In the first scene after the jarring switch in narrative that occurs at the revelation that Laura Glyde/Fairlie is alive, we find Walter, Laura, and Marian hiding out in a two-floor apartment “in a populous and poor neighborhood” in London (Collins 412). Several dramatic shifts have occurred at this point, following the empty one-week period Hartright insists “must remained unrecorded” (Collins 412). The first of these shifts is a matter of class—Walter, Marian, and Laura, who were once well-respected, wealthy British citizens, have been reduced to living in anonymity and poverty.
The second shift which has rattled the story is the change in the dynamic between Walter, Laura, and Marian—particularly the first two. This unsettling subversion is encapsulated in the following quote from Hartright’s story, which is the subject of my focus for this blog post: “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 honour as father and brother both. Mine to vindicate through all risks and all sacrifices…” (Collins 414).
My first point of interest with this quote is the conspicuous repetition of the word “mine” four times, emphasized by its placement at the front of each sentence. Each use doubles down on Walter’s possession of Laura after their long time apart. The initial use of “mine” is not capitalized, yet its significance comes from the words surrounding it: “she was mine at last!” This exclamation alludes to Walter and Laura’s previous connection and unresolved longing. The specific term “at last” implies yearning for something, and what has Walter been yearning for? A romantic connection with Laura!
Repetition takes center stage in this passage, appearing as well in Walter’s list of actions which he will perform for Laura. This includes “to protect,” “to cherish,” and “to love,” all words reminiscent of marriage vows. Walter repeatedly pledges himself to Laura in all the ways a husband would…and yet he surprisingly circumvents this expectation soon after.
The crucial paradox of this paragraph centers around the line, “mine to love and honour as father and brother both.” Here Walter takes two positions in relationship to Laura, both of which are familial—a dramatic departure from his previous feelings for her. The word “both” emphasizes the multiplicity of their relationship, and yet “lover” is noticeably left out of the list. The first half of The Woman in White has revolved around Walter and Laura’s budding romance, which had to be suppressed because of her engagement to Sir Percival Glyde. Yet now that Laura has seemingly escaped her marriage—the main obstacle in their way—the romance has been sidestepped.
With this startling shift from forbidden lovers to siblings (or perhaps father/daughter), Collins avoids a potential major sex scandal. If they weren’t posing as a brother/father and two sisters, embodying the roles as if they were real blood relatives, they would be a bachelor living with his mistress and her sister(lover) alone in secret! What a scandal! This move of circumventing a potential illicit sexual relationship marks a very Victorian impulse within the text—to avoid discussion/description of sex at all costs. Collins replaces Walter and Laura’s sexual tension with a familial bond—presumably due to Laura’s ill health, which has reduced her to a childlike invalid. One can’t really blame Walter for avoiding sexual relations with such a woman, but the shift is still dramatic considering his many months of yearning (even on a ship headed to and from the West Indies!). In fact, yearning dominates this quoted passage from Hartright’s log, yet any possibility of a “completion” of this yearning is entirely warded off, as is the Victorian way.
This reminds me of the excerpt from “Sex, Scandal, and the Novel,” which brought up the ways the Victorians attempted to avoid explicitly discussing sex through word choice and other textual elements. I wonder if this repetition of “mine” goes hand in hand with this sexual innuendo. Besides highlighting Walter’s obsessive love for Laura, this possessiveness highlights the new sexual control he has over her as his wife. I think that the fact that the word “lover” is not included in the quote falls in line with the Victorian norms that Walter lives by, but maybe also signal that he has lived so long as without a romantic relationship with Laura that he can’t imagine actually filling the role.
At a later point in the novel, Walter demonstrates a similar possessiveness over Sir Percival’s secret. “This was the Secret, and it was mine!” he exclaims. “A word from me; and house, lands, baronetcy, were gone from him for ever — a word from me, and he was driven out into the world, a nameless, penniless, friendless outcast!” (Collins 510) When taken with the passage you point out, this quotation makes Walter seem like a megalomaniac. Suddenly, his narrative seems less about reclaiming Laura’s identity and more about possessing Laura for himself. Though he doesn’t explicitly say so, Walter is excited about striping Sir Percival of his title because it means stripping him of his wife, too. He hopes to usurp Laura from Percival, treating her as an exchangeable object.
In these passages, do you think Collins is implicitly critiquing the possessiveness of marital heterosexuality? Walter is our hero, but Collins never paints him as infallible. Walter may represent the Victorian husband assimilating his wife into his own identity through marriage. In these scenes, is Walter any better than Count Fosco? This novel critiques the criminal justice system, so it’s not so far-fetched to believe that it critiques the misogynistic laws of marriage, too. I’d love it if you expanded upon these themes in a future essay!
I find this reading of how Walter claims ownership over Laura to be very interesting. I want to know what you think when the father/daughter relationship shifts to a romantic relationship when Laura finally exclaims “we may own that we love each other now”. In this sentence, Laura explicitly uses the word “own” rather than something like “say” or “admit”. This is shortly after Sir Percival Glyde’s death, but there is still a moment where Laura and Hartright are living together unmarried.
I find this really interesting. Perhaps something to think about further is how the repetition of “mine” is indicating Walter’s ownership of Laura. Something that strikes me is how he is so focused on owning her and getting her back from Sir Percival, and less on actually being a partner to her and loving her. It seems to me that in this way, Walter is really subverting our expectations of him as the novel’s hero, emphasized in this one paragraph and his repetitions of “mine”.