Marriage is presented as a great risk for women in The Woman in White. Women in nineteenth-century Britain had fewer rights than men because of the societal belief that women were inferior to men. It was still very difficult for women to challenge their husband’s authority or to maintain control over their own assets once married. Throughout the novel, Collins is critical of marriage, as the female characters in the novel stand to lose everything by it, while the male characters stand to gain from marriage and use this to their own advantage. While marriage for love is still depicted as a favorable outcome when it is based on mutual love and respect—like Laura and Walter’s marriage at the end of the book—many of the marriages in The Woman in White highlight the unfair balance of power between men and women in the nineteenth century.
In the novel, marriage is presented as something that is potentially dangerous to women because it strips them of their rights, power, and individual freedoms. Laura’s marriage to Sir Percival Glyde threatens her identity, fortune, and even her life. Although Laura is a wealthy woman, she has had little say in the distribution of her inheritance; if Laura dies, her fortune will go to her husband and to her aunt, Madame Fosco, who is conveniently married to Sir Percival’s co-conspirator, Count Fosco. This situation seals Laura’s fate, as it gives her future husband a financial incentive to murder her. Furthermore, like many wealthy women in the period, Laura has no say over who she marries. Before his death, Laura’s father selected Sir Percival for her, and Laura feels that she must obey her father’s dying wish. This gives the reader the impression that Laura has no power over her situation and is emotionally pressured into marrying Sir Percival, whom she does not love (let alone even like), by nineteenth-century conventions, which stated that women must obey the wishes of their male relatives. Once Laura is married to Sir Percival, she loses whatever personal freedoms she previously enjoyed. She must ask Sir Percival’s permission for her sister, Marian, to live with her and must live in Sir Percival’s house at Blackwater. Sir Percival is also physically aggressive towards Laura and tries to keep her locked up against her will. Although Marian reminds Sir Percival that there are laws to protect women against brutal treatment, Laura is effectively powerless against the plots of her husband because of her lack of agency—a situation that firmly positions marriage as a severe danger to women.
The novel highlights that while women lose power through their marriages, men become more powerful through marriage. This increases the risk of marriage for women, as men are incentivized to marry women who are likely to receive a large inheritance; the husbands of these women will be able to control this inheritance, as they have more financial rights than their wives. Sir Percival stands to gain enormously from his marriage to Laura; if she dies, her will leaves 20,000 pounds and Limmeridge House to Sir Percival, who is heavily in debt. Although the novel presents an extreme scenario—that Sir Percival is willing to murder Laura in order to access her fortune—Collins suggests that marriage leaves women vulnerable to predatory forces because of their lack of rights in Victorian society, and incentivizes men to prey on wealthy women for their fortunes, which marriage gives them access to. Similarly, Count Fosco has benefitted from his marriage to Madame Fosco. Once an outspoken young woman who “advocated for the Rights of Women,” Madame Fosco has been transformed into an obedient and unquestioning accomplice for the Count. The Count has destroyed her independent spirit and sense of self to the point where she is like an extension of the Count with no will of her own. Count Fosco also stands to benefit financially through Sir Percival’s marriage as, if Laura dies, he will be in control of the 10,000 pounds that his wife, Laura’s aunt, is set to inherit. The descriptions of Madame Fosco as a young woman mirror Marian in her outspokenness and determination to be treated like a man. However, while Madame Fosco’s marriage quashes her spirit, Marian does not plan to marry and describes herself as a “confirmed spinster.” This supports Collins’ criticisms of marriage as an institution that stamps out the potential of bright, outspoken women who strive to be treated as equal to men.
However, the novel doesn’t present marriage as entirely bad. In certain cases, marriage can create a fulfilling bond between two people, like with Walter and Laura, as long as these people are equals and are committed to each other through love and respect. Walter’s marriage to Laura is the happy conclusion of The Woman in White. Although Walter, as a lower-middle-class man, stands to gain financially by marrying Laura, he proves that he is interested in her and not her wealth through his unwavering dedication to her throughout the novel. At one point in the novel, Walter leaves Limmeridge for Honduras, even though he is deeply in love with Laura, because he wants to give Laura the chance to be happy with her new husband and to forget Walter, even though she is in love with him too. When he returns from South America and finds that Laura is changed by her time in the asylum and that she has lost her fortune, Walter remains faithful to her and does not pressure her to marry him while she is emotionally fragile. Instead Walter supports Laura financially and works tirelessly to help restore her identity and fortune, even though he believes this effort will come to nothing. Ultimately Walter’s marriage to Laura supports the idea that marriage can be a happy occurrence when a man has earned the trust and respect of the woman he wants to marry. However, Walter’s devotion to Laura is treated as a rare occurrence in the novel and Collins suggests that, despite this one-off happy ending, most marriages are a dangerous trap for nineteenth-century women and often result in them losing what little financial, legal, and social power that they have.
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Marriage and Gender Quotes in The Woman in White
This is the story of what a Woman’s patience can endure, and what a Man’s resolution can achieve.
To associate that forlorn, friendless, lost woman, even by an accidental likeness only, with Miss Fairlie, seems like casting a shadow on the future of the bright creature who stands looking at us now.
‘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.
As matters stood, my client – Miss Fairlie not having yet completed her twenty-first year – was her guardian, Mr. Frederick Fairlie. I wrote by that day’s post and put the case before him exactly as it stood; not only urging every argument I could think of to induce him to maintain the clause as I had drawn it, but stating to him plainly the mercenary motive which was at the bottom of the opposition to my settlement of the twenty thousand pounds. The knowledge of Sir Percival’s affairs which I had necessarily gained when the provisions of the deed on his side were submitted in due course to my examination, had but too plainly informed me that the debts on his estate were enormous, and that his income, though nominally a large one, was, virtually, for a man in his position, next to nothing.
I answered him – more because my tongue is a woman’s, and must answer, than because I had anything convincing to say. It was only too plain that the course Laura had adopted the day before, had offered him the advantage if he chose to take it – and that he had chosen to take it. I felt this at the time, and I feel it just as strongly now, while I write these lines, in my own room. The one hope left, is that his motives really spring, as he says they do, from the irresistible strength of his attachment to Laura.
‘It will only involve us in more trouble and more confusion,’ she said. ‘It will set you and my uncle at variance, and bring Sir Percival here again with fresh causes of complaint— ’ ‘So much the better!’ I cried out, passionately. ‘Who cares for his causes of complaint? Are you to break your heart to set his mind at ease? No man under heaven deserves these sacrifices from us women. Men! They are the enemies of our innocence and our 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. And what does the best of them give us in return?’
1 hate Sir Percival! I flatly deny his good looks. I consider him to be eminently ill-tempered and disagreeable, and totally wanting in kindness and good feeling. Last night, the cards for the married couple were sent home. Laura opened the packet, and saw her future name in print, for the first time. Sir Percival looked over her shoulder familiarly at the new card which had already transformed Miss Fairlie into Lady Glyde – smiled with the most odious self-complacency – and whispered something in her ear. I don’t know what it was – Laura has refused to tell me – but I saw her face turn to such a deadly whiteness that I thought she would have fainted. He took no notice of the change: he seemed to be barbarously unconscious that he had said anything to pain her.
The bare anticipation of seeing that dear face and hearing that well-known voice to-morrow, keeps me in a perpetual fever of excitement. If I only had the privileges of a man, I would order out Sir Percival’s best horse instantly, and tear away on a night-gallop, eastward, to meet the rising sun – a long, hard, heavy, ceaseless gallop of hours and hours, like the famous highwayman’s ride to York. Being, however, nothing but a woman, condemned to patience, propriety, and petticoats, for life, I must respect the housekeeper’s opinions, and try to compose myself in some feeble and feminine way.
Except in this one particular, she is always, morning, noon, and night, in-doors and out, fair weather or foul, as cold as a statue, and as impenetrable as the stone out of which it is cut. For the common purposes of society the extraordinary change thus produced in her, is, beyond all doubt, a change for the better, seeing that it has transformed her into a civil, silent, unobtrusive woman, who is never in the way. How far she is really reformed or deteriorated in her secret self, is another question. I have once or twice seen sudden changes of expression on her pinched lips, and heard sudden inflexions of tone in her calm voice, which have led me to suspect that her present state of suppression may have sealed up something dangerous in her nature, which used to evaporate harmlessly in the freedom of her former life.
And the magician who has wrought this wonderful transformation – the foreign husband who has tamed this once wayward Englishwoman till her own relations hardly know her again – the Count himself? What of the Count? This, in two words: He looks like a man who could tame anything. If he had married a tigress, instead of a woman, he would have tamed the tigress. If he had married me, I should have made his cigarettes as his wife does – I should have held my tongue when he looked at me, as she holds hers.
‘The fool’s crime is the crime that is found out; and the wise man’s crime is the crime that is not found out. If I could give you an instance, it would not be the instance of a wise man. Dear Lady Glyde, your sound English common sense has been too much for me. It is checkmate for me this time, Miss Halcombe –ha?’ ‘Stand to your guns, Laura,’ sneered Sir Percival, who had been listening in his place at the door. ‘Tell him, next, that crimes cause their own detection. There’s another bit of copy-book morality for you, Fosco. Crimes cause their own detection. What infernal humbug!’
“If I do build you a tomb,” he said, “it will be done with your own money. I wonder whether Cecilia Metella had a fortune, and paid for hers.” I made no reply — how could I, when I was crying behind my veil?
Human ingenuity, my friend, has hitherto only discovered two ways in which a man can manage a woman. One way is to knock her down – a method largely adopted by the brutal lower orders of the people, but utterly abhorrent to the refined and educated classes above them. The other way (much longer, much more difficult, but, in the end, not less certain) is never to accept a provocation at a woman’s hands. It holds with animals, it holds with children, and it holds with women, who are nothing but children grown up. Quiet resolution is the one quality the animals, the children, and the women all fail in. If they can once shake this superior quality in their master, they get the better of him.
