Author: Currer Bell

Texts written for children often have clearly defined morals that children are supposed to understand by the time the tale has concluded. However, these deceivingly clear-cut messages are often convoluted with more sinister warnings. In “Goblin Market,” Christina Rossetti ends her poem with a tidy saying about the value of sisters, diverting the attention from the dangerous, foreign men who prey on innocent young women. Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland similarly describes the happiness of childhood at the conclusion, which moves the reader away from the anxiety of ignorance placing a child in danger. The simplified morals in these texts illustrate the complex desire of adults to simultaneously warn children of danger but prevent them from becoming too fearful of life.

The deeper meaning of “Goblin Market” is interwoven into the final stanza. The role of becoming a mother provides the women with a defined role, but it causes their hearts to be “beset with fears” and to reflect on “not-returning time” (488). The fear arises from their worry for their children and from the realization that they are growing old. Despite their romanticized perceptions of their “pleasant days” of childhood, the “haunted” and “wicked” events in the market-place are true and frightening (488). Lizzie stood in “deadly peril” to save Laura; there is nothing “pleasant” about that circumstance. Therefore, the clear moral denies children access to the more important messages about avoiding dangerous situations, especially those connected to sexual endeavors.

The final chapter of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland also draws all of the disastrous elements of Alice’s adventure into a positive message about enjoying one’s dreams while one can still access her imagination. Alice believes that she had a “wonderful dream,” which is then replayed in a condensed form in her older sister’s daydream (102). After the sister’s rationalization about everything that occurred in the vision, her sister thinks about how Alice will “keep…the simple and loving heart and her childhood” through her adult years (104). Though this seems like a lovely attribute, Alice’s childhood mind is filled with ignorance, disrespect, and simplicity. These attributes prevent her from sympathizing with others and keep her extremely close-minded. Through the emphasis on the joys of childhood at the conclusion, the narrator forces children into believing Alice’s tale was wonderfully positive.

The narrators of “Goblin Market” and Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland each conclude with the hope that these tales will be passed on from generation to generation. These texts create two binaries that cause tension in the texts based on this form of storytelling. The first is the natural occurrence of maturing into adulthood while still maintaining access to the memories of childhood. The second is the relationship between the stories parents tell their children and what these stories actually teach. These parental anxieties are one of the driving forces of “Goblin Market” and Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Without the focus on a young audience, these texts could have very different, and less happy, endings.

In “Goblin Market,” Christina Rossetti provides an account of how the love between two women is actually a necessity for survival. Lizzie and Laura’s love for one another is what saves them both and allows them to uphold their duties as single women and then as married women. Their relationship is reminiscent of the one between Laura and Marian in Wilkie Collins’s The Woman in White in that each Laura is saved by the selfless acts of her respective sister. Rossetti and Collins reject the notion that love between women should be feared by highlighting the ability of this love to coexist with heterosexual marriage.

Rossetti proves that though women may fall, they are ultimately powerful forces. Rossetti writes that women can “cheer,” “fetch,” “lift,” and “strengthen” one another in times of need (488). Lizzie could only achieve these feats by offering her body to Laura. When she returns from the market, she says to Laura, “Eat me, drink me, love me” (486). In response, Laura “kissed and kissed her with a hungry mouth” (486). This sexually-overt physical exchange between the sisters ultimately prevented the death of Laura. In fact, her dangerous condition arose from the seduction of the male goblins, who spoke in “tones as smooth as honey” and caused her to “suck” the deadly fruits (476). Laura’s weak will caused her to risk her life while Lizzie’s refusal to obey the male characters saved them both from death. Through this portrayal of the female characters in “Goblin Market,” Rossetti shows that same-sex bonds are healthy and can be more beneficial than heterosexual relationships at specific points in a woman’s life.

The final line of The Woman in White embodies that same ideal about same-sex relationships. After dominating the tale, Walter ends his narrative by stating, “Marian was the good angel of our lives—let Marian end our Story” (612). Though it is contestable that Marian actually ends the story, she plays a key role in the marriage between Walter and Laura. Without Marian, Walter’s plans for revenge and marriage would have never come to fruition. Marian acts as the nurturing and protecting force whose physical and emotional support revive Laura. Therefore, just as Laura needs Lizzie’s love and physical affection to revive her from death into her youthful beauty, Laura Fairlie needs Marian to restore her to her previous self so that she is once again fit for marriage.

These stories are paradoxical in that same-sex sensuality is simultaneously repressed and illuminated as a pathway to marriage in these Victorian texts. Even though both accounts end with heterosexual marriages, these unions are not the solution to the scandal of same-sex relationships. Rather, heterosexual marriages allow same-sex relationships to exist by providing women with the guise of respectability in society. Marian and Lizzie remain as close to their sisters as they did before the marriages, but these relationships are no longer explicitly erotic because each Laura can now fulfill her role as a married woman raising her children in a safe, domestic space.

The narrative structure of The Woman in White presents the reader with a number of potential interpretations of Walter Hartright’s intentions—from attempting to reestablish Laura’s identity to trying to avenge his rightful property. In the first chapter of the novel, Walter deceives the reader by stating that “the story [is] here presented…by more than one witness…to present the truth always in its most direct and most intelligible aspect” (Collins 5). One key piece of information that Walter leaves out until later in the novel is that he will be the one collecting all of these narratives and, presumably, editing them to fit his purpose. According to Pamela Perkins and Mary Donaghy, Walter, through his role as editor and chief narrator, “is in fact manipulating the narrative for his own ends” (392). Therefore, Walter is not presenting the truth and clearly has ulterior motives.

Walter’s motives can be understood through his representation of the “facts” that he portrays in the novel. Throughout his narrative, he presents information as though they had just occurred and as though he has the same amount of information as the reader. However, in the Third Epoch, Walter reveals that he “[has] paused and rested for a while on [his] forward course” and admits that he is “looking forward to the happier time which [his] narrative has not yet reached” (490). Due to his previous attempt at disguising his motives, Perkins and Donaghy argue that Walter’s “voice is far from reliable despite its pretense of objectivity” (396). This act of concealing his fundamental role in the text creates the initial doubt about his intentions in collecting all of this information that supposedly revolves around “the woman in white.”

If Laura is reestablished in society and Count Fosco and Sir Percival Glyde have been avenged by the time Walter collected this narrative, then his motives must lie in something else. Perkins and Donaghy claim that Walter only presents his retribution against Sir Percival to “persuade his readers that his investigative skills are unequaled” (398). Perkins and Donaghy reference Walter’s continual need to be justified in his actions by readers and other characters. His self-conscious nature reveals that Walter’s actual intention in narrating this story is a self-justification of why he deserves his new position in society, and it is an act of pride rather than of selfless love.

Walter fails in presenting himself as the hero, because, according to Perkins and Donaghy, his “shortcomings” prove that Marian is the “strong and capable figure” in the novel (398). Count Fosco even admits that his “fatal admiration for Marian restrained” him from preventing his demise” (628). Marian controls the entire plot of The Woman in White even though Walter tries to claim all the responsibility. Therefore, Wilkie Collins goes against Victorian gender constructions in The Woman in White through the flawed narrator and editorial figure of Walter and his representation of Marian as the strongest and most trustworthy character in his novel.

The authorial decision to designate multiple narrators throughout a text influences the way a reader interprets a given scene and limits the amount of information available to the reader. In The Woman in White, Wilkie Collins creates smooth and seemingly logical transitions from one narrator to the next; however, thus far, Collins has not given the role of narrator to a number of the prominent characters. Therefore, there is a significant amount of mystery that still surrounds these characters—Laura, Sir Percival, Anne, etcetera. With each new narrator, these characters are described in distinctly different ways. In The Woman in White, Collins portrays Sir Percival in contradicting ways through the narrators of Mr. Gilmore and Marian Halcombe, which adds a level of mystery and uneasiness around his character.

Mr. Gilmore provides the reader with the first vivid description of Sir Percival’s character when he arrived at Limmeridge House. This provides the reader with his or her first impression of his persona. Despite his surprise at how old Sir Percival appeared, Mr. Gilmore describes him in a very positive light. According to him, Sir Percival is “easy and pleasant […] with perfect grace […and] a mixture of tenderness and respect” (130). Additionally, Sir Percival’s “tact and taste were never at fault on this or any other occasion” while Mr. Gilmore resided at Limmeridge House with him (130). From the perspective of the lawyer, Sir Percival embodies everything that a wealthy, well-educated man should be. It is easy to see why Laura’s father chose him as her future husband.

Even though Mr. Gilmore leaves with a lesser impression of Sir Percival after the negotiation over money, his overall description of him is exceedingly positive. However, when Marian Halcombe becomes the narrator, the overall impression of Sir Percival becomes convoluted because her portrayal of him is very negative. After attempting to have a more optimistic outlook on Sir Percival’s character for a few journal entries, Marian begins her entry on November 20^th by saying, “I hate Sir Percival!” (191) She then precedes in describing him as “eminently ill-tempered and disagreeable, and totally wanting in kindness and good feeling” (191). Her rant over her renewed hatred of him that completely contradicts Mr. Gilmore’s description is prompted by him whispering something in Laura’s ear that made her face turn white. Since Marian is so willing and able to adjust her description of one of the other characters so drastically from one day to the next, she becomes difficult to trust as a narrator.

The juxtaposition of the various accounts and descriptions by the three narrators presented so far in The Woman in White have allowed more clarity to certain situations but have also made character analysis extremely problematic. Due to her close connection with Laura, Marian seems like a trustworthy narrator, but this bias often muddles her judgment. Additionally, Mr. Gilmore and Mr. Hartright have their own reasons for being biased towards or against specific characters in the novel.