{"id":2018,"date":"2025-02-08T00:33:01","date_gmt":"2025-02-08T00:33:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/?p=2018"},"modified":"2025-02-08T00:33:01","modified_gmt":"2025-02-08T00:33:01","slug":"objectionable-objects-and-objective-desire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/2025\/02\/08\/objectionable-objects-and-objective-desire\/","title":{"rendered":"Objectionable Object(s) and Objective (?) Desire\u00a0\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"

The gaze is central to <\/span>The Woman in White<\/span><\/i>.\u00a0 In the first section, Collins frames a supposedly objective testimony through a drawing master\u2019s narrative, someone whose job is primarily looking.\u00a0 Walter Hartright frequently affords his reader extensively self-indulgent visual descriptions, but in his relationship with Laura, these descriptions take a turn:\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cNot a day passed, in that dangerous intimacy of teacher and pupil, in which my hand was not close to Miss Fairlie\u2019s; my cheek, as we bent together over her sketch-book, almost touching hers. The more attentively she watched every movement of my brush, the more closely I was breathing the perfume of her hair, and the warm fragrance of her breath\u201d (Collins 63).<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Because Hartright is first and foremost a painter, it makes sense that he is alarmed at the literalized foreshortening of his life\u2019s picture plain: Laura is much closer to his than he initially realized. He describes his experience first through negatives: \u201cnot a day,\u201d \u201cnot so close,\u201d when he is in control of the action, perhaps to emphasize the extent of his restraint in this \u201cdangerous\u201d relationship with (the formally addressed) \u201cMiss Fairlie.\u201d\u00a0 However, when they act \u201ctogether,\u201d or when Laura is the actor \u201cwatch[ing]\u201d him, he more freely admits his desire. Though he cannot see her, as he is focusing on his work, he gages <\/span>her<\/span><\/i> \u201cattentive\u201d gaze by her proximity, her smell.\u00a0 Hartright assumes their equal attraction in the next parallel phrase: the \u201cmore\u201d attentive she is, the \u201cmore\u201d intensely he breathes her in. They are close enough to equally exchange air, but Laura\u2019s \u201cperfume\u201d and \u201cfragrance\u201d dominates the space (I will note, uncontrollably) at the culmination of this multi-clause, breathless phrase.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Even when Laura is \u201cattentive\u201d to Hartright, she is watching \u201cevery movement of [his] <\/span>brush<\/span><\/i>,\u201d not him.\u00a0 The brush undoubtedly has sexual or phallic connotations for both parties which extend to another moment of gaze.\u00a0 As Hartright prepares to leave Limmeridge House,\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cShe turned her head away, and offered me a little sketch, drawn throughout by her own pencil, of the summer-house in which we had first met. The paper trembled in her hand as she held it out to me\u2014trembled in mine as I took it from her\u201d (Collins 126).<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

While Hartright is allowed to express his desire for Laura in his retrospective account, Laura cannot do the same.\u00a0 Without looking at him (and without touching him), she gives him a \u201clittle\u201d (note Hartright\u2019s diminutive) \u201cdrawing\u201d which can yield a few interpretations.\u00a0 First, that her desire cannot be voiced, and is therefore only communicated through another object, (the paper).\u00a0 Second, that that the pencil in a woman\u2019s (\u201ctrembling\u201d) hand will never be as mighty as the brush in a man\u2019s, we take it, steady one.\u00a0 But if we lean into the phallic interpretation, just like Hartright\u2019s drawing, she has independently drawn on the canvas and <\/span>given<\/span><\/i> it to Hartright – perhaps she is voicing her own mirrored desire for Hartright.\u00a0 However, I would suggest that another reading is possible here: Laura\u2019s trembling hand and inability to meet Hartright\u2019s gaze hints at her insincerity.\u00a0 Painting from Hartright\u2019s perspective is often linked with heterosexual desire, so (it might be crazy but) could this moment also allude to how Laura is merely <\/span>mimicking<\/span><\/i> heterosexual desire as she mimics Hartright as a painter?\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Works Cited:<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Collins, Wilkie. The Woman in White<\/em>. Edited by John Sutherland, Oxford, Oxford University Press, [1860] 2008.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The gaze is central to The Woman in White.\u00a0 In the first section, Collins frames a supposedly objective testimony through a drawing master\u2019s narrative, someone whose job is primarily looking.\u00a0 Walter Hartright frequently affords his reader extensively self-indulgent visual descriptions, but in his relationship with Laura, these descriptions take a turn:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u201cNot a day passed, … Continue reading Objectionable Object(s) and Objective (?) Desire\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4758,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[135984],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2018","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2025-posts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2018","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\/4758"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2018"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2018\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2018"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2018"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2018"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}