Category: 2025 Posts

In the first scene after the jarring switch in narrative that occurs at the revelation that Laura Glyde/Fairlie is alive, we find Walter, Laura, and Marian hiding out in a two-floor apartment “in a populous and poor neighborhood” in London (Collins 412). Several dramatic shifts have occurred at this point, following the empty one-week period Hartright insists “must remained unrecorded” (Collins 412). The first of these shifts is a matter of class—Walter, Marian, and Laura, who were once well-respected, wealthy British citizens, have been reduced to living in anonymity and poverty.

The second shift which has rattled the story is the change in the dynamic between Walter, Laura, and Marian—particularly the first two. This unsettling subversion is encapsulated in the following quote from Hartright’s story, which is the subject of my focus for this blog post: “In the right of her calamity, in the right of her friendlessness, she was mine at last! Mine to support, to protect, to cherish, to restore. Mine to love and honour as father and brother both. Mine to vindicate through all risks and all sacrifices…” (Collins 414).

My first point of interest with this quote is the conspicuous repetition of the word “mine” four times, emphasized by its placement at the front of each sentence. Each use doubles down on Walter’s possession of Laura after their long time apart. The initial use of “mine” is not capitalized, yet its significance comes from the words surrounding it: “she was mine at last!” This exclamation alludes to Walter and Laura’s previous connection and unresolved longing. The specific term “at last” implies yearning for something, and what has Walter been yearning for? A romantic connection with Laura!

Repetition takes center stage in this passage, appearing as well in Walter’s list of actions which he will perform for Laura. This includes “to protect,” “to cherish,” and “to love,” all words reminiscent of marriage vows. Walter repeatedly pledges himself to Laura in all the ways a husband would…and yet he surprisingly circumvents this expectation soon after.

The crucial paradox of this paragraph centers around the line, “mine to love and honour as father and brother both.” Here Walter takes two positions in relationship to Laura, both of which are familial—a dramatic departure from his previous feelings for her. The word “both” emphasizes the multiplicity of their relationship, and yet “lover” is noticeably left out of the list. The first half of The Woman in White has revolved around Walter and Laura’s budding romance, which had to be suppressed because of her engagement to Sir Percival Glyde. Yet now that Laura has seemingly escaped her marriage—the main obstacle in their way—the romance has been sidestepped.

With this startling shift from forbidden lovers to siblings (or perhaps father/daughter), Collins avoids a potential major sex scandal. If they weren’t posing as a brother/father and two sisters, embodying the roles as if they were real blood relatives, they would be a bachelor living with his mistress and her sister(lover) alone in secret! What a scandal! This move of circumventing a potential illicit sexual relationship marks a very Victorian impulse within the text—to avoid discussion/description of sex at all costs. Collins replaces Walter and Laura’s sexual tension with a familial bond—presumably due to Laura’s ill health, which has reduced her to a childlike invalid. One can’t really blame Walter for avoiding sexual relations with such a woman, but the shift is still dramatic considering his many months of yearning (even on a ship headed to and from the West Indies!). In fact, yearning dominates this quoted passage from Hartright’s log, yet any possibility of a “completion” of this yearning is entirely warded off, as is the Victorian way.

On page 527, Hartright positions himself as a modern-day holy figure through his inability to understand how flippantly people view the death of Sir. Percival. He exclaims, “One of the village women, whose white wild face I remembered, the picture of terror, when we pulled down the beam, was giggling with another woman, the picture of inanity, over an old washing-tub…Solomon in all his glory, was Solomon with the elements of the contemptible lurking in every fold of his robes and in every corner of his palace” (Collins 527). This sentence references Matthew 6:29, where Jesus explains that even the extremely wealthy King Solomon did not have expensive clothes. With his extreme wisdom, he saw that worrying about worldly things like clothing inherently meant ignoring the more important things in life, like goodness and worship. This second sentence implies that Hartright is similar to Solomon in that they are both surrounded by heartlessness, yet he is able to see through their self-interest and remember the sanctity of death. Ironically, “elements of the contemptible” follow Hartright to his “castle”; this scene lies before he learns that Count Fosco has visited his apartment in London.  

The description of the two women falls in line with how Hartright processes and relays information about people as an artist; both of the women are described as being “pictures.” Although this is a common phrase, because of Hartright’s artistic background, the phrase can be taken more literally, like Hartright is imagining how he would paint the women. This word choice explicitly creates a hierarchy between the painter and the painted; Hartright gets to choose how the women are depicted. If Hartright is to be taken as a holy figure like Solomon, he has the perspective to accurately discern a person’s character. Any mention of “white” cannot go unnoticed in the novel, and is normally associated with Laura or Anne’s purity. In the moment of Percival’s death, the woman behaved morally through the amount of fear she displayed. However, now that she lives without fear, she loses the innocent “white” face, and Hartright judges her to be immoral. Hartright’s judgment is consistent throughout the novel. Like a holy figure, he decides who is good and who is evil; just as his name suggests, his heart is always correct. 

“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. 

When Hartwright first enters Mrs. Catherick’s house, he describes that “On the largest table, in the middle of the room, stood a smart Bible, placed exactly in the center” (484). This large size of this bible and its placement in the center of the room on a special table implies that it has intentionally been set up in order to be as noticeable as possible. Further, Mrs. Catherick brings up this bible when she feels Hartwright has insulted her reputation, saying “Is your mother alive? Has she got a better Bible on her table than I have got on mine?” (488). By emphasizing her bible in this context, Mrs. Catherick uses her supposed faith as a way of defending her reputation. She specifically depicts herself as being more religious than other women by comparing herself to Hartwright’s mother. Through her claim that she is a more religious woman because of the quality and size of her bible, Collins implies that a person is often judged more on the showiness and appearance of their religious beliefs rather than their actual faith and morals.

Ironically, Mrs. Catherick actually strays from most Christian ideals. She is incredibly selfish and cares little for other people other than herself, hardly even showing any care for her daughter’s death (she just puts on black mittens– a performative action). Her taking Anne away from Mrs. Clements even demonstrates a more active type of wickedness (her sole motivation being a whim of jealousy). Her desire for Sir Percival’s gifts indicate that she is very greedy and materially motivated. She is depicted to be very sensual, both in appearance and in her actions (her affair). Her betrayal of her marriage (not just to any man, but to a clergyman) emphasizes her betrayal of the church and its teachings. Interestingly, Hartwright also describes Mrs. Catherick’s hatred with serpent-like language (“serpent-hatred,” “lurking reptile”), evoking images of the original biblical, sinful woman, Eve. 

Through Mrs. Catherick’s immorality (but presentation as a religious woman), Collins suggests that religion is often used performatively to enhance one’s reputation, and can be treated as just another societally constructed way to judge people (especially women). 

In the “Sugar” reading from last class, Eastlake talks about the gender implications of sugar and how they changed over the course of the Victorian era. She talks about how at the end of the century, sugar, which had previously been associated with women and children, became masculinized, writing: “This newly masculinized hunger for sugar reflects a broader cultural move away from the kind of midcentury masculine ideals described by James Eli Adams, which had emphasized ‘an elaborately articulated program of self-discipline'” (Eastlake 517). I thought this was interesting because in Mrs. Michaelson’s narrative, she notes multiple times how self-possessed Count Fosco was when taking Doctor Dawson’s criticism. When the Count offers his medical advice to Dr. Dawson, and Dr. Dawson tells him he will only reply to a “professional man,” Mrs. Michaelson is impressed how “Buffeted in this inexcusably uncivil way, on one cheek, the Count, like a practical Cristian, immediately turned the other, and said, in the sweetest manner, ‘Good morning, Mr. Dawson'” (Collins 362). This self-discipline is directly opposed to the Count’s sweet tooth, as Eastlake mentions earlier in the article.  

We’ve talked about it in class a little, but it’s interesting how the foreigners in the books are not held to the same standards as the English people. Pesca and Count Fosco are vastly different. Pesca is open and excitable, and Fosco is creepy and unsettling, but both of them are characterized in some way as lacking self-discipline. Fosco eats lots of sweets, and Pesca was so excited to tell Hartright and his family the news of the job at Limmeridge House that he foregoes propriety and acts in a “boyish manner” (Collins 14).  

The Woman in White was published before the end of the century, which means sugar was still feminized and juvenilized. Like the foreign men in the novel, the foreign women don’t seem to fit with Victorian norms. Mrs. Rubelle is very cold and I think she could be described as self-disciplined. The same goes for Countess Fosco (especially compared to her pre-marriage self). Even though she isn’t technically foreign, she seems to have been foreignized by Fosco. I’m not sure whether the novel sees the differences between Victorian expectations and foreigners as a strength – as in, they are free from the strict societal standards that English people are held to- or as a weakness – as in, they can never fully assimilate to British society and become an English person because they’re just different. I’m leaning toward the latter, because most of the foreigners in the novel are the bad guys, but Pesca’s role in this is complicated and makes it hard to generalize (which maybe is the point). 

Upon meeting Mrs. Catherick, Mr. Hartright narrates her physical appearance, describing her as having dark eyes that “look straight forward, with a hard, defiant, implacable stare. She had full square cheeks; a long, firm chin; and thick, sensual, colourless lips. Her figure was stout and sturdy, and her manner aggressively self-possessed” (Collins 484). As Mrs. Catherick guarding her position and reputation she has carefully constructed within her community against a foreigner investigating the identity she wants to remain stable, her personality exudes hostility.

The attention towards her “sensual” lips assume a more stereotypical female trait as compared to Marian’s “masculine form and masculine look” (Collins 35). Marian and Mrs. Catherick remain a complex duo as they are both female characters who are assertive and protective of their identities. Though as Marian defends her identity in relation to the safety of her sister’s emotional and legal well-being, Mrs. Catherick is “self-possessed” in safeguarding her own persona and its perception to others. While her “manner” is “aggressive” and inwardly obsessed with maintaining the perfect “high” standing amongst other assumed low standing community members, her physical appearance is “stout and sturdy” (Collins 487). The combination of those words reveals the linkage between Mrs. Catherick’s fatness and her immovable and “defiant” nature. Her logic connects the benefits of remaining stagnant in her community positioning and physical home to stability and sturdiness. And yet, that sturdiness is coupled with her fatness—a quality describing the other defiant, male character, Count Fosco.

Fatness in the nineteenth century was often female coded as it signified both the ability to maternally “nurture” with appeasing sexual appetites (Huff 408). Mrs. Catherick represents a mixture of sensualness and fatness. While at this time fatness was stigmatized and led to hostile responses from the public despite being in a consumer culture urging people to spend money, Mrs. Catherick seems to disregard the negativity of her body by being hostile towards others. Perhaps, Collins suggests that her “aggressively self-possessed” manner is so full of excess that the fatness trickles out as hostility towards others instead of others responding with hostility towards her stoutness. She, in turn, reverses the ills of her fatness as she uses her sturdiness and size to her advantage as both a feminine coded “sensual” seductor and a “stout and sturdy” aggressive self-protector.

While her bourgeois body is considered “improper” and therefore an inefficient “machine,” she has spent her whole life with her unforgiving “stare” and “defiant” personality to prove herself as an effective turning machine, successfully defying what fatness should mean for her Victorian existence and challenging it (Huff 408). Though, alternatively, Collins presents Mrs. Catherick as a “stout” woman effectively hiding behind a secret, lacking the agency she supposedly has. Perhaps, her fatness instead symbolically weighs her total freedom down as achieving that freedom in stability and remaining known and liked in the community is her sole focus. Hartright’s investigation into this secret damages the body and therefore reputation management she has built. Her “bourgeois body management,” in this instance, falls short of securing the individual security she seeks as her physical stoutness masks the control she actually has (Huff 409).

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.

The Woman in White, as a rule, generally hinges upon the inaction of its characters as a device for furthering the catastrophe permeating its pages. This, of course, can refer to any number of the novel’s characters; but, more often than not, Laura Fairlie can be found at the center of Wilkie Collins’ intertwined conflicts. Since the very beginning of Walter Hartright’s residence at Limmeredge House, he and Marian Halcombe have maintained a level of secrecy concerning anything remotely “upsetting.” When it comes to Laura, the two of them grow protective, to the point where they fret over even slightly disturbing her mental state. This exercise in omission only intensifies with the reveal of her engagement to Sir Percival Glyde, and more when the marriage itself takes place. Throughout the entire narrative, those both close and far from Laura have engaged in a cycle of white lies. For our narrators (Marian and Walter), their desire to protect Laura supposedly justifies such behaviors. Laura herself seems initially content enough to let Marian and Walter pursue their own suspicions while she is in the throes of her engagement.

All those in The Woman in White, however, are not our narrators, and it is at a crucial moment that Sir Percival Glyde forces the reader to reevaluate the choices they have become accustomed to for the entirety of the novel. While berating Eliza Michelson after she announces her resignation due to his questionable actions, he asserts that the “deception” Laura has most recently been subjected to is “innocent” and “essential to her health,” answering her own needs in a way she could not consciously (Collins 392). Such language has been used for the past four hundred pages, justifying the keeping of critical information from Laura as something that is for her own good. Marian and Walter are sympathetic characters, and thus the audience will tend to align themselves morally with their protagonists. Sir Percival thus takes the comfortability the audience has established and uses the rhetoric of care to deal one final blow against his wife.

Such language of control has also appeared, perhaps obviously, in the portrayal of Anne Catherick and her consignment to an asylum. I believe Collins is drawing a direct parallel between Sir Percival’s deception of Laura and the lies surrounding Anne’s commitment to the asylum to demonstrate the negative influences the self-interests of others have on these two young women’s lives. In doing such, the reader is made to question the choices made earlier in the novel by Marian and Walter, prompting a reevaluation of a large part of the narrative thus far. Sir Percival and Mrs. Catherick have shown the reader that an “innocent deception” can result in far larger consequences than originally planned.