In line with its genre, The Woman in White contains a number of secrets. However, there is one secret in particular, referred to as "the Secret," that returns repeatedly as a motif. The purpose of this motif is to build suspense and foreshadow the novel's later events.
The capital-s secret that Walter devotes much of the Third Epoch to uncovering is that of Sir Percival's birth and the forged marriage register. At first, Walter and Marian believe that Sir Percival's secret has something to do with Anne—could he be her lover, or perhaps her father? Lacking the money for legal expenses, Walter takes matters into his own hands and moves from person to person in search of clues as to what the Secret may be. As he hunts for the Secret, he bumps up against many other secrets, including Anne's parentage and Count Fosco's identity. Some of these other secrets underpin the Secret, while others divert from it.
The structure of searching for clues surrounding the Secret makes for a suspense-filled puzzle. For much of the novel, Walter merely knows that the Secret exists and that it would be the cause of Sir Percival's ruin, but does not know what it could relate to. This is ironic because the first person to alert him to existence of the Secret (the first person in the novel to refer to it as "the Secret") is Anne, who never knows the secret herself. All she knows is that there is one. Because Sir Percival fears that Anne knows his secret, he goes to great lengths to silence and immobilize her. Through this, Collins highlights the value and cost of secrets. The mere awareness of a secret's existence can give someone immense power as well as put them in grave danger.
Dreams are an important motif in The Woman in White. All three of the novel's main female characters dream, and tell either each other or the reader about them. The recollections of their dreams foreshadow future plot points and contribute to the building suspense.
Dreaming—or at least sharing the contents of one's dreams—is posed as a feminine activity. Early in the novel, Walter wonders what he will dream about one night, but this seems to mostly be a rhetorical remark. The dreams that Anne, Laura, and Marian share all relate to a looming menace, which leaves them feeling vulnerable. Dreams are thereby associated with weakness. At the same time, Collins and the character take dreams seriously, giving them weight as prophetic tools. Although dreams may remind the women of their powerlessness, they also give them valuable foresight about events to come. Characters in the novel use dreams as supernatural evidence that they are either on the wrong or right track.
The first time a character goes into detail about her dreams is when Anne Catherick warns Laura not to marry Sir Percival in an anonymous letter, in the first part of the First Epoch:
Do you believe in dreams? I hope, for your own sake, that you do. See what Scripture says about dreams and their fulfilment (Genesis xl. 8, xli. 25; Daniel iv. 18–25); and take the warning I send you before it is too late.
Last night, I dreamed about you, Miss Fairlie.
Citing the Bible to give credence to her allegorical dream, Anne goes onto describe it to Laura. To convince Laura not to marry Sir Percival, Anne could share concrete details from her own life that attest to his cruelty. Instead, she uses her dream, in which Sir Percival appeared as a demonic figure, as evidence that Sir Percival is a bad person. Laura takes the letter and dream seriously, trusting the anonymous writer's dream as evidence.
Before describing a dream of her own to Mrs. Michelson in the third part of the Second Epoch, Laura repeats the first line of Anne's letter:
‘Do you believe in dreams?’ she whispered to me, at the window. ‘My dreams, last night, were dreams I have never had before. The terror of them is hanging over me still.’
Until the very end of the Second Epoch, when it is revealed that Laura is in fact still alive, these three haunting sentences comprise the final words the reader hears from Laura before she supposedly dies. Through the repetition of the rhetorical question, Collins uses the dream motif to build suspense for the reader.
Dreams also foretell more positive developments, however. As Laura's and Marian's situation grows increasingly dark in the Second Epoch, Marian has a prophetic dream that Walter will survive a number of dangers in South America and come back to them. When he returns, the reader learns that he survived the very dangers that Marian envisioned in her dream. At the end of her dream, he meets a veiled woman who is risen from the dead. This foreshadows Laura's "return from the dead" when Walter and the reader discover that it was actually Anne who died. At the end of the Second Epoch, when Walter lays eyes on Laura for the first time since learning of her supposed death, Marian murmurs "My dream! my dream!" to herself. She is shaken by the fulfillment of her prophetic vision.
Dreams are an important motif in The Woman in White. All three of the novel's main female characters dream, and tell either each other or the reader about them. The recollections of their dreams foreshadow future plot points and contribute to the building suspense.
Dreaming—or at least sharing the contents of one's dreams—is posed as a feminine activity. Early in the novel, Walter wonders what he will dream about one night, but this seems to mostly be a rhetorical remark. The dreams that Anne, Laura, and Marian share all relate to a looming menace, which leaves them feeling vulnerable. Dreams are thereby associated with weakness. At the same time, Collins and the character take dreams seriously, giving them weight as prophetic tools. Although dreams may remind the women of their powerlessness, they also give them valuable foresight about events to come. Characters in the novel use dreams as supernatural evidence that they are either on the wrong or right track.
The first time a character goes into detail about her dreams is when Anne Catherick warns Laura not to marry Sir Percival in an anonymous letter, in the first part of the First Epoch:
Do you believe in dreams? I hope, for your own sake, that you do. See what Scripture says about dreams and their fulfilment (Genesis xl. 8, xli. 25; Daniel iv. 18–25); and take the warning I send you before it is too late.
Last night, I dreamed about you, Miss Fairlie.
Citing the Bible to give credence to her allegorical dream, Anne goes onto describe it to Laura. To convince Laura not to marry Sir Percival, Anne could share concrete details from her own life that attest to his cruelty. Instead, she uses her dream, in which Sir Percival appeared as a demonic figure, as evidence that Sir Percival is a bad person. Laura takes the letter and dream seriously, trusting the anonymous writer's dream as evidence.
Before describing a dream of her own to Mrs. Michelson in the third part of the Second Epoch, Laura repeats the first line of Anne's letter:
‘Do you believe in dreams?’ she whispered to me, at the window. ‘My dreams, last night, were dreams I have never had before. The terror of them is hanging over me still.’
Until the very end of the Second Epoch, when it is revealed that Laura is in fact still alive, these three haunting sentences comprise the final words the reader hears from Laura before she supposedly dies. Through the repetition of the rhetorical question, Collins uses the dream motif to build suspense for the reader.
Dreams also foretell more positive developments, however. As Laura's and Marian's situation grows increasingly dark in the Second Epoch, Marian has a prophetic dream that Walter will survive a number of dangers in South America and come back to them. When he returns, the reader learns that he survived the very dangers that Marian envisioned in her dream. At the end of her dream, he meets a veiled woman who is risen from the dead. This foreshadows Laura's "return from the dead" when Walter and the reader discover that it was actually Anne who died. At the end of the Second Epoch, when Walter lays eyes on Laura for the first time since learning of her supposed death, Marian murmurs "My dream! my dream!" to herself. She is shaken by the fulfillment of her prophetic vision.
