Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Woman in White, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Evidence and Law
Morality, Crime, and Punishment
Identity and Appearance
Marriage and Gender
Class, Industry, and Social Place
Summary
Analysis
Walter goes down for lunch with Marian and meets Laura and Marian’s servant, Mrs. Vesey. After lunch, Marian takes Walter for a walk in the grounds and tells him that, although, she has found no evidence yet among her mother’s letters of a connection with the woman in white, she intends to keep looking. They reach a “pretty summer house” and find Laura there, looking through her sketchbook.
Throughout the novel, Walter associates Laura with the “summer house” because it is the first place they meet and because it represents a happy time in his life; the period in which he falls in love with Laura. This happiness is associated with summer, new life, and joy throughout the book via the symbol of the summer house.
Themes
Walter tells the reader that there is a watercolor on his desk where he sits writing—a portrait of Laura that he finished soon after their meeting—and he thinks how much lovelier Laura is in person than in this dull, “mechanical” sketch. On meeting her for the first time, in the summer house, Walter is struck by her beauty. At the same time, however, he notices something troubling and familiar about her face.
Walter comments on the limitations of the visual arts. Although the portrait on his desk is very like Laura, it cannot compare to the experience of looking at her in real life and seeing her move and change as real people do. This reflects Collins’s belief in the superiority of the novel over visual mediums, as the novel can show people changing and moving across time, whereas, in the 1800s, visual forms were a fixed, static medium.
Themes
Laura is too shy to show Walter her drawings, which she feels are very rough. Marian teases them both and suggests that they take a drive in the carriage and let Walter compare their work to the scenery around Limmeridge house. Looking back over this carriage ride while he writes, Walter notes that he remembers every detail of his conversation with Laura on this trip.
It is clear that Walter is attracted to Laura from their first meeting, as he remembers their first conversation so clearly and has obviously replayed it in his mind often. Marian’s joke about the comparison of still pictures to the scenery moving by the carriage further supports Walter’s observations that art can be contrived and “mechanical” compared with narrative forms.
Themes
When they arrive back at the house, Walter goes up to his sitting room and, while alone, begins to feel uncomfortable about his role at Limmeridge as a teacher—as he feels he has been too unguarded with Laura and Marian—and starts to wonder about the strange, familiar quality which he sees in Laura’s face. He retires to the drawing room with the ladies after dinner and finds Laura dressed in white clothes.
Walter is worried that he will overstep the boundaries of professionalism and become too comfortable with Laura and Marian. As a teacher he must keep a respectable distance between himself and his pupils, but he has already confided in Marian about the woman in white and sees the sisters as his equals and friends.
Themes
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Laura plays the piano for the group, while Mrs. Vesey dozes in the corner and Marian continues to search through Mrs. Fairlie’s letters for mentions of the woman in white. It is a moonlit night and they have the drawing room doors open onto the veranda outside. Walter and Laura move out onto the veranda to look at the garden in the moonlight but have only been outside a few minutes when Marian calls Walter back inside.
Walter fits in and gets on well with the two sisters. Marian is clearly tenacious and determined when she is interested in finding something out (a reminder of the “man’s resolution” of the novel’s opening) and continues to hunt through her mother’s letters for mentions of the woman in white.
Themes
Walter leaves Laura on the veranda and Marian calls him over to her seat beside the fire. Laura continues to walk back and forth on the terrace, before the open doors, singing softly to herself. Marian reads Walter a letter from her mother to Mr. Philip Fairlie, Laura’s father. The letter tells Mr. Fairlie about a new pupil at her school, the daughter of a woman called Mrs. Catherick. The girl’s name is Anne Catherick, and Mrs. Fairlie writes that she has developed a strong bond with the girl, who is a little strange, but very affectionate, and who has a habit of sticking very stubbornly to certain ideas once they have entered her mind.
Walter and Marian believe that Mrs. Fairlie’s letter, about a pupil with whom she developed a particularly strong bond, may hold a clue to the identity of the woman in white. The girl is described as “strange,” which may suggest a tendency towards mental illness (or at least the perception of it) and provide an explanation for her incarceration in the asylum. The fact that she clings very stubbornly to ideas would also explain why she still feels so strongly about Mrs. Fairlie, although she has not seen her since she was a young girl.
Themes
Mrs. Fairlie’s letter explains that she gave Anne several sets of white clothes, feeling that little girls look best in white, and that, when she heard this, Anne vowed always to dress in white. Marian asks Walter if this young girl could be the woman who he met on the road. Walter believes it is possible and Marian reads the rest of the letter, which notes the inexplicable physical similarity between Anne and Mrs. Fairlie’s own daughter, Laura. As Marian reads these words, Laura comes to the door of the drawing room and Walter leaps up from his chair, startled suddenly by the realization that Laura, in fact, reminds him of the woman in white.
The letter confirms Walter’s suspicion that this girl may be the woman in white. The vow she made to Mrs. Fairlie, to “always dress in white,” clearly explains her appearance. The likeness between the woman and Laura becomes evident to Walter as soon as it is pointed out.
Themes
Literary Devices
Walter begs Marian to call Laura in out of the moonlight to relieve its eerie effect. He feels that this similarity between Laura and the woman in white is a bad omen for Laura’s future. Marian whispers to Walter that they should keep this discovery from Laura, and they change the subject as Laura returns to the room.
The similarity between Laura and the woman in white unnerves Walter because it associates Laura with thoughts of madness and imprisonment. It also links her to a mystery that Walter feels uneasy about and thinks may involve some kind of conspiracy or injustice. These thoughts bring back the apprehension that Walter inexplicably felt before taking the position at Limmeridge.
Themes
