Category: 360: Victorian Sexualities

In the article, “A Man’s Resolution: Narrative Strategies in Wilkie Collins’ The Woman in White” Pamela Perkins and Mary Donaghy parallel Laura’s emptiness of character with the concept of the ideal woman as an aesthetic object. Laura exists throughout the narrative as male property, which is exchanged through marriage transactions, disposed of through the forgery of her death, and in the end undergoes another marriage transaction only to ultimately benefit more men. Laura’s loss of agency and identity through male objectification is especially highlighted by Marian’s character, because she remains “[her] own mistress,” and in control of her own property by never being married off (258 Collins). Although Walter’s character exudes more superficial kindness and love towards Laura, his intentions are paralleled with Sir Percival and Count Fosco. He wishes to gain property, by having Laura as his wife, and thus he makes sure to mold her into the wife he desires. Laura exists as “a blank to be filled by male desire” and is used for “her ability to fit into the role of a charming and innocent young girl” (393 Donaghy). Laura’s character is portrayed as empty and dependent because all the characters, including Marian, need her to be that way so that they feel purposeful. Walter explains that he “is indebted to Marian’s courage” because “Laura’s brighter looks and better spirits told [him] how carefully she had been spared all knowledge,” and how carefully her growth had been stunted to maintain her childlike innocence and dependency on both Marian and Walter. Had Laura been exposed to all the details of the investigation Laura might have disagreed, or might have wanted to make decisions for herself. She may not have wanted to marry Walter after hearing about how Sir Percival died just inches beyond his reach. Walter or Marian could not bear the thought of Laura’s loss of innocence, because Marian could not cope with losing her purpose as a protector and Walter could not withstand losing his opportunity to possess two women and an estate. Thus, Laura is designated from birth to serve everyone else’s needs by remaining a piece of blank parchment, where Laura Fairlie’s life story is determined and narrated by everyone else but Laura.

The Woman in White ends with Laura Walter and Marian all living together at Limmerage without scandal. William Greg would likely argue that Marian is the “redundant” woman in this relationship as she is single and the other two characters are married to each other. This essay will attempt to refute the argument of Marian’s redundancy in the story though the examination of how Wilkie Collins deals with the three issues proposed by Greg regarding women’s redundancy and Marian’s complex role in the narrative that makes her appear both “redundant” and not redundant in comparison with other female characters.

Greg argues that English women remain “redundant” because of three factors: the lack of women who immigrated during the colonization period, men’s preoccupation with prostitutes, and women never being asked by a man to get married. Wilkie Collins deals with two of the three problems Greg proposes through the characters of Madame Fosco and Laura. Madame Fosco immigrates to Italy to marry the Count, solving issue one. Laura, in her marriage to both Sir Percival and Walter deals with men’s fascination with prostitutes. Sir Percival has an obsession with Anne before and after his marriage to Laura. Anne, while not a prostitute, becomes similar to a prostitute in the sense that she is a woman who distracts men from their marriage. This problem is fixed by his death and Laura’s remarriage to Walter. The third issue which Gregg points out is an issue, and potentially holds weight when we consider Marian’s status as a single woman.

Marian is one of the few, if not the only, female to remain single (and alive), throughout the entirety of the novel. No one asks Marian to marry her. However, there a few sentences on page 621 when Walter clumsily asks whether Marian intents to get married and she responds that, “…there can be no parting between [the three of] us” and “I will teach the children to speak for me in their language; and the first lesson they will say to their mother and father is – we can’t spare our aunt.” (621). In this case, Greg might argue that Marian takes on a role of governess for her sister and Walter and “while a noble profession” should still obtain a husband. Carolyn Dever would likely argue back that Marian does find a husband in Walter and a wife in Laura, but its likely Greg would not accept this. However, Marian also falls into the category which Greg allotted for, a woman who chooses to remain single rather than is forced to be single by circumstance.

Marian is redundant because she is a single woman but is also not because she chooses to be single. We can take on alternative perspectives like Dever, or call Marian a proto-feminist because she’d rather have children speak for her rather than a husband. Marian’s complex character complicates Greg’s overly deconstructed reasons as to why Victorian women were single.

In her chapter on Wilkie Collins’s unique variations on the standard marriage plot, Carolyn Dever discusses the ways in which Collins triangulates romantic relationships in The Woman in White: “The novel distributes the emotional intimacy ordinarily credited to marital love among three figures, rather than the conventional two” (113). Dever focuses her exploration of this idea on the novel’s most overt triangulated relationship—the relationship among Laura, Marian, and Walter. She asserts the relationship between the two sisters “is the novel’s most fully realized ‘marriage,’ if we consider marriage a union based on emotional depth, mutual trust, and the presumption of permanence” (114). While Marian functions as an emotional ‘spouse’ for Laura, Dever continues, she simultaneously serves as an intellectual, masculine ‘spouse’ for Walter: “Walter and Laura enter a marriage anchored by its essential bisexuality. Providing a masculine companion for Walter and a feminine one for Laura, Marian is a full partner in this marriage of three” (114). The novel contains ample support for Dever’s argument.

Laura and Marian share multiple scenes wherein emotions and thoughts are shared and accompanied by physical touch or gesture. For example, after Laura finally discloses some of the events of her unhappy honeymoon, the sisters embrace and ultimately kiss: “I had caught her in my arms, and the sting and torment of my remorse had closed them around her like a vice… How long it was before I mastered the absorbing misery of my own thoughts, I cannot tell. I was first conscious that she was kissing me…” (Collins 262). The impassioned embrace and comforting kiss that follow a scene of emotional intimacy, though not overtly sexual, do seem as though they are gestures that would typically come from a lover or a spouse. Similarly, Walter frequently confides in Marian, sometimes asking her advice or for her assistance in carrying out a plot or scheme. In the wake of Sir Percival’s death and the Count’s disconcerting visit to Laura, Marian, and Walter’s temporary London home, Walter turns to Marian for advice on how to protect Laura moving forward: ‘“I was guided by your advice in those past days,’ I said; ‘and now, Marian, with reliance tenfold greater, I will be guided by it again’” (558). Their exchange results in a plan to extract information from the Count as well as Laura and Walter’s marriage.

Though Dever is undoubtedly correct in pointing out Marian’s unusual, and possibly subversive, partnerships with Laura and Walter, I do think she fails to address one important fact that may limit the extent to which we can read this triangulated relationship as a challenge to traditional marriage. Since Marian is a woman, she does not pose a threat to the main legal purpose of marriage—inheritance. At the end of the novel, Walter happily allows Marian to “end our Story” with her introduction of Laura and Marian’s son as “Mr. Walter Hartwright—the Heir of Limmeridge (626-7). Marian’s presence in Laura and Walter’s relationship, while disrupting the institution’s traditional heteronormative binary, poses no threat to marriage’s perpetuation of patrilineal inheritance.

The character of Walter Hartright presented within the novel is one who forces the reader to believe that he is a man exceptionally different from Sir. Percival and Count Fosco. The reader is brought to believe that Walter is different from the other men due to the fact that he is an advocate for the women within the novel, rather than an oppressor. This image of Walter as an advocate for woman and possibly even a feminist is explored throughout the novel because of his actions. Walter is the only male character who actively assists the women in their quest for justice, trying to attain Laura’s true identity and ruin Sir Percival and Count Fosco for their wrong doings. When Walter runs into Anne Catherick on the road to London he points her in the right direction, “We met very late, and I helped you to find the way to London…..Take time to recover yourself-take time to feel quite certain that I am a friend. (pg95-96)” The reader, as well as the women within the novel are lead to believe that Walter is a friend, a trusted male individual who sets forth the best intentions for the women.

However, upon reading Perkins and Donaghy’s, “A Man’s Resolution: Narrative Strategies In Wiklie Collins’ The Woman in White” one can determine that Walter is no different from Fosco and Percival as Perkins states, “Walter proceeds to make Laura even more haze and less individualized…” Alike Fosco and Percival, Walter has a hidden agenda and casts a veiled patriarchal oppression towards the women within the novel. Walter does not help the woman or advocate for them solely because he believes they deserve justice, but because he wants to be the hero for these women, he wants to hold power over them just as much as the other men within the novel, but he approaches it in a different way. Walter’s oppression towards the women is initially overlooked due to his actions and words that projects him as a friend and advocate for the women. Upon revisiting the text through the lens of Perkins and Donaghy, Walter’s sensationalized reaction towards Anne Catherick is a moment that highlights him no different from the typical Victorian male. Despite Walter being a ‘friend’ towards Ann and leading her in the right direction towards London he is shocked at her discovery. When he first sees her he is dumbstruck because of the sight of a woman alone in the middle of the night is something unnatural for a woman within this time. Therefore Walter is perpetuating female oppression because he is so bewildered at the sight of lone Anne Catherick.

In his 1862 essay “Why are Women Redundant?” William Rathbone Greg laments the excess population of single, unmarried women in Great Britain. Greg argues that this excess leads to moral and social evils such as women finding employment outside of the home and women having sexual relations with other women. To remedy this problem, Greg offers a plan for female emigration in order to restore the balance between the sexes.

While Greg’s proposition may appear ridiculous to twenty-first-century readers, reading Greg’s essay alongside Wilkie Collins’s The Woman in White illuminates Collins’s deep engagement with this issue of the redundant woman in his novel, particularly through the characters of Anne Catherick and Marian Halcombe.

In her almost identical physical appearance to Laura Fairlie, Anne Catherick is redundant because she is essentially the duplicate of another woman. The novel later reveals that Laura and Anne are half sisters by the same father. Because Laura is legitimate and married, she survives; by contrast, Anne—illegitimate and unmarried—dies. Anne’s death solves the problem of this redundancy, but not before their likeness enables Sir Percival and Count Fosco to create an elaborate scheme to steal Laura’s identity and fortune. In light of Greg’s essay, Collins appears to be commenting on the danger of redundant women.

By the end of the novel, Marian emerges as the true redundant woman. After Walter and Laura marry, they worry about “the consideration of Marian’s future” (621) as a single, unmarried woman. Marian resolves to live with Walter and Laura in what is essentially a marriage of three. Marian’s strange words to Walter deserve closer examination:

“Wait a little till there are children’s voices at your fireside. I will teach them to speak for me, in their language; and the first lesson they say to their father and mother will be – We can’t spare our aunt!”

Marian clearly indicates reproduction as a byproduct of marriage, echoing Greg’s concern over “the abnormal extent of female celibacy” (162). While Marian will be celibate as an unmarried woman, she describes assuming the domestic role of the mother-as-teacher, thereby splitting female obligations between herself and her half sister.

The word “spare” here is particularly complex. On one level, the word functions ironically because “spare” is synonymous with “redundant” or “extra.” The meaning of the sentence, however, lies in tension with this denotation; taking the definition of “spare” as “to part with” (OED), “We can’t spare our aunt!” means that the children believe Marian to be an absolutely essential part of their household. “Spare” may also carry a third, more nefarious meaning that contradicts the second: “to abstain from destroying, removing” (OED). In this interpretation of “can’t spare,” the children admit to the necessity of removing their aunt. According to Greg, this removal is necessary in order to eliminate the redundant woman. Collins clearly packs a lot of ambiguity into this line, which Greg’s essay helps illuminate.

Walter Hartright is the main narrator of Wilkie Collin’s The Woman in White however he is not trustworthy. From the start the reader is told by Walter that he has put together these narrations to prove his beloved Laura’s identity as though the reader is judge and jury in the court of her life. Walter seems to pride himself on the virtue of his motives, on his ability to stay above the other men in the story who are driven by greed or malice. Whereas Percival wants Laura for her money, her property, Walter is convinced that his love for Laura is honest and pure. However the language that Walter uses about Laura contradicts that, as Perkins and Donaghy point out in their piece A Man’s Resolution: Narrative Strategies in Wilkie Collins’ The Woman in White “her ability to fit into the role of a charming and innocent young girl is more important than the individuality he is supposedly reclaiming” (393). Walter does not love Laura, he objectifies her.

After hearing the Counts conditions Walter decides “it was hard, when I had fastened my hold on him, at last, to loosen it again of my own accord- but I forced myself to make the sacrifice. In plainer words, I determined to be guided by the one higher motive of which I was certain, the motive of serving the cause of Laura, and the cause of Truth” (591). The repetition of “I” with active verbs like “I had fastened”, “I forced”, “I determined”, and “I was certain” shows how Walter is ultimately concerned not with Laura’s identity, but his own action. This is reinforced by repeating “my” and “myself”. All these sentences revolve around Walter and what he owns. The only mention of Laura- the supposed benefactor in all of this- is in her comparison to “Truth” (591). This does not give her agency or a voice however, it pushes her farther away from any real characterization. She is an entity, like Truth, or God, or “My Wife” (589). These words condense large ideas with many different meanings behind them and therefore fall flat as actual descriptions of who Laura really is. Walter doesn’t see Laura as a human, but an idea. He is fighting not because the law is unfair and was used to strip Laura of her identity or because he loves Laura, but as Perkins and Donaghy say, “because the values Walter upholds exist to protect property” (400). The story even ends with Walter Hartright and his property. In fact, he never succeeds in giving Laura her identity. To the end Walters hand rules the narration and seems to erase Laura from the pages. Perhaps Wilkie Collins is suggesting that to love in the Victorian sense, through courtship and marriage, is to erase a woman’s identity to privilege their husbands actions.

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.

As we have recently discussed in class, part of the fascination with The Woman in White is based in the triangular marriage between Laura, Marian, and Walter. Deven, in her short essay on how Collins plays with marriage plots in most of his work, discusses that the “marital love among three figures, rather than the conventional two” is a key plot used by Collins (page 113). The entirety of The Woman in White revolves around these marital irregularities, as Deven discusses, and through that lens it is possible to see how this book really was a “sensation” novel in the 1860s; it is sensational in that these marriages and situations were unlike the common theme. These plots are tremendously unrealistic, from our viewpoint in 2015, though it is possible that in 1860, maybe there were often plots to change status or marriages of equal minds in conflict with a marriage of property. I think the most important thing in reading  The Woman in White is to be able to interpret the story from our perspective in 2015 as well as from Collins’ perspective in the 1860s.

It was interesting to see that Collins has a preference for unusual marriage plots in more of his work than just The Woman in White, and to question just how prevalent the marriage plot was in Victorian literature; in what I’ve read previously, it seems like the only thing going on in Victorian life is marriage and the intrigues surrounding it. Is there anything but marriage in Victorian life, or is it just the most relatable part?

Mr. Fairlie’s protest about others’ propensity to burden him with unnecessary details, irrelevant, in his eyes, to his own life assures the reader of his lack of affection for anyone but himself and causes us to doubt the reliability of his narrative. He relates that Fanny was given “two letters, one for me, and one for a gentleman in London. (I am not a gentleman in London–hang the gentleman in London!)” (Collins 341). While this quotation might make us laugh, we can also apply its sentiment to another character in the text, one whose exclusion of some details and selective inclusion of others is less overt. That character is Walter Hartright.

Walter, in his role as editor of the text, has chosen very deliberately and selectively whose narrative is included in this story, despite his claim that every detail “from beginning to the end of the disclosure” will be related to the reader (9). Yet, we are only offered certain perspectives, and each has been edited to an unknown extent by Walter. Pamela Perkins and Mary Donaghy go so far as to suggest that Walter has “overtly deceived [the reader] about his motives,” arguing that he claims to be recording the narrative to establish Laura’s true identity, but is in fact more concerned about property and his own heroic status (Perkins & Donaghy 394). He is editing the text according to what interests him, just as Mr. Fairlie only wishes to hear what is absolutely essential to him.

It is important to note which perspectives we are given access to, and under what circumstances. In terms of reliability, Marian’s diary is perhaps the only account in the novel which was written unprompted by Walter, and even so, we are unsure the extent to which he edited it, or even if we are presented the diary in full. Similarly, we never hear from Laura, around whom the entire plot revolves. Her trip to the continent after her marriage to Sir Percival is the largest span of time left unaccounted for by the narrative, and this in spite of “her letters” which she writes to Marian during her travels (Collins 200).

One possible explanation behind Walter’s exclusion of Laura’s written account from the narrative might be that he does not wish to read about her time with Sir Percival. Yet, Marian’s diary, to which Walter has access, informs us that “the name of her husband is only mentioned in her letters, as she might mention the name of a friend who was travelling with them” (200). We are left to wonder why, then, Walter has chosen to essentially silence Laura.

Perkins and Donaghy comment that Marian is similarly oppressed by Walter in the latter half of the novel, and that “she becomes shadowy and less interesting” (396). The Woman in White is a text in which the women are smothered under the ‘protection’ of Walter, and in spite of his good intentions, we are left with women who are shadows of their former selves. It is never made clear whether Laura’s mental faculties are fully recovered, and formerly independent Marian, content with the prospect of teaching Walter and Laura’s children to say “‘We can’t spare our aunt!'” resigns herself to a life of domesticity (621).