{"id":861,"date":"2016-09-28T00:26:19","date_gmt":"2016-09-28T00:26:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/?p=861"},"modified":"2016-10-13T12:47:53","modified_gmt":"2016-10-13T12:47:53","slug":"the-victorian-fight-for-female-rights","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/2016\/09\/28\/the-victorian-fight-for-female-rights\/","title":{"rendered":"The Victorian Fight for Female Rights"},"content":{"rendered":"

At first glance, Laura Fairlie\/Lady Glyde and the victim in the case of \u201cThe Abominable Bride\u201d from the BBC Sherlock Christmas special set in Victorian England (Emelia Ricoletti) live out two very different situations.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Emila Ricoletti (source<\/a>)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Laura has survived, with Anne Catherick dying in her place; Emelia pretends to die in an attempt to (literally) get away with murder.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Sherlock deducing how Emelia faked her suicide (source<\/a>)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"\"
Emelia about to murder her husband (source<\/a>)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Anne and Laura are the victims of a plot; Emelia is the culprit of a plot. Emelia has one of her friends shoot her in the head after the murder so as to complete her alibi and for her corpse to be positively identified; Anne dies of heart failure and Laura continues to live. Both Anne and Laura have been in asylums; Emelia has never stepped foot in one \u2013 although her actions might qualify her for entrance.<\/p>\n

All three women are clothed in white \u2013 Laura and Anne simply general white clothes, Emelia specifically in a wedding gown (hence the Abominable Bride moniker). All three women are wronged by a man: Laura and Emelia both faced abuse at the hands of their husband, while\u00a0Anne is hunted down and shut away in an asylum by Glyde. Anne and Emelia were both sick, Anne with a condition of the heart and Emelia with consumption.<\/p>\n

\"\"
One of Emelia’s friends educating Holmes during his deduction (source<\/a>)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In the end, however, the most important correlation between the two stories is their focus on the rights of women. Emelia\u2019s death opens the gate for other women to avenge their suffering at the hands of men, disguising themselves as her ghost to murder the men doing them wrong. Reading Marian\u2019s perspective emphasizes the lack of rights held by women, and Hartwright\u2019s quest is to reveal the wrongdoings of Glyde and the Count to save Laura and give her closure (His stated goal is to “vindicate [Laura] through all risks and all sacrifices” (Collins, 414)). He will not stand for their abuse of Laura, made possible by their patriarchal power over her and Marian. While it may not seem so at first, I believe that The Woman in White<\/em> is indeed a feminist novel, arguing for increasing the rights of women, so as to prevent more terrible circumstances, like the ones Laura and Marian are forced to go through. I agree with wardka\u2019s conclusions from their last post, that Wilke Collins is advocating for women\u2019s rights.<\/p>\n

(As a small aside, one interesting similarity between \u201cThe Abominable Bride\u201d and The Woman in White<\/em> are the mustachioed ladies: Marian is described as having a mustache, and Molly Hooper appears in male disguise during the special:<\/p>\n

\"\"
“Mr.” Hooper (source<\/a>))<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At first glance, Laura Fairlie\/Lady Glyde and the victim in the case of \u201cThe Abominable Bride\u201d from the BBC Sherlock Christmas special set in Victorian England (Emelia Ricoletti) live out two very different situations. Laura has survived, with Anne Catherick dying in her place; Emelia pretends to die in an attempt to (literally) get away … Continue reading The Victorian Fight for Female Rights<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2255,"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-861","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\/861","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\/2255"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=861"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/861\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=861"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=861"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=861"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}