The Woman in White <\/i>by Wilkie Collins was widely referred to as a \u201csensation novel\u201d as it sparked excitement and desire within the reader through crime, mystery, and romantic triangles.\u00a0 The dramatic tales were scandalous for the era, and particularly worrisome as they appealed to female reader. In William Greg\u2019s essay discussing the Victorian woman, he focuses particularly on the despair and disappointment of single women. He deems them unaware of their ambitions, and accuses them of setting goals too high to be met, which would leave them in \u201ca dreary void of unshared existence.\u201d In The Woman in White, <\/i>this idea and the belittling of women is made clear through the male characters. However, Marian Halcombe contrasts the typical female character in her often blunt expressions and her \u201crational\u201d thoughts.<\/p>\n
In Vincent Gilmore\u2019s narration, he has a particularly interesting series of conversations with Marian. His descriptions of Marian often include adjectives that would be used to describe males. He uses hard words, like sharp and dark. On page 146, Marian stands up to Gilmore, in a conversation about Laura. Upon calling Laura \u201cweak and nervous,\u201d Marian says to Vincent Gilmore, \u201cyou are altering your opinion about Laura, you are readier to make allowances for her than you were yesterday.\u201d He writes, \u201cNo sensible man ever engages, unprepared, in a fencing match of words with a woman.\u201d This not only shows Marian\u2019s ability and confidence to stand up to men, but also her fierce loyalty to Laura, which becomes more and more evident as the book continues. Gilmore, in his narration, is almost submissive, but alludes to the \u201cirrationality\u201d that women were believed to express through their hysteria. I did not interpret his thought as respectful, but rather a mockery of Marian\u2019s provoking statement. Rather than continuing the conversation, he replies to her, \u201cLet me know what happens. I will do nothing till I hear from you.\u201d His avoidance of the argument, or potential conversation, was, in my opinion to avoid Marian getting \u201chysterical\u201d by some means.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins was widely referred to as a \u201csensation novel\u201d as it sparked excitement and desire within the reader through crime, mystery, and romantic triangles.\u00a0 The dramatic tales were scandalous for the era, and particularly worrisome as they appealed to female reader. In William Greg\u2019s essay discussing the Victorian woman, … Continue reading Avoiding Female Hysteria<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2616,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[111380,108029],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-200","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-360-victorian-sexualities","category-spring-2015"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200","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\/2616"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=200"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=200"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=200"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=200"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}