The moment we are first introduced to the unspeakably lovely Laura in Collins’ The Woman in White, she is described as having golden hair that melts away and her aura is one of daintiness and fragility. Almost immediately, Laura is revealed as the embodiment of femininity and marriageability (according to Walter), directly juxtaposed with Marian’s sturdiness and refusal to go unseen. If not watched closely, Walter and Marian fear that she could fade away – physically in her health and mentally. In a novel so dependent on recalling details specifically, even Walter fears he’s forgetting her:
How can I describe her? How can I separate her from my own sensations, and from all that has happened in the later time? How can I see her again as she looked when my eyes first rested on her—as she should look now, to the eyes that are about to see her in these pages? (p39)
Here he cannot separate the different memories he has of Laura because they fade together. It is almost as if she is a blank slate on which to project Walter’s impressions and ideas of the future. At the same time, she is the connection to the past of Anne Catherick her appearance as a wisp in the moonlight harkens back to Walter’s strange meeting with her.
There stood Miss Fairlie, a white figure, alone in the moonlight…the living image at that distance and under those circumstances, of the woman in white!
Walter later notes that the likeness between Laura and Anne seems like casting a shadow on her future. Not only is Anne disordered by her perceived mental illness, but now she is corrupting the future of the fair Ms Fairlie. Now the likeness between the two of them darkly foreshadows what may happen to Laura.
It might be a stretch to make the claim that a perfect woman has a completely mutable future. Laura threatens to fade away, making her completely under the control of whomever is looking after her. Laura insists that Marian, our symbol of stability and permanence, receives her entire fortune, knowing that she has her best interests at heart. This inability to control her own life might be why the creepy Sir Percival is so insistent on receiving her entire fortune if (or when, as he sub-textually insinuates) something happens to her.
Furthermore, with the idea that Laura is capable of fading into memories, we can assume that Laura is the perfect candidate for a traumatic event. If a disordered woman is permanent and remembers painful memories (like how Anne’s trauma follows her around and expresses itself symptomatically), Laura’s possible future trauma (which will most definitely be related to Sir Percival) will be swept under the rug and walked over. Laura’s strict femininity will force her into doing the most important thing a woman can do after a trauma: stay silent and fade into the background.
Bianca LoGiurato
logiurab@dickinson.edu