{"id":205,"date":"2015-02-06T13:08:56","date_gmt":"2015-02-06T13:08:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/?p=205"},"modified":"2016-08-24T15:52:07","modified_gmt":"2016-08-24T15:52:07","slug":"victorian-stereotype-in-the-woman-in-white","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/2015\/02\/06\/victorian-stereotype-in-the-woman-in-white\/","title":{"rendered":"Victorian stereotype in The Woman in White"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Women in the Victorian period were expected to be docile, submissive, and were relegated to the domestic sphere. Once married, as Greg states in his essay, they became their husband\u2019s servants and had no legal rights to own property. Laura Fairlie\u2019s character in <em>The Woman in White <\/em>embodies all these characteristics, representing the typical Victorian woman. The Victorian stereotype that Laura impersonates can be seen not only in her personality which is described as servile, vulnerable and weak, but it does also apply to her social status. In that period, in fact, marriages used to be arranged by parents, and Laura, being engaged to an older and wealthier man she does not love, is no exception.<\/p>\n<p>However, the interesting figure of Marian Halcombe in this novel completely contradicts this stereotype. From the beginning, she is described by Walter as an intelligent, curious, rational and outspoken woman. When introduced, Walter immediately notices Marian\u2019s physical masculinity which, to a broader extent, can be read as seeping into her character personality, given that she is an independent, dominant character who has great influence in Limmeridge House. She is verbally frank and extremely critical of her own gender, as she states on her first meeting with Walter, \u201cHow can you expect four women to dine together alone every day, and not quarrel? We are such fools, we can\u2019t entertain each other at table. You see I don\u2019t think much of my own sex, Mr. Hartright\u201d (36) In addition to this, Marian\u2019s presentation as both an \u201cugly\u201d and unmarried woman typifies Greg\u2019s idea of a societally dangerous woman: \u201cthe residue who remain unmarried constitute the problem to be solved, the evil and anomaly to be cured\u201d (159)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Women in the Victorian period were expected to be docile, submissive, and were relegated to the domestic sphere. Once married, as Greg states in his essay, they became their husband\u2019s servants and had no legal rights to own property. Laura Fairlie\u2019s character in The Woman in White embodies all these characteristics, representing the typical Victorian &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/2015\/02\/06\/victorian-stereotype-in-the-woman-in-white\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Victorian stereotype in The Woman in White<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2618,"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-205","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\/205","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\/2618"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=205"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=205"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=205"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=205"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}