Author: minovir

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.

Throughout the novel, Collins places a significant amount of emphasis on the inherent differences between men and women and what traits he views as acceptable or normal for men and women to have. This is highlighted through his description of Marian Halcombe when Mr. Hartright sees her for the first time. While he is first drawn in by her body, his perceptions of her quickly shift when he sees her face. Mr. Hartright uses the term ‘masculine’ several times to describe Miss Halcombe’s facial features, and he implies that these are undesirable features that he is “almost repelled” by (35). It seems as if Mr. Hartright views Miss Halcombe’s feminine body and masculine face as two things that simply cannot exist at the same time. He does this by saying that “to see such a face as this set on shoulders that a sculptor would have longed to model […] was to feel a sensation oddly akin to the helpless discomfort familiar to us all in sleep, when we recognize yet cannot reconcile the anomalies and contradictions of dreams” (35). These ‘contradictions’ that Mr. Hartright is facing seem to be confusing his idea of what a woman should look like.

Miss Halcombe’s facial expressions also appear to go against Mr. Hartright’s perceptions of femininity. He states that “her expression – bright, frank, and intelligent – appeared, while she was silent, to be altogether wanting in those feminine attractions of gentleness and pliability, without which the beauty of the handsomest woman alive is beauty incomplete” (35). Mr. Hartright views intelligence and frankness as traits that are un-womanlike and instead sees submissiveness as a more desirable trait. In Mr. Hartright’s opinion, no woman is truly beautiful unless she is ‘gentle’ and ‘pliable.’ Mr. Hartright’s opinions on what traits are acceptable for a woman are typical of the time, as many believed that the role of a woman was to be selfless and care for men. Throughout this passage and as the novel continues, it almost seems like Mr. Hartright views Miss Halcombe as less of a woman because of the contradiction or lack of femininity in her personality and physical appearance.