{"id":875,"date":"2016-09-30T01:39:16","date_gmt":"2016-09-30T01:39:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/?p=875"},"modified":"2016-10-13T12:47:52","modified_gmt":"2016-10-13T12:47:52","slug":"mine-the-language-of-possession-and-female-objectification","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/2016\/09\/30\/mine-the-language-of-possession-and-female-objectification\/","title":{"rendered":"Mine: The Language of Possession and Female Objectification"},"content":{"rendered":"

“The most wretched of her sex, if she must give herself in marriage when she cannot give her love” (171) L<\/strong><\/p>\n

“She will be\u00a0his<\/em> Laura instead of mine!\u00a0His<\/em> Laura!” (185) M<\/strong><\/p>\n

“I [have] just come back from a stolen look at Laura in her pretty little white bed . . . My own love!” (194) M<\/strong><\/p>\n

“My poor, faded flower! my lost, afflicted sister!” (478) W<\/strong><\/p>\n

“In the right of her calamity, in the right of her friendlessness, she was mine at last! Mine to support, to protect, to cherish, to restore. Mine to love and honor as father and brother both. Mine to vindicate through all risks and all sacrifices” (414) W<\/strong><\/p>\n

“If I am to fight our cause with the Count, strong in the consciousness of Laura’s safety, I must fight it for my Wife.” (559) W<\/strong><\/p>\n

In simplistic terms, Laura Fairlie is the object of desire that\u00a0The Woman in White<\/em> works toward possessing.<\/p>\n

Laura is loved and desired by Walter Hartright; she is sought and desired by Sir Percival Glyde; she is kissed and loved by Marian; she is stolen from Blackwater; she is cared for and coveted by both Walter and Marian in their tangled\u00a0m\u00e9nage \u00e1 trois.\u00a0<\/em>In all these cases, syntactically as well as contextually, Laura is the object of desire: she is passive, the desired rather than the desirer. Similarly, she is spoken about\u00a0as the possessed object – but not by Percival Glyde or Count Fosco, the ostensible villains of her life: by Walter and Marian, her husband and sister.<\/p>\n

In the six\u00a0excerpts above, Laura gets ten<\/em> possessive pronouns (or, in keeping with the Laura’s syntax and context, ten are given to her). Laura is “my” love, “mine,” or “his.” She is not her own Laura; she is discussed as an object passed around from hand to hand. Marian discusses her marriage to Glyde in almost economic terms, as if Laura’s marriage is a transaction involving a change of possession. Laura herself, describing marriage, uses the phrase\u00a0“give herself,”<\/em> reinforcing the possessional aspects of marriage as a contract and a relationship.<\/p>\n

Perhaps the worst instance of Laura as an object of possession is Walter’s in-narrative monologue. He refers to Laura as “mine” four times; the paragraph’s anaphora enforces the possessional language, enhancing the concept of Laura as an object of possession which Walter as “at last” gotten into his own hands.<\/p>\n

The description of a spouse as “my wife” doesn’t seem especially ominous until connected with the numerous other instances of possessive language. Walter insists to Marian that he wants to marry Laura because it will enhance his position as Laura’s guardian angel, savior, chevalier, knight in armor, etc. – not because he loves her or is attracted to her, but because his\u00a0possession<\/em> of her legally will make it easier for him to “save” her (return her to her legal identity, stolen by SPG and CF through AC’s resemblance). We know this through Walter’s umpteenth use of “my” to describe Laura.<\/p>\n

Furthermore, Laura is never given her own narrative; not once, except in her (relatively rare) dialogue, does Laura speak in her own voice. The utter exclusion of Laura as a major figure of the action reinforces her presentation as an object; she is handled, desired, passed around, and exchanged, but she\u00a0does<\/em> nothing,\u00a0acts<\/em> as nothing,\u00a0performs<\/em> nothing. The possessional language consistently applied to her reduces her to a possessed object, and the refusal to let her speak as herself reduces her to a thing.<\/p>\n

Laura is reduced and possessed throughout\u00a0The Woman in White<\/em>. Whether or not Collins is a feminist, whether or not\u00a0TWIW<\/em> is meant to argue for better women’s rights, whether or not Marian is supposed to be an example of a “freed” woman – Laura is an object, through the novel’s syntax as well as its contexts. Her objectification and possession are the root of the novel’s dilemma, and her submission to these concepts is the product of them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“The most wretched of her sex, if she must give herself in marriage when she cannot give her love” (171) L “She will be\u00a0his Laura instead of mine!\u00a0His Laura!” (185) M “I [have] just come back from a stolen look at Laura in her pretty little white bed . . . My own love!” (194) … Continue reading Mine: The Language of Possession and Female Objectification<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2924,"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-875","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\/875","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\/2924"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=875"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/875\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=875"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=875"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=875"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}