While certain rights and freedoms were granted to women throughout the nineteenth century, they still faced many oppressions, both legally and socially. For example, the law made it exceedingly difficult for women to get divorced from their husbands (“The Victorian Age” 992). Additionally, a woman’s role in life was to ensure the happiness of her husband. As stated in The Victorian Age section of The Norton Anthology of English Literature, “Protected and enshrined within the home, her [a woman’s] role was to create a place of peace where man could take refuge from the difficulties of modern life (992). Essentially, as expected by society, a woman’s – particularly a middle-class woman’s – purpose in life was to attend to the needs and desires of men.
The burdens of these expectations on women are explicitly depicted in Wilkie Collins’, The Woman in White. While these depictions are scattered throughout the entire novel, there is one paragraph that explicitly describes the struggles that these expectations have caused. Upset about her sister’s marriage to Sir Percival Glyde, Marian complains about a woman’s duty to men, stating that “they [men] take us body and soul to themselves, and fasten our helpless lives to theirs as they chain up a dog to his kennel. And what does the best of them give us in return” (Collins 181)? Marian is not only expressing her frustration at Laura’s marriage to a man she does not want to marry but also expressing her frustration with the role of women in general. She hates that women have to give so much while they get nothing in return. It is interesting for Marian to be showing frustration about this, particularly because her character always seems to agree with belittling stereotypes about women. Perhaps it was Laura’s marriage to Sir Percival that opened her eyes to the burdens of a woman’s role in society. It is also interesting that Wilkie Collins recognized and spoke so openly about this topic. Overall, The Woman in White provides insight into what the life and struggles of a woman may have been like in the Victorian era, a time when women were expected to put men before themselves.