It seem
s that the legends and stories of women in white always involve a forbidden lover. The artist Frida Kahlo drew an unfinished portrait of a woman in white which was painted in 1930 (to the left). Some people thought that this woman was Frida’s first lesbian lover, which makes an interesting connection to Wilkie Collins’ Woman in White when looking at the homo-erotic, incestual relationship between Laura and Marian. Marion seems like more of a lover than Walter Hartright for most of the novel. An example of this relationship is when Marian tells Laura to keep herself safe by locking herself in her room, “I will come back again, love, in an hour or less… Lock the door; and open it to nobody, until I come upstairs again.’ I kissed her, and left her,” (302) Marian can’t part with Laura without a kiss, she is Laura’s protector and very passionate about her. Marian is very enthusiastic to get Laura away from Sir Percival so claim her as “mine” once again which is the character of a lover and not a sibling. So there is an irony is the stereotypical symbolism of the color white meaning purity and innocence when these women in white have healthy sexual appetites and partake in relationships that society would consider sinful and (gasp!) scandalous.
Also, there seems to be a connection between phantom women in white and phantom girls in white, which would explain why both Anne and Laura are treated like children. In Esther Inglis-Arkell’s article “Why are There so Many Ghost Stories about a ‘Woman in White’?”, she discusses how these ghost little girls in white evolve into the women in white we have come to know all too well. Arkell describes the little girl phantoms as having more of a personality whether that be playful, somber, or simply evil or menacing. Anne is the perfect example of this in an earlier scene with Walter after he brings up Sir Percival’s name in front of her for the first time and Anne’s pitiful and melancholy character transforms into something a bit more menacing. “The instant I pronounced that name she started to her feet; and a scream burst from her that rang through the churchyard and made my heart leap in me with the terror of it,” (105). Anne is usually portrayed as an innocent child that we as the audience want to empathize with. But then she has this child-like tantrum that makes the situation a bit more sinister and hair-raising. She is upset by an evil betrayal on the part of Sir Percival but quickly goes back to her innocent, doe-eyed, ghost-child persona.
According to Arkell, the woman in white’s narrative is always involving “love, sex, betrayal, murder … She’s someone’s unhappy wife, or illicit lover, or suicidal betrothed, or some other sad tale of romantic woe.” Does this sound familiar (Laura Fairlie-Glyde)?
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I think that Laura’s persona as well as her relationship with Marian throughout the narrative should also be addressed. I agree with you whole-heartedly that in the first half of WIW, their relationship had a glorious amount of sexual undertones. But what is it like now? You made the connection that the woman in white also take on a child-like ghost personality, and one could argue that that is what is happening to Laura. Instead of now having this weird marriage of kinship with Marian, it feels like now she is assuming the mother/governess role, with good ‘ol Walter as the father figure. There are moments when Laura gets treated delicately like a child after she leaves the asylum.
I think it may be to far to argue that the women in this novel have healthy sexual appetites, considering the fact that Laura is deemed as this child-like creature. Yes the relationship with Marian may have had sexual undertones, but now it just seems motherly to me. But hey, would could put Freud into conversation and it would shed a whole other light on this topic.