The Woman in White

Summary

Walter Hartright, a young London drawing-master, is engaged through his Italian friend Professor Pesca to teach watercolour at Limmeridge House in Cumberland. Walking home across Hampstead Heath late on the night before he leaves, he is touched on the shoulder by a woman dressed entirely in white who asks the way to London and speaks fondly of Limmeridge; soon after, two men in a chaise ask a policeman whether he has seen a woman escaped from an asylum. At Limmeridge Walter meets the nervous invalid Frederick Fairlie, his niece Laura Fairlie, and her half-sister Marian Halcombe, dark, plain-featured, clever and brave. Laura bears a strange likeness to the woman in white, Anne Catherick, whom Laura's late mother once befriended. Walter and Laura fall in love, but Laura is engaged, by her father's dying wish, to Sir Percival Glyde of Blackwater Park, Hampshire. An anonymous letter warns against the marriage; Walter finds Anne cleaning Mrs. Fairlie's gravestone and learns she wrote it. Sir Percival explains Anne's confinement plausibly, and Walter leaves England with an expedition to Central America. The family solicitor, Vincent Gilmore, records how Sir Percival secures Laura's fortune of twenty thousand pounds on her death; the marriage takes place in December 1849. In the second part Marian's diary describes life at Blackwater Park, where Sir Percival, pressed for money, tries to force Laura to sign a document unread, and his friend Count Fosco, an enormously fat, charming Italian with tame white mice and a gift for chemistry, quietly controls everyone. Anne reappears at the boathouse, hinting that she knows Sir Percival's Secret. Marian overhears the two men plotting from the verandah roof in a rainstorm, falls ill with fever, and the Count reads and annotates her diary. In a sequence of short testimonies from Mr. Fairlie, the housekeeper Mrs. Michelson, a cook, a doctor and the tombstone itself, Laura is lured to London, and Anne Catherick, who has died of heart disease, is buried at Limmeridge as Lady Glyde, while Laura is shut in the asylum under Anne's name. Marian rescues her, and Walter, returned, finds both women at the grave. In the third part Walter, living with them in poverty, pursues the truth: Sir Percival's secret is that his parents never married and that he forged the entry in the Old Welmingham marriage register; he dies when the vestry burns as he tries to destroy the evidence. Through Pesca, Walter recognizes Fosco as a traitor to a secret political Brotherhood and forces from him a written confession, after which Fosco flees and is found stabbed in Paris. Laura's identity is restored at Limmeridge, and she and Walter marry; their son becomes heir of Limmeridge. The novel was serialized in All the Year Round from November 1859 to August 1860 and published in three volumes in 1860.

Plot or Argument

• First Epoch: Hartright's story

  Pesca's introduction; the woman in white on the Hampstead road; Limmeridge House, Mr. Fairlie, Marian and Laura; Walter's love; the anonymous letter; Anne at the gravestone; Walter's departure.

• First Epoch: Gilmore and Marian

  The solicitor Vincent Gilmore on Sir Percival's explanations and the marriage settlement, with Mr. Fairlie's careless consent; Marian's journal of Laura's surrender to her promise and the wedding.

• Second Epoch: Marian's diary at Blackwater Park

  The arrival of Count and Madame Fosco; the signature Laura refuses to give; Anne in the boathouse and the Secret; Marian on the verandah roof in the rain; her fever and the Count's postscript to her diary.

• Second Epoch: Fairlie and Mrs. Michelson

  Mr. Fairlie, all nerves, receives Fosco and sends for Laura; the housekeeper recounts the doctor's dismissal, Mrs. Rubelle's nursing, the false report that Marian has gone, and Laura's departure for London.

• Second Epoch: Several narratives

  The cook Hester Pinhorn, the doctor's certificate, the servant Jane Gould, the tombstone at Limmeridge, and Walter's return to find Laura standing by her own grave.

• Third Epoch: Hartright's inquiry

  Hiding in London with Marian and Laura, Walter seeks proof; visits to Mrs. Clements and Mrs. Catherick at Welmingham; the duplicate register at Knowlesbury; Sir Percival dies in the burning vestry.

• Third Epoch: Mrs. Catherick's letter

  Anne's mother tells, without remorse, of her bargain with Sir Percival years before and why he feared her.

• Third Epoch: Fosco's confession and the conclusion

  Pesca and the Brotherhood; Walter compels Fosco's written narrative of the substitution; the date of Laura's journey; Fosco's flight and death in Paris; Laura recognized at Limmeridge; the marriage and the heir.

Characters

• Walter Hartright, principal narrator

  A drawing-master who loves Laura and gathers the testimonies that make up the book.

• Marian Halcombe, narrator and heroine

  Laura's half-sister, plain, witty and resolute, whose diary carries the middle of the novel.

• Laura Fairlie (Lady Glyde), heiress

  A gentle, fair young woman who keeps her promise to marry Sir Percival.

• Anne Catherick, the woman in white

  A frightened young woman escaped from an asylum who resembles Laura and knows Sir Percival's secret.

• Sir Percival Glyde, antagonist

  A baronet in debt, irritable and violent, who hides the truth about his birth.

• Count Isidor Ottavio Baldassare Fosco, antagonist

  Sir Percival's vast, polished Italian friend, a chemist who admires Marian and directs the conspiracy.

• Madame Fosco (Eleanor Fairlie), Laura's aunt

  The Count's silent, devoted wife.

• Frederick Fairlie, narrator

  Laura's uncle, a self-absorbed invalid who cannot bear noise, light or responsibility.

• Professor Pesca, Walter's friend

  A tiny, excitable Italian teacher of languages who holds the key to Fosco's past.

• Vincent Gilmore, narrator

  The Fairlie family solicitor who fails to protect Laura's fortune.

• Mrs. Catherick, narrator

  Anne's hard, respectable mother in Welmingham.

• Mrs. Clements, Anne's friend

  A kindly woman who cares for Anne during her escape.

Lessons

• Evidence told by witnesses

  Walter's preamble says the story will be told as a case is told before a judge, by each witness in turn, speaking only of what he or she saw. The method lets Collins show how a crime can be built from gaps between testimonies, and how a careful man can rebuild the truth from the same fragments, down to a single date.

  • Why does Walter claim the law could not have handled this case?
  • What does each narrator know, and not know, at the time of writing?
  • How does the tombstone's narrative work as evidence and as irony?

• Marian's courage

  Marian is the first character whom the reader sees through another's eyes as unfashionable, and she becomes the one Fosco respects most. Her night on the verandah roof in the rain, her watchfulness at Blackwater Park and her rescue of Laura from the asylum make her the moving force of the plot, as Walter acknowledges in the last line.

  • What does Walter's first description of Marian show about him, and about her?
  • Why does Marian cry out against men when Laura agrees to marry Sir Percival?
  • Why does Fosco admire Marian, and what does his postscript to her diary reveal?

• Identity and its proofs

  Laura is declared dead, buried under another woman's name and shut in an asylum as Anne Catherick. The novel asks what a person is in law and society if papers, witnesses and family can be made to deny her, and it lets love and loyalty, not documents, first recognize her.

  • Why does Mr. Fairlie fail to recognize his niece, and does he want to?
  • How do Sir Percival's forged register and Laura's false burial mirror each other?
  • What must Walter prove before Laura can be restored to her name?

• The clever criminal

  Fosco argues at dinner that only fools' crimes are found out, and he nearly proves it. Collins makes him the most charming person in the book, kind to his mice and canaries, cultivated and witty, so that the reader feels the attraction of intelligence without conscience.

  • Is Fosco's claim about wise and foolish criminals true within the novel?
  • Why does Laura answer that crimes cause their own detection, and why does Sir Percival laugh?
  • What finally brings Fosco down, his own mistakes or something outside him?

Context

The novel belongs to the 1850s and 1860s, when English married women's property passed largely to their husbands unless protected by settlement, and private asylums could receive a patient on the certificates of two medical men, a system that alarmed the public and was debated in Parliament. Exiled Italian nationalists and secret societies were a familiar presence in London after the revolutions of 1848. Collins combined these real anxieties with the domestic settings of the country house and the suburban villa.

Composition

Collins began the story in 1859 to follow Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities in All the Year Round, where it ran weekly from 26 November 1859 to 25 August 1860; it appeared at the same time in Harper's Weekly in New York. Sampson Low published it in three volumes in August 1860, dedicated to the poet Bryan Waller Procter. Collins acknowledged a French criminal case, recorded in a collection of trials, as one source for the plot of a substituted identity; scholars differ on how closely he followed it.

Reception

Readers queued for each instalment, and the book went through several editions within months; shops sold Woman in White perfume and bonnets, and there was a Woman in White waltz. Some reviewers objected to the new kind of sensational plot, but the novel is generally regarded as the first and best of the sensation novels of the 1860s, and Fosco and Marian are among the most admired characters in Victorian fiction. It has been adapted many times for the stage, film, television and a musical.

Comparisons

• the-moonstone

  Collins's later novel uses the same method of successive witness narratives for a detective plot, with Sergeant Cuff in place of Walter's amateur inquiry.

• jane-eyre

  Both novels hide a woman confined because of a family secret; Brontë's Bertha is kept in an attic, Collins's Anne and Laura in a private asylum.

• bleak-house

  Dickens, Collins's friend and editor, also builds a mystery around documents, inheritance and a hidden parentage, with a detective, Inspector Bucket, at its edges.

• a-tale-of-two-cities

  Collins's novel followed Dickens's in the pages of All the Year Round; both turn on a substitution of one person for another who resembles him or her.

• the-hound-of-the-baskervilles

  Doyle's novel, like Collins's, sets a crime about an inheritance in a lonely country house and lets a careful investigator undo an impostor's plan.

Quotes

For Students

A reading companion for classical Christian high school students. See the student guide.

Reading Guide

Watch for

• Who is speaking in each section, when the account was written, and what the speaker could not have known.
• The likeness between Laura and Anne, first noticed by Walter in the moonlight at Limmeridge.
• Marian's diary at Blackwater Park, especially the night on the verandah roof and the page that follows in another hand.
• Every mention of dates, letters, registers and certificates in the Second and Third Epochs.
• How Count Fosco treats his white mice, his canaries and Marian.

Key terms and names

Epoch

One of the novel's three large parts: before the marriage, the crisis at Blackwater Park and in London, and Walter's inquiry.

Marriage settlement

The legal agreement on Laura's property drawn up by Mr. Gilmore; Sir Percival insists her twenty thousand pounds pass to him if she dies without children.

The Secret

What Anne hints she knows about Sir Percival: that he is not legally his father's heir, since his parents never married.

Register

The parish book of marriages in Old Welmingham church, where Sir Percival forged his parents' entry; a duplicate copy is kept at Knowlesbury.

The Brotherhood

The secret Italian political society to which Pesca belongs and which Fosco has betrayed.

Limmeridge

The Fairlie house in Cumberland, scene of the drawing lessons, Mrs. Fairlie's grave and the final restoration.

Seminar Questions

1. Comprehension How does Walter first meet Anne Catherick, and what does she say about Limmeridge?
2. Comprehension What does Marian overhear from the verandah roof, and what happens to her afterward?
3. Comprehension What is Sir Percival's secret, and how does he die?
4. Interpretation Why does Laura keep her promise to marry Sir Percival when she loves Walter? Is she weak or faithful?
5. Interpretation Why does Collins tell the story through so many narrators, including servants and a tombstone?
6. Interpretation Fosco is the villain, yet many readers like him best. What makes him attractive, and how does the novel finally judge him?
7. Big Question Is a person's identity something that others can take away, or something that remains even when no one will acknowledge it?
8. Big Question Do crimes cause their own detection, as Laura believes, or must someone do the work of justice?

Faith Connections

• Numbers 32:23 (Scripture)

  Moses warns that your sin will find you out. Laura's quiet belief at the Blackwater dinner sets this conviction against Fosco's boast, and the forged register finally finds Sir Percival out in the burning vestry.

• Ruth 1:16-17 (Scripture)

  Ruth refuses to leave Naomi wherever she goes. Marian's promise never to leave Laura, kept through Blackwater, the asylum and poverty in London, has the same shape of loyal love.

• Proverbs 22:1 (Scripture)

  Solomon ranks a good name above great riches. Sir Percival commits crimes to keep a name he has no right to, while Laura must be given back the name that was taken from her.

• Augustine, City of God IV.4 (Great Conversation)

  Augustine compares a kingdom without justice to a robber band on a large scale. Fosco's charm and power over the household raise the same question about a man of ability without justice.

Logic and Rhetoric

Central argument: The law cannot by itself detect a crime committed by clever men with money and respectable witnesses. But testimonies honestly collected, however partial, can together expose the gaps in a false story. Therefore patient witness and resolute love can restore truth that the official record has denied, as the single wrong date in Laura's journey proves.

Rhetorical device: framing preamble (forensic analogy). The opening of The Story Begun by Walter Hartright compares the book to a trial in which each witness speaks in turn; the first quoted sentence announces the woman's patience and the man's resolution that the witnesses will reveal.

Debate: Resolved: that Mr. Frederick Fairlie bears as much blame for Laura's sufferings as Sir Percival Glyde.

Memory Work

This is the story of what a Woman’s patience can endure, and what a Man’s resolution can achieve.

Marian was the good angel of our lives—let Marian end our Story.

Writing Prompts

Essay: Collins presents Anne Catherick and Laura Fairlie as near doubles. Argue what the likeness reveals about identity, class and protection in the novel.

Comparison with The Moonstone: Both of Collins's great novels are told by several witnesses. Compare how the method builds suspense and reveals character in each, and argue which uses it more effectively.

Medical Lens

The plot depends on the private madhouse system of mid-Victorian England, in which a patient could be detained on medical certificates arranged by a relative or a person of standing; Anne Catherick is confined by Sir Percival to keep her silent, and Laura is received under Anne's name, her protests taken as proof of delusion. Collins's portrait of Anne, gentle, confused, fixed on a few ideas and on wearing white, is sympathetic, and the novel leaves her mental state undefined beyond the period's language of a weak or injured mind; modern readings of her condition are interpretive. Frederick Fairlie is a comic study of the nervous valetudinarian who makes illness an excuse for selfishness. Marian's fever after the night in the rain becomes the occasion of a bedside quarrel in which Fosco declares it typhus, blames the treatment and threatens to testify against the family doctor, Mr. Dawson, who denies it; Dawson is soon removed from the case, leaving Fosco's chosen nurse Mrs. Rubelle in charge, a sequence Collins uses to show medical authority being captured. Anne's death from heart disease is certified by a respectable doctor who has no reason to doubt the name he is given, showing how a correct medical certificate can serve a false identity. Fosco's narrative boasts of the power of chemistry and of harmless agents used to make Laura pliable.

• First Epoch, Hartright, IV

  The escaped asylum patient on the Hampstead road and the two men who pursue her by chaise.

  Asylum Institution Madness Psychosis
• Second Epoch, Frederick Fairlie's narrative

  Mr. Fairlie's elaborate account of his nerves and his sufferings from noise and light, interrupted by visitors he cannot refuse.

  Hypochondria Neurosis Anxiety
• Second Epoch, Marian Halcombe's diary and Mrs. Michelson's narrative

  Marian's fever after the rain, the dispute in which Fosco calls the fever typhus against Mr. Dawson's opinion, Fosco's interference and Mrs. Rubelle's nursing.

  Fever Infection Physicians Doctors Nursing Caregiving Medical Ethics
• Second Epoch, The Narrative of the Doctor

  A brief death certificate recording the death of Lady Glyde from aneurism at St. John's Wood.

  Death Dying Physicians Doctors
• Second Epoch, Hartright's narrative; Third Epoch

  Laura's confinement in the asylum under Anne's name, her rescue by Marian through a bribed nurse, and the effects of the ordeal on her memory and spirits.

  Asylum Institution Medical Ethics
• Third Epoch, The Story Continued by Isidor, Ottavio, Baldassare Fosco

  Fosco's praise of chemistry as power and his account of the drugs used during the substitution.

  Pharmacology Poisons

Creative Prompts

• Fiction

  Write the testimony of the nurse whom Marian bribes at the asylum, in the style of one of Collins's minor witnesses.

• Classroom

  Make a timeline of the dates in the Second Epoch narratives and find, as Walter does, the single date that proves Laura was alive after her supposed death.

• Essay

  Argue whether Marian Halcombe or Walter Hartright is the true hero of the novel, using the final sentence as a starting point.

Further Reading

• The Moonstone, Wilkie Collins

• No Name, Wilkie Collins

  Collins's next novel, also concerned with inheritance and the law.

• The King of Inventors: A Life of Wilkie Collins, Catherine Peters

• Wilkie Collins: A Brief Life, Peter Ackroyd

• Museums of Madness: The Social Organization of Insanity in Nineteenth-Century England, Andrew Scull