Author: Mina Murray

Victorian ideas of a society being “redeemed by art” as described by Richard Altick rest on the function of looking. Culture, to some Victorians, was “a function, in the first instance, of the eyes”—the quality of the “inner life” was determined by what someone was surrounded with, ideally beautiful things (281). This is quite similar to medieval English ideas of sight, with the differences being physical. To the Victorians, beauty improved your inner self, including your morality and happiness, hence helping society. To English folks in the Middle Ages, looking upon beauty not only improved your morality and happiness, but also your physical health and appearance. In fact, it was a common romantic trope (as in medieval romances as a genre) that physical beauty was equated with inner beauty as well as wealth. Though a fictional trope does not translate directly into the real world, its existence does still reflect a cultural trend. It is one similar to the Victorian equation of beauty in your surroundings with morality as well as wealth. 

But to an extent, the medieval equation of physical beauty in the person with all these things is actually shockingly similar to the Victorians. While I have no evidence of any Victorian writer arguing that in the real world, beautiful and healthy people are always surrounded by beauty and wealth and have perfect souls, Victorian prints—works of fiction, much like medieval romances—strongly suggest the idealistic notion. 

I’ve had the recent privilege of looking at a collection of prints that were distributed in Victorian England, particularly ones produced by the Illman Brothers that feature women as the main subjects. Because I am focusing on images with women, I will not be considering if the equation of beauty with morality with health with money with art also applies to men. I will, though, be focusing on how it might apply to women, and the significance of that gendered analysis. 

“Expectation” is a standout example of one of these art women being surrounded by beautiful objects. She is the beauty standard—a soft face, accessorized hair, and an expensive, modest dress. The luxury of her clothing, as well, suggests equating wealth with beauty. Furthermore, she is framed by angels, flowers, swirls, and fruits. Angels suggest both purity and innocence, a subtle comment on the woman’s morality as represented by the objects or art that surrounds her. Whether it reflects her morality, or causes her normative morality, is unclear. Flowers adorn lots of art—stereotypically beautiful objects that bring joy and life, also perhaps suggesting the youth and femininity of the woman here. Decorative lines, as well, are shown. Interestingly, there is also fruit hanging from the frame. This ripe fruit might imply fertility and health for the woman shown. Through her appearance and these surrounding objects, then, not only the morality, but the external beauty and physical health of the woman is emphasized.

“Health and Beauty”’s title already carries a suggestion that the central woman is both physically fit and gorgeous. She stands tall and proper, an image of extravagance on top of those two previously mentioned features. Not only does her clothing display extra fabric, intricately patterned, but her environment is one that is grand and expensive. A large classically-styled pillar can be seen in the background, along with a decorated railing adorning the steps she descends. The woman’s health and beauty, then, is native to her wealthy and art-filled environment.

“Fannie’s Pets” is an interesting image for multiple reasons. First of all, it features two figures, a woman and a man, as opposed to the previous images only featuring one central character. Second of all, it includes animals as central elements. The woman, presumably Fannie, is assumed to own every shown bird and mammal in the image; their shapes and appearances suggest both elegance (such as the birds) and sweetness (such as the rabbits). Her ownership over them implies that she is wealthy, one of the features in the equivalent list. Because they demonstrate a bond with her, flocking to her side, she is also implied to be moral. The way the animals surround her and gaze up at her evokes a motherly image of Fannie, as well as indicates that she is a trustworthy individual. Finally, a man exists in he image to one side, also gazing in awe at the scene unfolding before him. His awestruck expression may also speak to Fannie’s kind and motherly qualities, as well as perhaps her physical beauty that attracts the man’s gaze. To conclude, these three above images are only some of the most prominent examples of Illman Brother’s prints that suggest fictionalized women must check off a list of desirable qualities, and that having one of the qualities inherently leads to the others. This draws a tentative connection between medieval romance genre ideas of moral character, class, and physicality, and Victorian attitudes towards art.

Works Cited:

Altick, Richard. “Art and its Place in Society.” Victorian People and Ideas, Norton: New York, 1973.

It is pretty much the point of Alice in Wonderland that Wonderland itself is a strange place with strange beings and strange rules. But what does that make Alice? Is she a regular human child as we see her, or is that only because of the perspective readers hold based on her introduction?

Readers are first introduced to our protagonist, Alice, in the “real world,” after all. Her real-world is something that is familiar to us: she is a child who is still in the process of undergoing education, who goes on walks, and has an older sister. Alice also thinks of herself in this way, by the rules of the real-world, consistently referring to herself as a “little girl.” The consistent establishment of Alice as a young girl, a child, are important in dictating how readers might treat her, or how they might react to Wonderland. A large part of why is that childhood carries a number of close associations, a notable one being innocence: the idea that children are purely innocent beings began to become quite popular among the Victorians, to the point where Lewis Carroll himself was fascinated by it. In fact, modern readers are still affected by this social idea that children are impressionable and innocent. Readers of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland are sure to draw upon not only the association of childhood with imagination, but of childhood with innocence, characterizing Alice as an innocent. There are many parts of the book in which Alice demonstrates that trait of innocence. For instance, she often steps back to think about her beloved cat, Dinah, who she misses during her time in Wonderland. “ ‘I hope they’ll remember her saucer of milk at tea-time’ “, she reminisces as she falls down the rabbit-hole, concerned not for her own falling, but her cat (4). She even mentions Dinah to the company of birds and mice she stumbles upon, not thinking ahead to realize that this particular set of creatures might not want to hear about her cat, who might hunt them. When asked about her, Alice replies “eagerly, for she was always ready to talk about her pet” (22). This eagerness and purehearted love for Dinah is a prime example of Alice demonstrating a trait of innocence, where her care for her pet might end up overshadowing her logic.

Another fascination of the Victorians was with double-ness, manifesting in lookalikes or the duality of one mind (think, for example, of Jekyll and Hyde). My classmates actually have pointed out that some of this double-ness exists within Alice, naming one part of her her “child self,” and the other, her “adult self.” Her “child self” is curious and emotional, connected to that trait of innocence I outlined above. Her “child self” often cries when afraid or hurt: for instance, when she bumps her head against the roof of the rabbit-hole hall, she lays on her side and is brought to tears (9). However, my classmates have also noticed that Alice demonstrates some awareness of how adults might react to her childlike actions, and reminds herself of it in times where she breaks down. Upon crying, she lectures herself: “ ‘You ought to be ashamed of yourself,’ said Alice, ‘a great girl like you,’ (she might as well say this), ‘to go on crying in this way! ‘“ (9). Interestingly, Alice at this time is a lot taller than she typically would be in the real-world after magically growing in size, hence why she calls herself a “great girl” instead of a “little girl.” She attempts to correlate her height with adulthood and maturity in order to get her “child self” to stop crying. 

These two aspects of Alice, her innocence and her double-ness, have led me to consider why the characters in Wonderland might react the way they do to her. One of the strangest traits of Wonderland, I’ve concluded, is that it has very little concept of adulthood or childhood, save for rare cases. There are a few characters, such as the baby that becomes a pig, who are determined solely by their age, but most others are ambiguous, assumed to be adults. Even so, the baby that becomes a pig is not treated with the assumed innocence of the child, and is beaten consistently for the misconception that he is purposefully disruptive. If Wonderland does have a consistent concept of maturity, it doesn’t apply presumed innocence of mind to children like the real-world might. This lack of difference in treatment applies to Alice, as well. Characters are often quite harsh to her, and make no effort to understand her, such as in the case of the caterpillar, who continuously interrogates her while she attempts to explain herself to the best of her ability. Still, the caterpillar denies her every word, always replying “contemptuously” (14). Readers such as myself might find this odd, considering we have the context that Alice is only a young girl in a stressful situation. We may even cite her trait of innocence as evidence of why she should be afforded pity or understanding. The characters in Wonderland, however, don’t seem to think this way about children, much like the caterpillar.

Another reason why Alice may be treated strangely in Wonderland, however, is her double-ness that I described earlier. Her “adult self” does not only appear when she scolds herself for crying, for instance. It also appears in scenes like the one with the baby pig, who she temporarily takes from its parent in order to save it from further beating, thus parentifying herself instead (47). Could it be that because of this duality, characters treat her as if she were an adult, or they ignore that she is a child? In fact, could this duality be a sort of “madness”? In a scene where the Cheshire Cat appears in a tree, he states that Alice “must be” mad, or she “wouldn’t have come here” (50). The cat might be referring to the fact that her “madness” is actually her childish curiosity, the very innocence spoken of earlier that led to her jumping down a deep and dangerous rabbit-hole. Or, possibly, the cat might be referring to something more complicated, such as this complication of character that Alice also possesses. Either way, Alice’s childhood as well as her complexity blatantly affect her navigation of Wonderland.

Works Cited:

Carroll, Lewis. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass. Bantam Books, 2006.

“Socially, morally, legally—dead” (Collins 413). This is how Laura Fairlie is described, in dramatic, definitive fashion, by Walter Hartright at the beginning of his long narrative after returning from abroad. It is important to note that Laura is not physically dead, and instead is in hiding, but that her “death” is still quite real in all of the senses that Hartright listed. Being a Victorian “sensation novel,” it combines gothic themes like death and mystery with romantic ideals (in the Romantic poetry sense) such as the thoughtful and noble artist: “Alive, with the poor drawing-master to fight her battle” Hartright says about himself and his determination to help (413). It is no surprise that the beginning of Hartright’s narrative reads as it does, then, full of scandal and daring. He frames Laura as practically dead, a fake-out that fills readers with mortal terror and then scandalous satisfaction, and himself as a moral protagonist against the world, reflective of poetic drama. Collins truly plays up the mystery and scandal of the novel during this portion.

In doing so, The Woman in White exemplifies the obvious connections between Victorian “scandal” and “sensation novels.” William A. Cohen in Sex, Scandal, and the Novel connects Victorians’ lengthy novels with a want to explore scandalous topics dramatically, yet sensitively—sexual content, for example, must be conveyed by journalists “without offending their readership” (Cohen). Cohen generally speaks of sex being the “scandal” that these novels indulge in, and by extension, Victorian readers indulge in due to their fascination with scandal. But the topics beyond sex in The Woman in White also exemplify scandal at its finest: not only is Laura’s fake-out death “sensational,” as in grand and terrible, but it is also scandalous in the ways Hartright describes. First of all, she has gone from wealthy to “in poverty” as Hartright says, a fall from grace that leaves her less capable monetarily and, considering Victorian literature sometimes connects wealth not only with power but with morality, perhaps less able to act reasonably (413). Though, considering Hartright is framed as a moral protagonist and is described as poor, this novel may actually criticize the idea of wealth and standing as morality. Regardless, Laura is also “in hiding,” a stark contrast from her social standing beforehand. Her uncle has “renounced her,” a family connection that is massively important, and she is dead to any “persons in authority” who dictate the law, and who therefore stand at the middle and final steps to truly putting the mystery of the novel to rest in terms of the ledger and inheritance (413). Though none of this is sexual in nature, it is all opposed to “polite” or socially lawful Victorian society, which neither Laura nor Walter are a part of any longer at this point. In other words, Collins’ readers, at this point, are indulging in the affairs of some quite scandalous characters who have found themselves in a terrible and sensational situation. The brief plot summary of later events in The Woman in White provided by Walter Hartright in this first chapter of his return alone could make up a scandal headline. His expressive use of punctuation, especially exclamation points, and his imagined binary between the shunned family he has grown into with Laura against greater polite society (remember how he so exaggeratedly “fight[s]” Laura’s “battle”) do not need much remodeling to become fantastic news stories.

The overall effect of this on fiction readers, then, is not unlike the indulgence in real(ish?) scandal that Cohen describes: following these protagonists “provides the opportunity to formulate questions” and “discuss previously unimagined possibilities” (Cohen). In fact, one of these questions may be the criticism of wealth as morality or power I mentioned earlier. Portraying Walter as poor and cast aside, but also heroic and determined raises questions about the norm of being wary of folks who have been “cast out” by Victorian society (think of Anne Catherick, who is pure and modest and honest in a polite womanly fashion yet also “insane” or “mad,” othering her). Sensation novels like The Woman in White, then, clear the way for plenty of scandalous “dangers,” and help pave the way for a number of critiques of Victorian society that “true” scandals are also defined by. In this case of Laura and Hartright, wealth/estate/property and morality are called into question especially.

 

Cohen, William A. “Sex, Scandal, and the Novel.” From Sex Scandal: The Private Parts of Victorian Fiction, Duke University Press, 1996. The Victorian Web, www.victorianweb.org/gender/wac.html. 

Collins, Wilkie. The Woman in White. Penguin Books, 2003. 

William A. Cohen’s “Sex, Scandal, and the Novel” describes the Victorian connection between Victorian concepts of sexual forbiddenness, other elements of socially unspeakable acts, and the style in which authors wrote. He explains, “Like other restrictions upon expression, the conventions of sexual unspeakability serve writers as a productive constraint, contributing to a certain historical formation of the literary”. The Woman In White, particularly the narrative of Walter Hartright, contains a number of paragraph-long descriptions that are winding and detailed, especially surrounding the novel’s women. Using this aspect of Cohen’s thinking as a lens, Hartright’s descriptions of the titular Woman in White become less curious, and more scandalous, regardless of any actual sexual intent. Now known to be Anne Catherick, she is further linked to the social undesirability of mental illness, as upon first meeting her, Walter discovers that she has escaped from an asylum. 

The most prominent rumination here is that of scandal rather than sex when thinking about Cohen. Whether she is the mysterious and ghostly Woman in White, or the tormented Anne Catherick, the woman is permanently linked to socially complex topics. Upon meeting her for the first time, Walter’s “restrictions of expression” produce a fascinating description, a long paragraph that takes great pains to deemphasize the sexualization of the woman. “The one thing of which I felt certain was,” he says, “that the grossest of mankind could not have misconstrued her motive in speaking, even at that suspiciously late hour and in that suspiciously lonely place”. Despite her wandering out late, Walter makes clear to readers that the woman is not a prostitute—however, instead of saying it outright, he politely states that her motives were pure, and that they could not have been “misconstrued” as promiscuous. Instead, her social unconventionality is linked to her rank, her social standing. Part of why the descriptive paragraph Walter embarks on is so long is because the woman defies categorization, being dressed in fabric “certainly not composed of very delicate or very expensive materials”. Additionally, her manner is inherently scandalous in that she hardly displays conventional femininity, according to Walter’s description. The “first touch of womanly tenderness” he hears from her is in the middle of their conversation, and he is unable to tell the nature of her “manner,” whether it is that of the noble lady or “the manner of a woman in the humblest rank of life”. All this from Walter is, in short, to say that the woman in white is more than a little strange, phrased in the politest way possible. On top of this inherent societal nonconformity (what we might call scandalous, even if not the exact “scandal” Cohen refers to), the woman in white is an escapee from a mental health institution, which Walter discovers after their first meeting.

However, the societal conventions of unspeakability that Cohen mentions guide Walter’s continual fascination and confusion with her in the text. Not even a day after they part, Walter is distracted by her: “I sat down and tried, first to sketch, then to read—but the woman in white got between me and my pencil, between me and my book.” He then asks a series of vague questions: “Had the forlorn creature come to any harm? That was my first thought, though I shrank selfishly from confronting it. Other thoughts followed, on which it was less harrowing to dwell”, he begins. Calling the mysterious figure a “forlorn creature,” especially, solidifies the image of her as something potentially scandalous in nature, even if not always sexual. In fact, Walter goes on to call her a “creature” rather than a “woman” more than once, throughout the novel. Late in the novel, when the obsession with unraveling the mystery consumes him further, he internally thinks, “Again, and yet again, the woman in white. There was a fatality in it”. This vaguely-stated “fatality” in question refers to his unconventional fascination, to the idea that this woman haunts him in a way greater than any other average lady—entirely due to her societal unconventionalism, the very thing that makes her ghostly other than her pale face in the moonlight. 

Walter’s fascination with the woman as unconventional is important in the formation of the novel because his point of view is the majority of readers’ exposure to this ghastly character. Readers only perceive Anne Catherick as so haunting due to her scandalous placement in Walter’s mind. These descriptions provide structure to the mystery, forming as a literary staple of the novel on a smaller scale than the way Cohen describes a historical formation of the literary. In addition, perhaps the mystery of the Woman in White has connections to the scandal-story that Cohen describes. 

Bibliography:

Cohen, William A. “Sex, Scandal, and the Novel.” From Sex Scandal: The Private Parts of Victorian Fiction, Duke University Press, 1996. The Victorian Web, www.victorianweb.org/gender/wac.html. 

Collins, Wilkie. (1996). The Woman in White. Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved February 5, 2025, from https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/583/pg583-images.html.