was frightened for her and sorry for her, and thought no more.” (Collins 305).
Marian is detachedly analytical in this passage, investigating “the marks” without reference to whom they are inflicted on, and then pushing her own feelings back in three parallel clauses (“I was past”) as if to convince the reader and herself that she has no emotion. In the next sentence, she also tries to distance herself from womanhood, which she associates with emotion (“grieve,” “cry,” or “shudder”) and the emotion with fault (“temptation,” “worse”). Her value as a woman is firmly grounded in a dialogue with men, where a valued woman can“hide” her emotion. Therefore, in an act of self-fashioning, she aligns herself with masculinity (or a more masculinely coded version of acceptable femininity) but is unsure of her success in the first clause of the sentence. However, in bursting forth “Thank God!-My face betrayed nothing,” she considers her reserve a success. Laura, meanwhile, is associated solely with femininely coded values (“gentle, innocent, affectionate” “thought no more”). There is still the implication that a woman cannot advocate well enough for herself, and she needs a masculine presence to help her voice those claims – in order to get help, femininity must be put aside. A woman has to “th[ink],” to remember, a position which is presented as masculine.
In light of this quotation, it is revealing to return to Greg, who writes that “The residue…who remain unmarried constitute the problem to be solved, the evil and anomaly to be cured” (Greg 159). It seems that Greg’s conclusions need to be flipped as they apply to The Woman in White: Marian, one of his so-called redundant women, is the one who cures, both physically and in proposing legal intervention, and the injury that needs to be cured results from his highly exalted marriage. Greg’s “lottery,” then, is just as perilous for the woman as it is desirable for him. Given that the novel is interested in men with hidden personalities putting their best foot forward for marriage while enacting harm behind closed doors, perhaps in the introduction when Hartright claims that the story is about “what a Woman’s patience can endure,” he is introducing a central theme. Perhaps this line raises not a question of “what” but a question of “how much”: the novel implicitly criticizes marital laws, asking how much a woman must endure before legal sympathy can be drawn on, if at all (Collins 5).
Works Cited:
Collins, Wilkie. The Woman in White. Edited by John Sutherland, Oxford, Oxford University Press, [1860] 2008.
Greg, William Rathbone. “The Redundant Woman.” pp. 157-163.
“The Victorian Age 1830-1901.” The Norton Anthology of English Literature, 8th Edition Volume E, Edited by Carol T. Christ and Catherine Robson, 2006.