Category: 360: Victorian Sexualities

Upon my first time reading The Woman in White, I had an expectation for the interaction of male and female characters and I made certain assumptions about female characters being portrayed through the male gaze. I was surprised by Walter Hartright’s first interaction with the Woman in white who later appears to be Anne Catherick. Walter explains “There was nothing wild, nothing immodest in her manner; it was quiet and self-controlled, a little melancholy and a little touched by suspicion; not exactly the manner or a lady, and at the same time, not the manner of a woman in the humblest rank of life” (Collins 24). Walter did make simple evaluations as he describes what he saw that night. Yet, when I expected him to make significant judgements of this woman, he seemed to refrain. This seemed like an opportunity for a Victorian man to admire the pure white garments even if he did not find the woman particularly pretty, or even to assert that the circumstances create a ghostly presence. Such judgements are completely lacking from Walter’s account of the interaction and his thoughts at the time. To me, this seemed strange on its own, but it becomes more questionable once Walter meets and describes Laura Fairlie.

Once Walter falls in love with Laura Fairlie (which seems to occur pretty quickly upon meeting) who bears a noticeable resemblance to Anne Catherick, I began to question the differences in their meeting and interactions. Walter goes into great detail about Laura’s looks and personality: how lovely and gentle she is (51). He quickly concludes he is in love with her. The idea that this man can have completely different reactions and completely different relationships with almost identical women even after meeting them only once or twice creates some burning questions for me: how and why? Based on Walter’s limited account of what happened, I have to consider a few likely possibilities. The circumstances of Walter meeting Anne as the woman in white are so unconventional that Walter distances himself from the occurrence, there is a stigma against possible mental illness that keeps Walter from becoming close with Anne, or Walter is simply choosing the woman that he concludes could be a more beneficial match. All seem possible; continuing to read from different perspectives may shed more light on why Walter gravitates strongly towards one woman and has less significant impressions of the other.

“Her ‘misfortune’. In what sense was she using the word? … In a sense which might show it to be the too common and too customary motive that has led many a woman to interpose anonymous hindrances on the marriage of the man who has ruined her? …. ‘There is another misfortune,’ I said, ‘to which a woman may be liable, and by which she may suffer life-long sorrow and shame. … The misfortune of believing too innocently in her own virtue, and in the faith and honor of the man she loves'” (Collins 101).

It’s easy to dismiss Victorian attitudes toward female sexuality as prudish and repressive, but this is an oversimplification and a misunderstanding of Victorian sexual mores. In an era when treatment for “hysteria” (a “disease” of the “womb”) involved giving women orgasms, sexuality – even female sexuality – is far more polyvalent and complicated than simply repressed and ignored. In The Woman in White, Anne Catherick’s “misfortune” is not actually sexual, but the way Walter Hartright immediately concludes that it is reveals common Victorian trends of thinking about sex and about women having sex.

The premarital sexual liaison that Hartright attributes to Anne’s misfortune he refers to as “the too common and too customary motive.” Common and customary are close to synonyms, except that “common” carries a connotation of inferiority, poverty, vulgarity, low class status. Although the man in the situation is the one committing the action – “ruining” the woman – the woman’s response is “common,” not merely frequent but vulgar, lower-class. It’s a way of blaming the victim: although the man receives the blame and the agency for the sexual part of the affair, the woman’s response and the consequences are her fault, endowed with negative qualities specifically connected to the woman.

As well, the woman “interposes anonymous hindrances” on her “ruiner’s” marriage. “Interpose” doesn’t carry any distinctly negative connotation but in conjunction with “anonymous” and “hindrance,” the phrase as a whole takes on a sinister quality, suggesting venom or malice on the woman’s part, as she performs deeds meant to prevent the man’s marriage. This marriage would legitimize and validate for good the man’s social and sexual status: as a male with the potential for socially endorsed progeny, his position in society would be confirmed.

However, Walter’s inner monologue doesn’t contain an actual accusation of a woman involved in premarital sex. What he says to Anne, however – the outward expression of his thoughts – does contain an accusation: the woman is “liable” to misfortune because she may “believe too innocently in her own virtue” (101). She believes too innocently, and it’s this, her own surplus of innocence, is what gets her into trouble. The man may have no “faith and honour,” but it’s still the woman’s fault for being “too innocent” and for not having enough virtue.

In this situation the woman is unmistakably the victim. She engages in sex or sexual activities, possibly without consent or understanding; she ends up with “life-long sorrow and shame.” Yet Hartright blames her for her own “misfortune,” and he doesn’t give her any possible agency for engaging in an affair with full consent to and desire for a sexual relationship. Here, as in so many situations, women can’t win: if they don’t understand what’s happening, they “believed too innocently” and had too little virtue. There is not even the possibility of their engaging with their own sexuality in any self-realized way.

Laura Fairlie lies in the center of the romance in “The Woman in White.” Walter Hartwright hopelessly falls in love with her during the period of his narrative, then after the parting, gets reduced to a bitter mess both Gilmore and Marian are surprised and sorry to find. Then there is Sir Percival Glyde, pursuing his engagement with “unchangeable love and admiration of two long years” (174), apparently not only for Laura but her inheritance. And then, there are Gilmore and Marian. They appear to be armed with a different kind of love, but the bitterness by which Marian writes–“She will be his Laura instead of mine!”–makes a reader wonder if she, too, may act as one of the voices driving Laura into confusion.

And yet, for the woman in the center of all this attention, Laura is given very little power. This is not to argue that her environment is at fault. True, the Victorian era gives no legal power for women, but Marian is doing just fine with her “robust nervous system,” to the envy of Mr. Farlie (176). Upon coming of age, Laura is also entitled to an inheritance of twenty-thousand pounds, a sum that is “absolutely Miss Fairlie’s own” (150). And on account of her marriage, it is not, to be strict, a forced one, either. Sir Percival Glyde, as pale as he gets when Laura calls to talk to him (165), still voluntarily leaves one window open by passing onto Marian that he could, under Laura’s desire, “sacrifice himself by leaving her perfectly free to withdraw from the engagement” (138).

She is not yet of age–three months short of being twenty-one (146). And while this puts her in roughly the same area as the readers in our class, her emotional state does not seem to be parallel at all. Again and again, she is referred as not only a ghostly figure in white, but as a child.

Her encounter with Gilmore is especially so. On trying to express her desire to leave some inheritance to Walter Hartwright, she bursts into tears and Gilmore “drie[s] the tears that were gathering in her eyes, with [his] own hand, as if she had been the little Laura Fairlie of ten long years ago” (144). And from the way she leans towards him and smiles, she apparently is still a little girl of ten, at heart. The later page supports this by mentioning that she was “[s]till clinging to the past – that past which I represented to her, in my way, as Miss Halcombe did in hers!” (145).

Her love for Walter, too, then becomes questionable not in its existence but its meaning. Is it actually love, or is it a form of idolizing admiration and affection that a little girl might have towards an older man? The time spent alone upstairs looking at the album Walter had given her, the act of pinning her hair to it and asking to give it to him upon her death, and of saying to Marian “say for me, then, what I can never say for myself – say I loved him!” (173) all points to a kind of love that is just pure and selfless. This is comparable to Walter’s remembering “at one time to be bending over her, so close to her bosom as to tremble at the thought of touching it” (65). There is nothing sexual about Laura’s love at all–not just, I daresay, because this is a Victorian novel and women are not “qualified” to have such thoughts, but because her love does not include any at all.

She is, in this way, caged and deprived of power not by her environment or her situation, but by the limits of her own naive self. All she can do in the center of attention, is to do what she thinks she “should do,” then cry in her bedroom in secret. She is too young in spirit to execute her right to refuse her marriage, or pursue her romance–which may not be romance at all.

Throughout The Woman in White, Miss Fairlie is described as a bright figure that “passes by in the moonlight.” (48) It is imperative to take notice of this moon motif because it reoccurs frequently within the text. During class discussions, many people spoke about Walter Hartright’s “supernatural and ghostlike” descriptions of Laura Fairlie, yet no one mentioned the instant link between the moon and lunacy. If we are thinking about lunacy and its implications, single women in the Victorian Era were especially vulnerable and “easily disposable” candidates for the mental institutions. (Victorian Gothic) In this post, I would like to propose a relationship between desire and implications of madness.
Fascinatingly enough, “certificates of lunacy” were easy to acquire. The Victorian Era Asylums essentially severed ties between the “patient” and the outside world and the institution had full invasive power to control which letters the patients could receive from their loved ones. (Victorian Gothic) Unsurprisingly, I suspect that men who felt rejected by feme soles were eager to accuse them and to isolate them whilst chanting the mantra: “If I can’t have you, nobody can.”
Similarly, the issue exists once men ascribe women with emotional undertones where the female “influx of sentimentality” might perhaps be void. Walter focuses on “the white gleam of [Laura Fairlie’s] muslin gown and head-dress in the moonlight” and he is overwhelmed by a slew of “sensations” that “quicken his pulse” and raise a “fluttering in his heart.” (49) However, Laura is simply walking around her yard in the nighttime and she most likely does not intend to arouse any of Walter’s deep sensual “feelings.” Thus, if the idea of lunacy is linked to feelings of desire, what other connections are implied within this relationship? How could this link be dangerous for members of Victorian society?

(Victorian Gothic source) http://www.victoriangothic.org/the-lunacy-of-english-lunacy-laws/

Note: The Woman in White copy that I reference is different than the class edition and therefore it contains different page numbers. (Published by London Chatto & Windus)

I would like to discuss Mr. Gilmore’s…sexuality. Though his prose is much more blunt and efficient than Mr.Hartright’s elaborate descriptions of people and places, the narrative style does not necessarily reflect masculinity even though we may typically associate straight-forward, effective language with men instead of the “flowery” or emotional language of women (stereotypes, let’s be clear). I want to address one particular sentence that I think hints to Mr. Gilmore’s sexual desires through the text. After Sir Percival (whom I believe might be the object of Mr. Gilmore’s affection) takes the note from Miss. Halcombe addressed to Mrs. Catherick without looking at it and addresses it and hands it back to Miss. Halcombe, Mr. Gilmore notes, “I never saw anything more gracefully and more becomingly done, in my life” (133). Is this simply approval of Sir Percival’s mannerisms on Mr. Gilmore’s behalf? I would argue there is desire within the sentence. Mr. Gilmore’s language, up until his encounters with Sir Percival, is fairly unemotional and fittingly, lawyer-like. He calls Mr. Hartright a “modest and gentlemanlike young man” (128) and Mr. Fairlie as a “helpless sufferer” (129). Brutally honest, and thus as a reader I came to see Mr. Gilmore as a frank, open man. Mr. Gilmore even describes the women in a very matter-of-fact manner, not mentioning their bodies or beauty (or lack thereof) as Mr. Hartright did.

Saying that Sir Percival’s actions were graceful is the most sensuous wording I’d read from Mr. Gilmore throughout the text. The use of the word “becomingly” suggests an attraction to Sir Percival’s actions while the notion that Mr. Gilmore’s “never seen” anything as graceful alludes to the fact that he has never been as tempted by someone, including women, before. I think the “in my life” highlights the awareness Mr. Gilmore has that his attraction to men is not something that occurs in the lives of other men; I would read it as “in my life”. The sentence is just one of many that hints quite obviously (at least I think so) to the desire Mr. Gilmore has for Sir Percival. He even later describes him as, “a gentleman, every inch of him” (146). I cannot help but associate this with sexual desire! It is not only the words, but the break in his usual objective text. In this novel, it may be those moments, when the narrators’ seemingly innocently comment on actions within the story, when they betray their true emotions. In this multi-narrator text, it’s fascinating to see how observing how different narrators comment on people and describe the events around them can allude to their own desires and thoughts more than the actions in the narrative.

When I first started reading The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins, I began to formulate a question in my mind on the true views of the author.  I was curious on whether Wilkie Collins would portray the women of his novel in a stereotypical Victorian way: men being superior to women in numerous rights and aspects of life.

At first, I was convinced that Wilkie Collins’ views were similar to William Rathbone Greg’s opinions on women, which were rather degrading.  In his essay entitled “Why Are Women Redundant?”, Greg described single working women of England as people who were “wasting life and soul, gathering the scientist subsistence, and surrounded by the most overpowering and insidious temptations” (158).  Meanwhile, in one passage in The Woman in White, Collins has one of the female characters, Miss Marian Halcombe, state, “Women can’t draw – their minds are too flighty, and their eyes are too inattentive” (37).  Also, Collins’ other female characters such as Anne Catherick and Laura Fairlie are shown as emotionally unstable.  Both Greg and Collins seem to portray women in their writings as fragile, careless, and incapable of performing certain tasks of life.  After reading such words, I came to believe that both writers were sexist towards women.

However, after delving deeper into the story of The Woman in White, I noticed that the personalities of women, especially that of Miss Marian Halcombe, did not represent female characters as the dim, meek people I had expected Collins to portray them as.  Rather, Marian and her half sister, Laura, are shown as strong characters protesting against the cruel regime of men in Victorian society.  This is most evident during the weeks leading up to Laura’s dreaded wedding ceremony with Sir Percival Glyde.  Marian, fed up with the selfish decision makings of their uncle, Mr. Fairlie, and Sir Percival, exclaims, “No man under heaven deserves these sacrifices from us women.  Men!  They are the enemies of our innocence and our peace – they drag us away from our parents’ love and our sisters’ friendship – they take us body and soul to themselves, and fasten our helps lives to theirs as they chain up a dog to his kennel” (181).  Such words are powerful and bold because they blatantly explain the unequal statues that women suffered during the Victorian Era.

After reading the outcry of Marian, I changed my opinion on Collins, now viewing him as a potential advocate on women’s rights.  However, it is still debatable on what Collins’ true intensions were due to other passages (such as the one mentioned before about women being incapable of drawing) that do not exactly portray women as equals to men.

Throughout The Woman in White, many characters go through losses that alter their life and lifestyle; Miss Laura Fairlie is one of these characters. Despite her growing forbidden love for Mr. Walter Hartright, Miss Fairlie marries another character who she does not love, Sir Percival Glyde. One point in this story, Miss Fairlie asks her half-sister, Marian Halcomb to continue to write to Mr. Hartright even though he has left and their love can never be. Laura pleads, “You write to him, and he writes to you, […] While I am alive, if he asks after me, always tell him I am well, and never say I am unhappy. Don’t distress him, Marian – for my sake, don’t distress him” (173). This passage is about people keeping in touch; however, this passage is also darker than it seems. Though not directly discussed, feelings of loss are key matters in this quote.

By telling Mr. Hartright that Laura is well, it is as if Marian is sending this version of her sister away forever, where she will live in his mind. Generally speaking, being sent away is a bad thing, like readers see through character Anne Catherick, who was sent away to an asylum, which she detests. In this case though, the happy Laura gets to be elsewhere (in Mr. Hartright’s thoughts). During this, the conflicted, fragile, and depressed remains of her character, live on and marry Sir Percival Glyde. Her happiness is lost and so are her hopes to develop a relationship with the noble Mr. Hartright.

The latter half of the quote also presents the theme of loss. The continuation of the passage above goes: “If I die first, promise you will give him this little book of his drawings, with my hair in it. There can be no harm, when I am gone, of telling him that I put it in there with my own hands” (173). This idea, of Laura including a piece of her hair in the book, I like to think, is quite significant. Hair is dead right from the start of the scalp, or from the beginning. The potential for Laura and Mr. Hartright’s relationship to grow was automatically seen as a  dead idea, right as Mr. Hartright arrived (because she is already engaged). It is as if the hair is a symbol of their bond.

Laura’s loss of Mr. Hartright, and of her independence (after marrying Sir Percival Glyde) ties her to so many other characters, and their experiences in The Woman in White. This theme has been present in the story, even if not blatantly stated, from the beginning. Loss has been haunting Anne Catherick, who is trying desperately to rid, or lose her reputation of being the crazy woman from the asylum. Loss has also affected Marian. When Laura got married it was as if Marian had lost a half of herself. So much of Marian’s identity was being a protector to Laura.

Author Wilkie Collins’ inclusion of this understated theme makes me intrigued to see what is going come of Laura and Mr. Hartright and these character’s futures. The author exemplifies the theme of loss, and specifically, this repetition of women losing things (or people) most prominently through Laura. Through the showcasing of this theme, perhaps Collins is commenting on how easy it is for women to lose power over their futures, as readers see, outside sources can hinder one’s development in many specific ways.