Justice is self-regulating in The Woman in White, as the characters who commit crimes are fittingly punished, while the virtuous characters receive suitable rewards in exchange for their efforts. The characters in The Woman in White are morally nuanced, however, and “good” characters are often willing to commit immoral or illegal acts if they are necessary to protect their loved ones, while “bad” characters sidestep punishment for long periods of time. Collins uses Walter and Marian to highlight how one can break the law while still being good and virtuous—what matters most is the intention underpinning the crime, and if one’s intentions are good, then they aren’t worthy of punishment. Meanwhile, if one commits a crime with malicious intent—like Count Fosco and Sir Percival do, on several accounts—those crimes are not only worthy of punishment but actually bring about their own punishment.
Although the virtuous characters are rewarded for their behavior, they are not passively virtuous throughout the action of the plot. Instead, they actively strive to do what’s morally right, even if they must break the law in the process. For instance, Marian breaks the law to free Laura from the asylum, where she has been unjustly imprisoned by Count Fosco under the identity of Anne Catherick. Marian’s actions are done with good intentions, to free her sister from false imprisonment, rather than for personal gain, which is why her law-breaking is positioned as virtuous rather than immoral. Walter is also willing to break the law to protect Laura and Marian. He is prepared to violently assault or murder Sir Percival before he finds that Sir Percival is trapped by a fire inside a church. Walter also blackmails Count Fosco into providing him with a full confession of the conspiracy that he concocted to steal Laura’s inheritance. However, like Marian, Walter’s seemingly immoral behavior reflects his good intentions and his willingness to act daringly and bravely to achieve justice and to see those who have committed crimes punished. By rewarding Marian and Walter at the end of the novel, Collins sharply distinguishes between behavior that is self-serving and corrupt—such as the behavior practiced by the Count and Sir Percival—and behavior that is noble and necessary, even if the only distinguishing feature between these two behaviors is the reason that underpins it.
Although Walter is prepared to commit these well-intentioned crimes if necessary, Collins spares him the necessity of doing this to demonstrate that crimes bring about their own punishment, and that morally corrupt people who commit crimes knowingly for personal gain, like Count Fosco and Sir Percival, often bring about their own demises. During a conversation at Blackwater, Count Fosco makes fun of Laura and Marian for suggesting that “crimes cause their own detection.” Count Fosco, who has lived a long life of crime without being punished, is complacent in his ability to evade punishment and feels that Laura and Marian are naïve in their belief. However, Count Fosco is proven wrong, and both he and Sir Percival Glyde unwittingly destroy themselves—Count Fosco by becoming too complacent and failing to disguise himself properly to evade the detection by the political organization he betrayed, and Sir Percival by becoming paranoid about his crimes and seeking to destroy evidence. Although it is Walter who helps bring about the men’s destruction—he leads his friend Pesca (who used to be caught up in the same dangerous political organization that Fosco betrayed) to the opera and reveals Fosco to his pursuers, and he fans Sir Percival’s paranoia by investigating him—the punishments the two antagonists receive are in fact the direct result of their crimes, and not the result of Walter’s direct intervention. Walter, therefore, is active in destroying the Count and Sir Percival, but is saved from having to commit violence and evade the punishment of the law himself. In The Woman in White, virtuous characters strive against crime and injustice to aid in its detection. Collins suggests that these actions, taken by people with good intentions, such as Walter and Marian, support both the capture and punishment of criminals and support systems of natural justice, in which “crime causes its own detection” and criminals bring about their own demise.
By the end of The Woman in White, most of the characters have arrived in situations that reflect their respective behaviors throughout the novel. Those who have acted with good intentions, like Walter and Marian, are rewarded for their morality, while characters who have acted with evil intentions, like Sir Percival and Count Fosco, are punished. Sir Percival causes his own death in a fire while trying to destroy the evidence of a forgery he has committed and which he has unlawfully used to claim inheritance and borrow money. Meanwhile, Count Fosco is murdered by the Italian political organization that he swore allegiance to and then promptly betrayed. These punishments fit the nature of the men’s crimes and support Collin’s central message that “crimes cause their own detection.” Walter, Marian, and Laura, in contrast, end the novel happily because their intentions have been moral throughout the novel. Laura and Marian have been victims in the conspiracy of Sir Percival and Count Fosco, while Walter has acted consistently with the Fairlies’ best interests in mind. Even Anne Catherick, who seems to have been punished, through her untimely death, meets a fate that is fitting for her character. Anne is a tragic figure, who has been outcast and mistreated by society her whole life. Her fondest memory is her time spent with Mrs. Fairlie at Limmeridge—a time she dreams of returning to. After Sir Percival and Count Fosco switch Anne and Laura’s identities, Anne’s wish is tragically fulfilled, as she is buried in Mrs. Fairlie’s tomb, because everyone thinks she is Laura. The resolution of the novel, in a way which reflects the behavior and degrees of virtue among the characters, is very typical of the nineteenth-century novel, in which virtue is richly rewarded and malevolence aptly punished.
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Morality, Crime, and Punishment Quotes in The Woman in White
If the machinery of the Law could be depended on to fathom every case of suspicion, and to conduct every process of inquiry, with moderate assistance only from the lubricating influences of oil of gold, the events which fill these pages might have claimed their share of the public attention in a Court of justice. But the Law is still, in certain inevitable cases, the pre-engaged servant of the long purse; and the story is left to be told, for the first time, in this place.
I looked along the two rays of light; and I saw down into his inmost heart. It was black as night; and on it were written, in the red flaming letters which are the handwriting of the fallen angel: “Without pity and without remorse. He has strewn with misery the paths of others, and he will live to strew with misery the path of this woman by his side.” I read that; and then the rays of light shifted and pointed over his shoulder; and there, behind him, stood a fiend, laughing. And the rays of light shifted once more, and pointed over your shoulder; and there, behind you, stood an angel weeping.
‘Try to compose yourself, or you will make me alter my opinion of you. Don’t let me think that the person who put you in the Asylum, might have had some excuse— ’ The next words died away on my lips. The instant I risked that chance reference to the person who had put her in the Asylum, she sprang up on her knees. A most extraordinary and startling change passed over her. Her face, at all ordinary times so touching to look at, in its nervous sensitiveness, weakness, and uncertainty, became suddenly darkened by an expression of maniacally intense hatred and fear […] ‘Talk of something else,’ she said, whispering through her teeth. ‘I shall lose myself if you talk of that.’
It is the great beauty of the Law that it can dispute any human statement, made under any circumstances, and reduced to any form. If I had felt professionally called upon to set up a case against Sir Percival Glyde, on the strength of his own explanation, I could have done so beyond all doubt. But my duty did not lie in this direction: my function was of the purely judicial kind. I was to weigh the explanation we had just heard; to allow all due force to the high reputation of the gentleman who offered it; and to decide honestly whether the probabilities, on Sir Percival’s own showing, were plainly with him, or plainly against him. My own conviction was that they were plainly with him; and I accordingly declared that his explanation was, to my mind, unquestionably a satisfactory one.
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.
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.
This is the habitable part of the house, which has been repaired and redecorated, inside, on Laura’s account […] – all very nicely ornamented in the bright modern way, and all very elegantly furnished with the delightful modern luxuries. I was terribly afraid, from what I had heard of Blackwater Park, of fatiguing antique chairs, and dismal stained glass, and musty, frouzy hangings […] A large circular fish-pond, with stone sides, and an allegorical leaden monster in the middle, occupies the center of the square. The pond itself is full of gold and silver fish, and is encircled by a broad belt of the softest turf I ever walked on.
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.
‘My bailiff (a superstitious idiot) says he is quite sure the lake has a curse on it, like the Dead Sea. What do you think, Fosco? It looks just the place for a murder, doesn’t it?’ ‘My good Percival!’ remonstrated the Count. ‘What is your solid English sense thinking of? The water is too shallow to hide the body; and there is sand everywhere to print off the murderer’s footsteps. It is, upon the whole, the very worst place for a murder that I ever set my eyes on.’
‘I have always heard that truly wise men are truly good men, and have a horror of crime.’ ‘My dear lady,’ said the Count, ‘those are admirable sentiments; and I have seen them stated at the tops of copy-books.’ He lifted one of the white mice in the palm of his hand, and spoke to it in his whimsical way. ‘My pretty little smooth white rascal,’ he said, ‘here is a moral lesson for you. A truly wise Mouse is a truly good Mouse. Mention that, if you please, to your companions, and never gnaw at the bars of your cage again as long as you live.’
‘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!’
The hiding of a crime, or the detection of a crime, what is it? A trial of skill between the police on one side, and the individual on the other. When the criminal is a brutal, ignorant fool, the police, in nine cases out of ten, win. When the criminal is a resolute, educated, highly-intelligent man, the police, in nine cases out of ten, lose. If the police win, you generally hear all about it. If the police lose, you generally hear nothing. And on this tottering foundation you build up your comfortable moral maxim that Crime causes its own detection! Yes — all the crime you know of. And, what of the rest?’
Yes! I agree with her. John Bull does abhor the crimes of John Chinaman. He is the quickest old gentleman at finding out the faults that are his neighbors’, and the slowest old gentleman at finding out the faults that are his own […] English society, Miss Halcombe, is as often the accomplice, as it is the enemy of crime. Yes! yes! Crime is in this country what crime is in other countries […] Is the prison that Mr. Scoundrel lives in, at the end of his career, a more uncomfortable place than the workhouse that Mr. Honesty lives in, at the end of his career? […] Which gets on best, do you think, of two poor starving dressmakers – the woman who resists temptation, and is honest, or the woman who falls under temptation, and steals?
The Count’s firm hand slowly tightened its grasp on his shoulder, and the Count’s steady voice, quietly repeated, ‘Be good enough, if you please, to remember it, too.’ They both looked at each other: Sir Percival slowly drew his shoulder from under the Count’s hand; slowly turned his face away from the Count’s eyes; doggedly looked down for a little while at the parchment on the table; and then spoke, with the sullen submission of a tamed animal, rather than the becoming resignation of a convinced man.
“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?
‘There can be no doubt,’ I said, ‘that the facts, as you have stated them, appear to tell against us; but— ’ ‘But you think those facts can be explained away,’ interposed Mr. Kyrle. ‘Let me tell you the result of my experience on that point. When an English jury has to choose between a plain fact, on the surface, and a long explanation under the surface, it always takes the fact, in preference to the explanation.’
It was strange to look back and to see, now, that the poverty which had denied us all hope of assistance, had been the indirect means of our success, by forcing me to act for myself. If we had been rich enough to find legal help, what would have been the result? The gain (on Mr. Kyrle’s own showing) would have been more than doubtful; the loss – judging by the plain test of events as they had really happened – certain. The Law would never have obtained me my interview with Mrs. Catherick. The Law would never have made Pesca the means of forcing a confession from the Count.
