{"id":2069,"date":"2025-02-18T17:25:46","date_gmt":"2025-02-18T17:25:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/?p=2069"},"modified":"2025-02-18T17:25:46","modified_gmt":"2025-02-18T17:25:46","slug":"turning-on-a-word","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/2025\/02\/18\/turning-on-a-word\/","title":{"rendered":"Turning on a Word"},"content":{"rendered":"

In William Rathbone Greg\u2019s pamphlet on \u201cthe redundant woman,\u201d he makes claims about acceptable celibacy, saying that this choice should not be made as \u201ca mere escape from the lottery of marriage\u201d (Greg 159).\u00a0 Two words stand out: \u201cmere escape.\u201d \u201cEscape\u201d denotes his understanding that the marriage market is a cyclical institution, one which perpetuates itself, while \u201cmere\u201d connotes trivializing the woman\u2019s desire next to the power of the institution.\u00a0 Greg fails to account for women who might have to \u201cescape\u201d from the institution of marriage, out of necessity.\u00a0 This is a side of marriage available to readers in <\/span>The Woman in White<\/span><\/i>.\u00a0 As <\/span>The Norton Anthology<\/span><\/i> notes, a married woman\u2019s legal protection was extremely limited, with restrictions on property, child custody, and conditions of divorce (\u201cVictorian\u201d 991).\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

One condition under which middle- and upper-class woman could claim a divorce was by proving a husband’s cruelty (\u201cVictorian\u201d 990).\u00a0 In <\/span>The Woman in White<\/span><\/i>, Marian is clearly aware of this clause and acts practically when Laura reveals evidence of domestic abuse:<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cShe showed me the marks. I was past grieving over them, past crying over them, past shuddering over them. They say we are either better than men, or worse. If the temptation that has fallen in some women\u2019s way, and made them worse, had fallen in mine at that moment\u2014Thank God! my face betrayed nothing that his wife could read. The gentle, innocent, affectionate creature thought I was frightened for her and sorry for her, and thought no more.\u201d (Collins 305).<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Marian is detachedly analytical in this passage, investigating \u201cthe marks\u201d without reference to whom they are inflicted on, and then pushing her own feelings back in three parallel clauses (\u201cI was past\u201d) as if to convince the reader and herself that she has no emotion.\u00a0 In the next sentence, she also tries to distance herself from womanhood, which she associates with emotion (\u201cgrieve,\u201d \u201ccry,\u201d or \u201cshudder\u201d) and the emotion with fault (\u201ctemptation,\u201d \u201cworse\u201d).\u00a0 Her value as a woman is firmly grounded in a dialogue with men, where a valued woman can\u201chide\u201d her emotion.\u00a0 Therefore, in an act of self-fashioning, she aligns herself with masculinity (or a more masculinely coded version of acceptable femininity) but is unsure of her success in the first clause of the sentence.\u00a0 However, in bursting forth \u201cThank God!-My face betrayed nothing,\u201d she considers her reserve a success. Laura, meanwhile, is associated solely with femininely coded values (\u201cgentle, innocent, affectionate\u201d \u201cthought no more\u201d).\u00a0 There is still the implication that a woman cannot advocate well enough for herself, and she needs a masculine presence to help her voice those claims \u2013 in order to get help, femininity must be put aside. A woman has to \u201cth[ink],\u201d to remember, a position which is presented as masculine.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In light of this quotation, it is revealing to return to Greg, who writes that \u201cThe residue…who remain unmarried constitute the problem to be solved, the evil and anomaly to be cured\u201d (Greg 159).\u00a0 It seems that Greg\u2019s conclusions need to be flipped as they apply to <\/span>The Woman in White<\/span><\/i>: Marian, one of his so-called redundant women, is the one who cures, both physically and in proposing legal intervention, and the injury that needs to be cured results from his highly exalted marriage.\u00a0 Greg\u2019s \u201clottery,\u201d then, is just as perilous for the woman as it is desirable for him.\u00a0 Given that the novel is interested in men with hidden personalities putting their best foot forward for marriage while enacting harm behind closed doors, perhaps in the introduction when Hartright claims that the story is about \u201cwhat a Woman\u2019s patience can endure,\u201d he is introducing a central theme.\u00a0 Perhaps this line raises not a question of \u201cwhat\u201d but a question of \u201chow much\u201d: the novel implicitly criticizes marital laws, asking <\/span>how much<\/span><\/i> a woman must endure before legal sympathy can be drawn on, if at all (Collins 5).<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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

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

Collins, Wilkie. <\/span>The Woman in White<\/span><\/i>. Edited by John Sutherland, Oxford, Oxford University Press, [1860] 2008.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Greg, William Rathbone. \u201cThe Redundant Woman.\u201d pp. 157-163.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe Victorian Age 1830-1901.” <\/span>The Norton Anthology of English Literature<\/span><\/i>, 8<\/span>th<\/span> Edition Volume E, Edited by Carol T. Christ and Catherine Robson, 2006.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In William Rathbone Greg\u2019s pamphlet on \u201cthe redundant woman,\u201d he makes claims about acceptable celibacy, saying that this choice should not be made as \u201ca mere escape from the lottery of marriage\u201d (Greg 159).\u00a0 Two words stand out: \u201cmere escape.\u201d \u201cEscape\u201d denotes his understanding that the marriage market is a cyclical institution, one which perpetuates … Continue reading Turning on a Word<\/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-2069","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2025-posts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2069","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=2069"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2069\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2069"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2069"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2069"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}