{"id":182,"date":"2015-02-06T03:00:32","date_gmt":"2015-02-06T03:00:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/?p=182"},"modified":"2016-08-24T15:52:30","modified_gmt":"2016-08-24T15:52:30","slug":"the-anxiety-of-count-foscos-influence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/2015\/02\/06\/the-anxiety-of-count-foscos-influence\/","title":{"rendered":"The Anxiety of Count Fosco\u2019s Influence"},"content":{"rendered":"

An uneasy combination of admiration and fear characterizes Marian\u2019s reception of Count Fosco in the second epoch of The Woman in White<\/em>. Having long wanted to meet him herself, Marian initially describes Fosco with admiration, as \u201cthe magician who has wrought this wonderful transformation\u2026 a man who could tame anything\u201d (217). \u00a0She portrays him in positions of power: he is a magician performing awe-inspiring magic, a ringmaster taming his \u201conce wayward\u201d wife (217). However, Fosco\u2019s splendid power is tinged for Marian with an anxiety over the extent of his control. She writes of him in her diary:<\/p>\n

\u201cI am afraid<\/em><\/strong> to confess it, even to these secret pages. The man has interested me, has attracted me, has forced<\/em> me<\/em><\/strong> to like him\u201d (217).<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat is it that makes me unable<\/em><\/strong> to blame<\/strong><\/em> them [his peculiarities], or to ridicule them, in him<\/em>?\u201d (217).<\/p>\n

\u201cThey [his eyes] have at times a cold, clear, beautiful, irresistible glimmer in them, which forces me<\/em><\/strong> to look at him, and yet causes me<\/em><\/strong> sensations, when I do look, which I would rather not<\/em> <\/strong>feel\u201d (218).<\/p>\n

\u201cHe has\u2026 that secret gentleness in his voice\u2026 which we [women] can none of us resist<\/em><\/strong>\u201d (219, all above emphasis mine).<\/p>\n

The language Marian uses to describe Fosco collectively demonstrates her fear, the sense that he is acting on<\/em> her, against her will, to produce a certain end\u2014one that she cannot resist, and that she does not desire. He \u201cforces her\u201d to feel and to look, \u201ccauses her\u201d to feel a certain way, and even \u201cmakes her unable\u201d to blame him for it. She is stripped of agency in her interactions with him. Though she may not have the modern vocabulary to describe it, Marian\u2019s diction is somewhat evocative of acquaintance rape: anxiety, social pressure, force, and finally silence\u2014in Marian\u2019s inability to \u201cblame\u201d Fosco, and a fear that somehow, even in the secrecy of her journal, he will discover her fear and become sure of his advantage over her.<\/p>\n

This sense of oppressive force and underlying anxiety concerning Count Fosco heightens the audience\u2019s sense of uncertainty about where his loyalties lie, or what his motivations are. Is he a friend, or is he simply waiting to force his aims upon the sisters? The unease evident in even Marian\u2019s praise of him frames him for readers as a skilled manipulator, thus furthering the impression that we cannot see through his actions any more than she can (at least until he adds his postscript to her diary).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An uneasy combination of admiration and fear characterizes Marian\u2019s reception of Count Fosco in the second epoch of The Woman in White. Having long wanted to meet him herself, Marian initially describes Fosco with admiration, as \u201cthe magician who has wrought this wonderful transformation\u2026 a man who could tame anything\u201d (217). \u00a0She portrays him in … Continue reading The Anxiety of Count Fosco\u2019s Influence<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1106,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[111380,108029],"tags":[111384,111383,111385],"class_list":["post-182","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-360-victorian-sexualities","category-spring-2015","tag-force","tag-fosco","tag-marian"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1106"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=182"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=182"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=182"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=182"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}