Author: MyLittleSprite

In William Rathbone Greg’s pamphlet on “the redundant woman,” he makes claims about acceptable celibacy, saying that this choice should not be made as “a mere escape from the lottery of marriage” (Greg 159).  Two words stand out: “mere escape.” “Escape” denotes his understanding that the marriage market is a cyclical institution, one which perpetuates itself, while “mere” connotes trivializing the woman’s desire next to the power of the institution.  Greg fails to account for women who might have to “escape” from the institution of marriage, out of necessity.  This is a side of marriage available to readers in The Woman in White.  As The Norton Anthology notes, a married woman’s legal protection was extremely limited, with restrictions on property, child custody, and conditions of divorce (“Victorian” 991).   

One condition under which middle- and upper-class woman could claim a divorce was by proving a husband’s cruelty (“Victorian” 990).  In The Woman in White, Marian is clearly aware of this clause and acts practically when Laura reveals evidence of domestic abuse: 

“She showed me the marks. I was past grieving over them, past crying over them, past shuddering over them. They say we are either better than men, or worse. If the temptation that has fallen in some women’s way, and made them worse, had fallen in mine at that moment—Thank God! my face betrayed nothing that his wife could read. The gentle, innocent, affectionate creature thought I was frightened for her and sorry for her, and thought no more.” (Collins 305). 

Marian is detachedly analytical in this passage, investigating “the marks” without reference to whom they are inflicted on, and then pushing her own feelings back in three parallel clauses (“I was past”) as if to convince the reader and herself that she has no emotion.  In the next sentence, she also tries to distance herself from womanhood, which she associates with emotion (“grieve,” “cry,” or “shudder”) and the emotion with fault (“temptation,” “worse”).  Her value as a woman is firmly grounded in a dialogue with men, where a valued woman can“hide” her emotion.  Therefore, in an act of self-fashioning, she aligns herself with masculinity (or a more masculinely coded version of acceptable femininity) but is unsure of her success in the first clause of the sentence.  However, in bursting forth “Thank God!-My face betrayed nothing,” she considers her reserve a success. Laura, meanwhile, is associated solely with femininely coded values (“gentle, innocent, affectionate” “thought no more”).  There is still the implication that a woman cannot advocate well enough for herself, and she needs a masculine presence to help her voice those claims – in order to get help, femininity must be put aside. A woman has to “th[ink],” to remember, a position which is presented as masculine. 

In light of this quotation, it is revealing to return to Greg, who writes that “The residue…who remain unmarried constitute the problem to be solved, the evil and anomaly to be cured” (Greg 159).  It seems that Greg’s conclusions need to be flipped as they apply to The Woman in White: Marian, one of his so-called redundant women, is the one who cures, both physically and in proposing legal intervention, and the injury that needs to be cured results from his highly exalted marriage.  Greg’s “lottery,” then, is just as perilous for the woman as it is desirable for him.  Given that the novel is interested in men with hidden personalities putting their best foot forward for marriage while enacting harm behind closed doors, perhaps in the introduction when Hartright claims that the story is about “what a Woman’s patience can endure,” he is introducing a central theme.  Perhaps this line raises not a question of “what” but a question of “how much”: the novel implicitly criticizes marital laws, asking how much a woman must endure before legal sympathy can be drawn on, if at all (Collins 5). 

 

Works Cited: 

Collins, Wilkie. The Woman in White. Edited by John Sutherland, Oxford, Oxford University Press, [1860] 2008. 

Greg, William Rathbone. “The Redundant Woman.” pp. 157-163. 

“The Victorian Age 1830-1901.” The Norton Anthology of English Literature, 8th Edition Volume E, Edited by Carol T. Christ and Catherine Robson, 2006. 

The gaze is central to The Woman in White.  In the first section, Collins frames a supposedly objective testimony through a drawing master’s narrative, someone whose job is primarily looking.  Walter Hartright frequently affords his reader extensively self-indulgent visual descriptions, but in his relationship with Laura, these descriptions take a turn:   

“Not a day passed, in that dangerous intimacy of teacher and pupil, in which my hand was not close to Miss Fairlie’s; my cheek, as we bent together over her sketch-book, almost touching hers. The more attentively she watched every movement of my brush, the more closely I was breathing the perfume of her hair, and the warm fragrance of her breath” (Collins 63). 

Because Hartright is first and foremost a painter, it makes sense that he is alarmed at the literalized foreshortening of his life’s picture plain: Laura is much closer to his than he initially realized. He describes his experience first through negatives: “not a day,” “not so close,” when he is in control of the action, perhaps to emphasize the extent of his restraint in this “dangerous” relationship with (the formally addressed) “Miss Fairlie.”  However, when they act “together,” or when Laura is the actor “watch[ing]” him, he more freely admits his desire. Though he cannot see her, as he is focusing on his work, he gages her “attentive” gaze by her proximity, her smell.  Hartright assumes their equal attraction in the next parallel phrase: the “more” attentive she is, the “more” intensely he breathes her in. They are close enough to equally exchange air, but Laura’s “perfume” and “fragrance” dominates the space (I will note, uncontrollably) at the culmination of this multi-clause, breathless phrase. 

Even when Laura is “attentive” to Hartright, she is watching “every movement of [his] brush,” not him.  The brush undoubtedly has sexual or phallic connotations for both parties which extend to another moment of gaze.  As Hartright prepares to leave Limmeridge House,  

“She turned her head away, and offered me a little sketch, drawn throughout by her own pencil, of the summer-house in which we had first met. The paper trembled in her hand as she held it out to me—trembled in mine as I took it from her” (Collins 126). 

While Hartright is allowed to express his desire for Laura in his retrospective account, Laura cannot do the same.  Without looking at him (and without touching him), she gives him a “little” (note Hartright’s diminutive) “drawing” which can yield a few interpretations.  First, that her desire cannot be voiced, and is therefore only communicated through another object, (the paper).  Second, that that the pencil in a woman’s (“trembling”) hand will never be as mighty as the brush in a man’s, we take it, steady one.  But if we lean into the phallic interpretation, just like Hartright’s drawing, she has independently drawn on the canvas and given it to Hartright – perhaps she is voicing her own mirrored desire for Hartright.  However, I would suggest that another reading is possible here: Laura’s trembling hand and inability to meet Hartright’s gaze hints at her insincerity.  Painting from Hartright’s perspective is often linked with heterosexual desire, so (it might be crazy but) could this moment also allude to how Laura is merely mimicking heterosexual desire as she mimics Hartright as a painter?   

 

Works Cited: 

Collins, Wilkie. The Woman in White. Edited by John Sutherland, Oxford, Oxford University Press, [1860] 2008.