{"id":2108,"date":"2025-02-21T04:28:01","date_gmt":"2025-02-21T04:28:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/?p=2108"},"modified":"2025-02-21T04:28:01","modified_gmt":"2025-02-21T04:28:01","slug":"sensation-scandal-tomato-tomahto-or-laura-and-walter-raise-dangerous-questions-and-make-great-headlines","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/2025\/02\/21\/sensation-scandal-tomato-tomahto-or-laura-and-walter-raise-dangerous-questions-and-make-great-headlines\/","title":{"rendered":"Sensation, Scandal, “Tomato, Tomahto” (Or, Laura and Walter Raise Dangerous Questions and Make Great Headlines)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cSocially, morally, legally\u2014dead\u201d (Collins 413). This is how Laura Fairlie is described, in dramatic, definitive fashion, by Walter Hartright at the beginning of his long narrative after returning from abroad. It is important to note that Laura is not <\/span>physically <\/span><\/i>dead, and instead is in hiding, but that her \u201cdeath\u201d is still quite real in all of the senses that Hartright listed. Being a Victorian \u201csensation novel,\u201d it combines gothic themes like death and mystery with romantic ideals (in the Romantic poetry sense) such as the thoughtful and noble artist: \u201cAlive, with the poor drawing-master to fight her battle\u201d Hartright says about himself and his determination to help (413). It is no surprise that the beginning of Hartright\u2019s narrative reads as it does, then, full of scandal and daring. He frames Laura as <\/span>practically <\/span><\/i>dead, a fake-out that fills readers with mortal terror and then scandalous satisfaction, and himself as a moral protagonist against the world, reflective of poetic drama. Collins truly plays up the mystery and scandal of the novel during this portion.<\/span><\/p>\n

In doing so, <\/span>The Woman in White <\/span><\/i>exemplifies the obvious connections between Victorian \u201cscandal\u201d and \u201csensation novels.\u201d William A. Cohen in <\/span>Sex, Scandal, and the Novel<\/span><\/i> connects Victorians\u2019 lengthy novels with a want to explore scandalous topics dramatically, yet sensitively\u2014sexual content, for example, must be conveyed by journalists \u201cwithout offending their readership\u201d (Cohen). Cohen generally speaks of sex being the \u201cscandal\u201d that these novels indulge in, and by extension, Victorian readers indulge in due to their fascination with scandal. But the topics beyond sex in <\/span>The Woman in White <\/span><\/i>also exemplify scandal at its finest: not only is Laura\u2019s fake-out death \u201csensational,\u201d as in grand and terrible, but it is also scandalous in the ways Hartright describes. First of all, she has gone from wealthy to \u201cin poverty\u201d as Hartright says, a fall from grace that leaves her less capable monetarily and, considering Victorian literature sometimes connects wealth not only with power but with morality, perhaps less able to act reasonably (413). Though, considering Hartright is framed as a moral protagonist and is described as poor, this novel may actually criticize the idea of wealth and standing as morality. Regardless, Laura is also \u201cin hiding,\u201d a stark contrast from her social standing beforehand. Her uncle has \u201crenounced her,\u201d a family connection that is massively important, and she is dead to any \u201cpersons in authority\u201d who dictate the law, and who therefore stand at the middle and final steps to truly putting the mystery of the novel to rest in terms of the ledger and inheritance (413). Though none of this is sexual in nature, it is all opposed to \u201cpolite\u201d or socially lawful Victorian society, which neither Laura nor Walter are a part of any longer at this point. In other words, Collins\u2019 readers, at this point, are indulging in the affairs of some quite scandalous characters who have found themselves in a terrible and sensational situation. The brief plot summary of later events in <\/span>The Woman in White<\/span><\/i> provided by Walter Hartright in this first chapter of his return alone could make up a scandal headline. His expressive use of punctuation, especially exclamation points, and his imagined binary between the shunned family he has grown into with Laura against greater polite society (remember how he so exaggeratedly \u201cfight[s]\u201d Laura\u2019s \u201cbattle\u201d) do not need much remodeling to become fantastic news stories.<\/span><\/p>\n

The overall effect of this on fiction readers, then, is not unlike the indulgence in real(ish?) scandal that Cohen describes: following these protagonists \u201cprovides the opportunity to formulate questions\u201d and \u201cdiscuss previously unimagined possibilities\u201d (Cohen). In fact, one of these questions may be the criticism of wealth as morality or power I mentioned earlier. Portraying Walter as poor and cast aside, but also heroic and determined raises questions about the norm of being wary of folks who have been \u201ccast out\u201d by Victorian society (think of Anne Catherick, who is pure and modest and honest in a polite womanly fashion yet also \u201cinsane\u201d or \u201cmad,\u201d othering her). Sensation novels like <\/span>The Woman in White<\/span><\/i>, then, clear the way for plenty of scandalous \u201cdangers,\u201d and help pave the way for a number of critiques of Victorian society that \u201ctrue\u201d scandals are also defined by. In this case of Laura and Hartright, wealth\/estate\/property and morality are called into question especially.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Cohen, William A. \u201cSex, Scandal, and the Novel.\u201d From <\/span>Sex Scandal: The Private Parts of Victorian Fiction<\/span><\/i>, <\/span>Duke University Press<\/span><\/a>, 1996. <\/span>The Victorian Web<\/span><\/i>, www.victorianweb.org\/gender\/wac.html.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Collins, Wilkie. The Woman in White. Penguin Books, 2003.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cSocially, morally, legally\u2014dead\u201d (Collins 413). This is how Laura Fairlie is described, in dramatic, definitive fashion, by Walter Hartright at the beginning of his long narrative after returning from abroad. It is important to note that Laura is not physically dead, and instead is in hiding, but that her \u201cdeath\u201d is still quite real in … Continue reading Sensation, Scandal, “Tomato, Tomahto” (Or, Laura and Walter Raise Dangerous Questions and Make Great Headlines)<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5136,"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-2108","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2025-posts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2108","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\/5136"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2108"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2108\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2108"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2108"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2108"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}