Not one family dynamic in Wilkie Collins’ The Woman in White fits into any definition of “the nuclear family” – that is, a married mother and father with children, residing in the same home. Laura, Marian, and Mr. Fairlie reside in the same home, unmarried and related to each other more distantly- when Laura marries, she and Sir Percival have no children, and neither do Count and Countess Fosco. After Laura/Anne’s death, she lives unmarried as siblings with Walter and Marian. Mrs. Catherick “raises” Anne as a single mother. And, as we learn about Sir Percival, he is not even really a “sir” at all. In Mrs. Catherick’s letter, she states “his father and mother had always lived as man and wife – none of the few people who were acquainted with them ever supposed them to be anything else” (530), indicating that his parents were not legally married and therefore he was born out of wedlock. Furthermore, she asserts his mother’s familial structure as far from nuclear, recalling “his mother had been living there just before she met with his father – living under her maiden name; the truth being that she was really a married woman; married in Ireland, where her husband had ill-used her and had afterwards gone off with some other person” (531). Thus, Sir Percival’s mother was not only living as a wife to a man she was not legally married to but was engaging in bigamy by being already married.
The fact that Sir Percival’s history of perversion of the nuclear family dynamic is the “Secret” that serves as the catalyst for the entire novel suggests that the perversions of the family dynamics of every other character are equally important in understanding the novel. The disorder that comes with the establishment of non-nuclear families is a driving conflict of the novel overall; the dynamics between characters because of their relation (or lack thereof) to each other causes problems. For example, Mr. Fairlie’s distancing of Laura because although he is her legal guardian, she is not his daughter, causes several issues in the initial marriage proposal, as well as later, in failing (or refusing) to recognize her after her supposed “death”. Additionally, there is the added layer of members of a family unit having multiple roles within that unit. For example, Walter, Marian, and Laura are living together as siblings, while Walter and Laura are in love; and though Marian and Laura are in fact legitimately sisters, they have a running theme throughout the novel of having a level of intimacy that indicates potentially something more.
The fact that the majority of these disorderly family dynamics are kept hidden or secreted in the novel harkens back to Freud’s interpretation of symptoms of neurosis in his “Remembering, Repeating, and Working Through”. His perception of repetition comes from the idea that a specific habit is created by the brain and body working together to divert attention from an unsavory secret, memory, or desire (150). Therefore, particularly in the case of Percival Glyde, his neurotic and obessive tendencies to protect his reputation, to find Anne Catherick, to commit to the plot of taking Laura’s inheritance, and to control those around him reflects this need to cover up the Secret that he is hiding, which is the disorder of his family situation. This can also be reflected in Walter, Marian, and Laura’s living situation, as Walter’s paranoia that they are being watched and followed, and fear of their disordered dynamic being discovered, prompts him to obsessively communicate with Marian via letters whilst he is away.