{"id":739,"date":"2016-09-16T02:17:03","date_gmt":"2016-09-16T02:17:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/?p=739"},"modified":"2016-10-13T12:48:28","modified_gmt":"2016-10-13T12:48:28","slug":"walters-creepy-love-for-laura","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/2016\/09\/16\/walters-creepy-love-for-laura\/","title":{"rendered":"Walter’s Creepy “Love” for Laura"},"content":{"rendered":"

While there are lots of bizarre\u00a0events occurring\u00a0in The Woman in White,\u00a0<\/em>few passages made me feel as downright uncomfortable as the passage where Walter Hartright proclaims his love for Laura.\u00a0Instead of saying sweet things about the girl he has fallen for, as would be expected, Walter goes on for paragraphs talking about\u00a0his urges to touch Laura. He states that he “had just enough work to do, in mounting his employer’s drawings, to keep his hands and eyes pleasurably employed, while his mind was left free to enjoy the dangerous luxury of its own unbridled thoughts” (Collins 64). In other words, Walter\u00a0likes doing his work because it gives him lots of\u00a0time to think dirty thoughts about Laura, and it gives him something to do with his hands other than struggle to keep them off of her.<\/p>\n

He doesn’t talk about any part of\u00a0Laura’s personality that he finds appealing, instead he\u00a0discusses the many parts of her appearance that he is attracted to. Walter goes into great detail describing how “the more attentively Laura watched every movement of his\u00a0brush, the more closely he was breathing the perfume of her hair, and the warm fragrance of her breath. It was part of his service, to live in the very light of her eyes- at one time to be bending over her, so close to her bosom as to tremble at the thought of touching it” (Collins 65). Walter and Laura have barely interacted so far in the story, especially never a heartfelt, meaningful interaction, so I can’t imagine that Walter knows that much about Laura other than what he has observed at face value.\u00a0Walter’s “love” for Laura is certainly only lust, and it is definitely\u00a0obsession.<\/p>\n

The lecherous way he talks about Laura does not give me warm and loving feelings. Walter even portrays himself in a creepy way when he talks about having to put up a guard \u00a0to prevent him from the temptation of the “beautiful and captivating women” that his career allows him to be around (Collins 66). Walter, you officially skeeve me out.\u00a0The more times Walter announced\u00a0that he loved Laura, the less I believed it. His “love” towards her is actually just extreme sexual desire.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

While there are lots of bizarre\u00a0events occurring\u00a0in The Woman in White,\u00a0few passages made me feel as downright uncomfortable as the passage where Walter Hartright proclaims his love for Laura.\u00a0Instead of saying sweet things about the girl he has fallen for, as would be expected, Walter goes on for paragraphs talking about\u00a0his urges to touch Laura. … Continue reading Walter’s Creepy “Love” for Laura<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3296,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[111380,111423],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-739","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-360-victorian-sexualities","category-fall-2016"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/739","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\/3296"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=739"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/739\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=739"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=739"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=739"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}