Author: The Woman In Sweats

At the conclusion of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland we are given a glimpse into the mind of Alice’s older sister.  In the final paragraph, she imagines Alice as an adult who maintains, “the simple and loving heart of her childhood”, and who “would gather about her other little children, and make their eyes bright and eager with many a strange tale, perhaps even with the dream of Wonderland of long ago”.

Upon first reading, I found this sentiment from Alice’s sister to be rather odd.  During our extensive study of The Woman in White, the two female characters attributed with childish characteristics, Laura and Anne, were seen and treated as mentally ill persons.  In their case, maintaining  “the simple and loving hearts” of their childhoods was a sign of something being wrong with them, and not a trait to be commended. However, I soon realized that there is a large difference in the medium through which childishness is interpreted in The Woman in White and Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.

In The Woman in White it was very rare for a female character to be relaying the story to us.  Even with Laura’s sister, Marian, acting as narrator it is difficult to claim a truly feminine viewpoint there, as much of the story features descriptions of her as a masculine character.  The narrator in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, however, was always close to either Alice or her sister.  Taking these disparate viewpoints into consideration, it begins to seem as though it is a masculine view that women who display childish tendencies have something wrong with them, whereas the feminine view is that maintaining this childishness is a good thing.

Childishness is often associated with innocence and naiveté.  The loss of innocence, then, can be seen as the loss of childishness.  Indeed, in The Woman in White, both Marian and Laura (before she is described as mentally ill) tried to shield one another from the realities of adulthood.  Before Laura’s marriage to Sir Percival, Marian lamented the need to explain to Laura what marriage would entail, and after her marriage, Laura refused to tell Marian what her marriage was like.  In both cases, the sisters are protecting the other from this information so they can maintain the other’s innocence and naiveté on the matter; they are seeking to prevent the loss of innocence to keep some of their sibling’s childishness in tact.

In her conclusion of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Alice’s sister is able to imagine and envision the characters from Wonderland.  She acknowledges reality, and yet delights in her ability to access these childish fantasies, wishing for her sister to be able to do the same when she is an adult.

What all of this suggests is that women view childishness as something to protect and hold on to.  But, because men see it as a sign of mental illness, that childishness must be exposed only to other women (like in the case of Marian and Laura), or other children.

In his essay Why Are Women Redundant? William Rathbone Gregg discusses what he saw as a great problem facing the Victorian age: Single women.  Single, working women were not fulfilling their womanly duties, (to be married to men and care for the home and children) and instead were wasting their lives working and remaining unmarried.

“There are hundreds of thousands of women…who, in place of completing, sweetening, and embellishing the existence of others, are compelled to lead an independent and incomplete existence of their own….In great cities, thousands, again, are toiling in the ill-paid métier of sempstresses and needlewomen, wasting life and soul, gathering the scantiest subsistence, and surrounded by the most overpowering and insidious temptations” (Gregg, 158).

This particular quote from Gregg’s article brought to mind the poem The Lady of Shalott by Lord Alfred Tennyson, specifically the first stanza of the second section of the poem.

In the first stanza we are told that, “No time hath she to sport and play:/ A charmed web she weaves alway.” (II. 37-38). Here we are introduced to the Lady of Shalott in a similar manner to how Gregg describes the single women; She is alone (single) and spends her days working with no time to  do anything else for her own enjoyment and with little in return. Similar to these single, working women, the Lady of Shalott is also surrounded by temptation. “A curse is on her, if she stay/ Her weaving, either night or day,/ To look down to Camelot” (II. 39-41). I believe that this line takes what Gregg is saying a step further, and that while the temptations are present, it is indulging in them that would lead to a single woman’s end, (and similarly the Lady of Shalott). Additionally, because later in the poem the Lady of Shalott does give into temptation, single women cannot be trusted to have the strength of will to stay away from such dangerous temptations.

What I interpreted the repercussions to be for giving into these temptations is that the woman becomes unmarriable, and just like the Lady of Shalott they are doomed to die alone as a single woman. In a way, this poem can be viewed as a warning to single women, that they must marry to avoid this terrible fate the Lady of Shalott was left to.

   

 

During his study of the human psyche, Sigmund Freud concluded that it was divided into three separate parts: The Id, the Ego, and the Superego. It is quite common for these parts of the mind to come into conflict, and while it is often an internal struggle, we are able to observe these struggles through first person narration. In The Woman in White we are able to see this struggle through the compilation and narration of Walter Hartright.

On the first page of the novel, Walter prevails upon the reader to consider the tale he is telling as a judge might consider a case.  What he is trying to prove, we do not yet know, but we are led to believe that  he is endeavoring to provide the most accurate depiction of what occurred as possible.  Indeed, Walter says at the bottom of that first page,

Thus, the story here presented will be told by more than one pen….with the same object…to present the truth always in its most direct and most intelligible aspect; and to trace the course of one complete series of events. (Collins, 9)

This also suggests that the individuals Walter is including are to be considered reliable in their accounts of events.

By the conclusion of the novel, however, the validity of these opening lines is called into question.  At the end of the pages included of Marian’s diary is a “Postscript by a Sincere Friend” who on later pages we find out to be Count Fosco. The contents of Marian’s diary are extremely condemning to the Count and Sir Percival, so it is not outside of reason to assume that he potentially altered some of the contents of her writing, rendering it unreliable and thus unusable in the constraints of a court of law.  Also, Walter tells us as we near the end of the tale that he has changed all of the names of the individuals involved in the book to protect their privacy.  If he has changed one thing about the tale, is it not possible, or even probable, that he has changed more as well?

I believe that it is very likely that he did, and that the inclusion of the damning material are manifestations of his conflicting Ego and Superego.  When the Ego and Superego come into conflict, they battle over what is possibly attainable and whether it is right to attain it or not (Conflict Chart, The Victorian Web).  What we can assume Walter desires is the rights to Limmeridge house, and that he is providing this account as a means of acquiring it.  This is a manifestation of his Ego.  However, his Superego intervenes, knowing his claim is false, and that pretending it is not is wrong.  Thus, Walter’s Superego prompts him to include the information that would prove him false, because it is the right thing to do.

The section that I chose to close read was Marian’s diary entry for December 20th, beginning with the line “I hate Sir Percival!” (191).  What I wish to focus on is the interpretation of the moment in which Laura first sees her name with Sir Percival’s last name attached to it and her reaction.

“Last night, the cards for the married couple were sent home.  Laura opened the packet, and saw her future name in print, for the first time.  Sir Percival looked over her shoulder familiarly at the new card which had already transformed Miss Fairlie into Lady Glyde — smiled with the most odious self-complacency — and whispered something in her ear.  I don’t know what it was — Laura has refused to tell me — but I saw her face turn to such a deadly whiteness that I thought she would have fainted.  He took no notice of the change: he seemed to be barbarously unconscious that he had said anything to pain her.” (191).

Upon first reading I thought that it was rather clear what Sir Percival might have said to Laura.  Considering the discussion between Laura and Marian only a few pages earlier where Marian tells us that, “She has learnt her hard, her inevitable lesson.  The simple illusions of her girlhood are gone” (186) I made the assumption that what Sir Percival whispered was of a sexual nature, something to connect Laura’s new title with her new role in his life.  I also thought that it might be something sexual in nature because of Laura’s refusal to repeat it to Marian. I saw this as a moment of foreshadowing the change in roles that occurs between Marian and Laura post-marriage, as Laura upon her return from the honeymoon refuses to share the problems in her marriage with her sister as a means of protecting her. However, upon further thought, I do think that a more complex reading of this section can be seen when considering the marital laws at the time.

I think that it is very important in this section to consider the phrase used to describe Laura’s impending transition into marriage, “the new card which had already transformed Miss Fairlie into Lady Glyde” (191). In the Victiorian period, when a woman married she ceased to exist as an individual and became completely the property of her husband. I think that by phrasing this as Miss Fairlie becoming Lady Glyde with the exclusion of her first name it is acting as a symbol for this loss of individuality that would occur upon her marriage to Sir Percival.  When considering this reading of the text, it is entirely possible then that Sir Percival did not say anything sexual to her at all, but rather he might have said something in reference to his soon to be ownership of her, and that the concept of losing herself in this unwanted marriage is what shook Laura to the core.  Thus, her reluctance to share her future husband’s words with her sister was not to prevent her from knowing her husbands carnal thoughts about her, but instead to prevent Marian’s further anger at him, as she has been throughout the novel very much a feminist figure.