The summer house at Limmeridge symbolizes the innocent state of happiness that Walter Hartright and Laura Fairlie enjoy when they first meet at Limmeridge, long before they learn about the conspiracy and the machinations of Count Fosco and Sir Percival Glyde. Walter first meets Laura, whom he eventually falls in love with, in the summer house. This connects Walter and Laura’s relationship with summer, which is generally associated with youth, joy, lightheartedness, and love. When Walter discovers that Laura is engaged to Sir Percival and that he must leave Limmeridge, he and Laura are cast out of the summer house and must live through the long, dark period of their lives (which can be associated with winter or a lack of summer) in which they are separated by Sir Percival and Count Fosco, the villains of the story. Throughout the novel, Walter relates his memories of the happy time that he spent with Laura to the summer house, and these happy memories are the only ones that Laura can bear to recall after Marian rescues her from the asylum. The pair remain cast out of Limmeridge House, and away from the summer house, until the end of the novel, when Laura’s identity as the heir of Limmeridge House is restored and the lovers are free to move back into the family home. The return of Laura and Walter to Limmeridge, and to the proximity of the summer house, suggests the return of joy and lightheartedness to their lives after the long metaphorical winter imposed on them by Count Fosco and Sir Percival Glyde.
The Summer House Quotes in The Woman in White
‘Crush it!’ she said. ‘Here, where you first saw her, crush it! Don’t shrink under it like a woman. Tear it out; trample it under foot like a man!’ The suppressed vehemence with which she spoke; the strength which her will concentrated in the look she fixed on me, and in the hold on my arm that she had not yet relinquished –communicated to mine, steadied me. We both waited for a minute, in silence. At the end of that time, I had justified her generous faith in my manhood; I had, outwardly at least, recovered my self-control.
The Summer House Symbol Timeline in The Woman in White
