Wilkie Collins was one of the most popular nineteenth century-writers (Page xi). Among his best works is the novel The Woman in White, which first appeared serially in 1859 before it was published in book form in 1860. Since its publication, Collins’ novel has never been out of print and it is generally regarded as one of the first and best examples of the Victorian sensation novel, which makes this popular work particularly interesting for research (Chuska 37). In The Woman in White, Walter Hartright encounters on his way to the Limmeridge House a mysterious woman dressed in white, who later turns out to be mentally ill. At the Limmeridge household, the reader is introduced to Laura Fairlie and her half-sister Marian Halcombe, as they end up being caught in a conspiracy revolving around this ‘woman in white’ and her secret. The Woman in White features love, marriage, greed, and murder. In this essay, the character of Laura will be analyzed alongside several notable author’s choices to simultaneously get a grip of Collins’ work and life, because it is through this character, amongst others, that Collins’ critiques Victorian social conventions, which tells us something about Collins’ personal view on life at the same time. Laura is representative for Victorian women and their place in society in the nineteenth century, which is why her character is the point of focus in this essay. As such, …this results in the following key question: …
An important element of this novel is the narrative technique that is used: “The novel presents readers with separate narratives of seven individuals in which they describe those things which they personally witnessed in the affair of Laura Fairlie (Panek 50). The Woman in White is set to take on the form of the so-called epistolary novel, meaning that it contains various accounts of first-person narrators, including journals, letters, diary entries, and tombstones, for example. This type of form offers a unique perspective on another literary term: voice (Page 4). The story is told through many different characters, instead of only one, yet pieced together by Walter Hartright who acts as the editor and has the authority over every narrative within the novel, as explained in the introduction by dr. Scott Brewster (Collins vii). However, Walter functioning as the ‘master narrator’ is unlikely for this kind of genre. According to Collins himself, as stated in the preface, the narrative technique is in fact actually the most remarkable technique of The Woman in White: “The story here presented will be told by more than one pen, as the story of an offense against the laws is told in court by more than one witness” (Collins 3). Collins purposely sets the readers up as a court, which is another different method as opposed to the traditional epistolary novel, where the readers are just snooping into someone else’s life (Panek 51). This makes The Woman in White also one of the first detective novels, another reason for its importance (Page 4). It is argued that presumably Collins got the idea for this particular point of view from his personal experience. In 1841, Collins entered Lincoln’s Inn to study law and was called to the bar ten years later (“Wilkie Collins: Life and Works”). Although he never actually practiced law after completing his studies for the legal profession, Collins’ legal knowledge may have influenced his stories (Hyder 301). It is been stated by many researchers investigating his life and works that “his legal training had a profound bearing on his writing. Most of his works, including The Woman in White, portray protracted engagement with, and transgressions of, legal processes. Lawyers play significant roles in his works,” and this effect is also present in this particular novel, as we have seen (“Wilkie Collins: Life and Works”). Turning to character Laura, she does not narrate her own story at all, which is striking, since she is the most significant character as ‘the victim’ and is the reason for the narrative after all (Page 35). Instead, Laura speaks through Walter or Marian, who view her as a weak and helpless woman. This has to do with her passivity. Laura acts as a static, passive character. One could say her life is controlled or directed. Although the actions of the plot happen to her, Laura does not act on her own, does not cause or change anything in terms of dialogue or action (Page 78). Her passiveness is thus further emphasized by the lack of her own narrative. Because Laura does not have her own voice, she does not narrate the story: “Passive, irresolute, dependent on her nurse, her sister, her future husband, and her guardian, Laura personifies the submissive wife promoted by conventional ideology” (Surridge 161). Thus, in social context, Laura’s passivity is related to Victorian women.
Along the same lines, it is likely Collins purposely made Laura a weak and helpless character as a reaction to marriage for Victorian women at that time, to show how damaging it could be. Many critics, such as Tamar Heller, view the novel as “a strong critique of Victorian women’s disadvantaged economic and legal position, especially within marriage” (Heller 112). Laura gets involved in “a marriage settlement that deprives her of power over her inheritance, a plot that emphasizes the lack of legal control Victorian wives had over their money,” Heller further explains (Heller 112). Since Collins did not offer us much insight into Laura’s personal feelings and thoughts on this matter, the subject of marriage will be addressed through Marian’s character, who on the contrary strongly expresses her view on this. Laura’s half-sister Marian sheds light on the definition of marriage in the nineteenth century: “It is an engagement of honour, not of love; her father sanctioned it on his deathbed, two years since; she herself neither welcomed it, nor shrank from it – she was content to make it. Till you came here she was in the position of hundreds of other women, who marry men without being greatly attracted to them or greatly repelled by them, and who learn to love them (when they don’t learn to hate!) after marriage, instead of before” (Collins 55). Later on, Marian compares marriage to imprisonment, comparing the wife to a dog, owned by her husband, on a lease, no longer allowed to think or act for herself (Struik 44). Marian utters: “No man under heaven deserves these sacrifices from us women. Men! They are the enemies of our innocence and peace – they drag us away from our parents’ love and our sisters’ friendship – they take us body and soul to themselves, and fasten our helpless lives to theirs as they chain up a dog to his kennel” (Collins 140). According to Jerome Meckier, she “challenges the propriety of a social and legal system that encourages men to subjugate women” (Meckier 111). Comparing a woman’s marital situation to imprisonment does not necessarily mean she was in fact literally imprisoned. However, to a certain degree it could surely feel that way, for example Countess Fosco who “could not go anywhere without the permission of her husband” (Struik 44).
Marian is dreaded by the thought of Laura being trapped in a loveless marriage, although this was quite common during that time. People often got married because of money, not out of love, which was also the case for Laura, as it turned out Sir Percival, her husband, needed her for her money. Once married, a woman’s property became the property of her husband to which she had no claim; her husband could do whatever he pleased with her property (Ablow). It was not until 1870 and 1882, with the passages of the Married Women’s Property Acts that the legal status of women in the nineteenth century really began to change in a positive sense. The act gave married women the right to act as independent legal personages (Shanley 103). Before, marriage in Victorian England was unjust for women as their husbands could take all their earnings and inheritance. Thus, Laura acted as the traditional Victorian woman. As a result of the promise she made to her father, Laura married Sir Percival and from that moment on had to obey her husband. Being married robbed her of her ability to act of her own will. She is under the control of a man; she has no say. Relating this to Collins’ personal life, he never got married yet spent his life with Caroline Graves and Martha Rudd, with whom he had three children. Collins took on a critical position regarding how wrongful the institution of marriage treated women, “persuaded of the futility of marriage, avoiding it at all costs” (Clarke 87). In other words, Collins opposed marriage, because he believed it to be, as a legal institution, unjust for women. As such, marriage is not portrayed as a positive institution in The Woman in White. Here, his past with law is also lurking in the background, as Collins is concerned with the difference between right and wrong, just and unjust, and he hints at this through the characters of Marian and Laura. In general, Collins felt he did not have to go along with conventional Victorian ideals. Thus, Laura’s marital situation and her inability to go against her husband, or situation for that matter, functioned as a form of social commentary on the position of women and the restrictions they endured in the Victorian era.
But not only Laura’s personality contains characteristics typical for the condition of Victorian women, her looks reflect her behavior as well. At the same time, Laura’s physical appearance reflect the Victorian ideal of female purity. First, Laura is always dressed in all-white, regarded as the color of angels and purity. She is described as a beautiful young woman, blue shiny eyes, blonde hair as light and golden; “a reference to angels and the ‘whiteness of heaven’” (Pagander 7). Then again, it is important to note that this physical appearance of Laura is described by Walter, who is in love with her and thus his view is colored. According to Walter, Laura represents the ‘Angel in the House,’ the “ideal of the pure and angel-like woman of the Victorian Era” (Pagander 7). The phrase the ‘Angel in the House’ is coined by Victorian poet Coventry Patmore and is possibly the most popular term for the description of the Victorian ideal of womanhood. It comes from the title of a popular poem (1854) by Patmore in which he holds his angel-wife Emily up as the perfect Victorian wife, an ideal model for all women: “The angel-wife was expected to be meek, dominated by her husband, inactive, self-sacrificing, subservient, refined and innocent (morally pure),” pretty much a description of character Laura (Vitanova-Strezova 132). Two other researchers have also provided a definition of the ‘Angel in the House,’ which is slightly more focused on physical appearance. Gilbert and Gubar describe ‘her’ as ““a woman in white, [such as Laura Fairlie]. (…) Passive, submissive, unawakened, she has a pure white complexion which betrays no self-assertive consciousness, no desire for self-gratification” (Gilbert 615). Thus, Laura not only fits into this description regarding her physical appearance, as a young and beautiful woman completely dressed in white, she also conforms to the traditional heroine and the Victorian ideal model of a woman.