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
As Walter exits Mrs. Catherick’s, he sees the man who shouted at him outside Blackwater Park. This man comes out of the house next door and rushes past Walter. Walter follows him to the train station and hears him buy a ticket to Blackwater. He then returns to his hotel to think over the day’s events. He plans to visit Old Welmingham Church and the vestry the next day. He is beginning to suspect that Sir Percival’s parents were not married—hence Mrs. Catherick’s disdain about Sir Percival’s mother—and he plans to check the marriage register of the church.
Walter is still being followed by Sir Percival’s spies. He suspects that Mrs. Catherick’s reaction when Walter brought up Sir Percival’s parents holds the key to Sir Percival’s secret. If Sir Percival’s parents were never married, Sir Percival would be illegitimate and unable to inherit his father’s property and title of Baronet. It was considered very shameful to be illegitimate in the nineteenth century, and illegitimate people were considered lower-class even if born into wealth.
Themes
Walter walks to the old village and, when he reaches the church, finds that Sir Percival’s men who followed him in London are posted outside. They do not approach him, however, and Walter finds the clerk’s house and asks to be shown the vestry. The clerk is a cheerful, talkative man and, when he and Walter approach the church, Sir Percival’s men are gone. The clerk takes Walter to the back door of the vestry as the door inside the church is locked. The lock is very old and stiff, and it takes several minutes for the clerk to open the door.
Sir Percival’s men have been told not to attack Walter in daylight so that they will not attract the suspicion of the law. The stiff lock on the door is a detail that becomes important later.
Themes
Inside the vestry, there are mountains of moldering paper and a couple of ancient wooden printing presses. There are also several boxes overflowing with straw and the window has been bricked up; the only light comes through a skylight in the ceiling. Walter asks to see the marriage register. He knows Sir Percival’s age, so works backwards from that. Walter asks why the register is left out in the open in the vestry and not locked up, and the clerk replies that there is a second copy of it, kept by a lawyer in the town.
Walter knows when Sir Percival was born, so if his parents were married their wedding will appear in the register before this date. It’s worth noting that the vestry is full of paper and straw and has only one exit—facts that will later be important when Sir Percival starts a fire inside.
Themes
To his dismay, Walter finds the marriage of Sir Percival’s mother and father noted in the register. It is squeezed onto the bottom of a page in a space which looks narrower than the entries around it. He asks the clerk for the address of the man who keeps the copy, and the clerk willingly passes it along.
Walter is disappointed but relieved that the copy exists so he can verify the evidence he has found. The fact that the entry is squeezed into a margin is slightly suspicious, however.
Themes
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As Walter leaves the church, he is followed by the two men who he saw earlier, joined by the man in black from the day before. This surveillance leads him to suspect that there is a secret hidden in the church after all.
Walter is convinced he is on the right track because Sir Percival’s men have increased their watch on him. If he was looking in the wrong place, they would probably leave him alone.
Themes
