Good Vibrations: The Sensationalization of Masculinity in The Woman in White

Novel: A Forum on Fiction, Fall 2003 by Ablow, Rachel

Walter's ability to recognize this woman as Laura is most obviously significant insofar as it enables him to restore her true identity: once he realizes who she is, he sets to work to uncover the plot that forced her and her half-sister, Anne Catherick, to trade places. Walter's recognition of the woman he loves is at least as important for what it says about him, however, for it suggests that he is no longer subject to the dictates of his body. Sensationalism, it seems, has been replaced by sympathy, and an interest in surfaces has been displaced by an attentiveness to depths. And, finally, the fact he has been able to recognize Laura at a moment when almost no one else could makes the socio-economic differences between them seem irrelevant: these lovers belong together, we are led to believe, for he is the only one able to see her for who she really is. Their marriage appears to vindicate this claim entirely, for their life together is unmarked by conflict of any kind. By contrast with her violent and uncongenial relationship with her first husband, Sir Percival Glyde, Laura appears to share all her second husband's aims, interests, and concerns.

Yet, at the same time, it is hard to say what exactly there could be for Walter to disagree with, for by the time Walter is reunited with Laura after her supposed death, her experiences in the insane asylum have stripped her of her memory and sense of self. Walter and Marian's attempts to revive their friend's memories of the past are consistently thwarted: "Every little caution ... we tried, to strengthen and steady slowly the weakened, shaken faculties, was a fresh protest in itself against the risk of turning her mind back on the troubled and the terrible past" (434). Only once Walter and Marian attempt to teach her what she needs to know does Laura show any signs of remembering who she is: "Tenderly and gradually, the memory of the old walks and drives dawned upon her, and the poor weary pining eyes, looked at Marian and at me with a new interest, with a faltering thoughtfulness in them, which, from that moment, we cherished and kept alive" (434). In a passage like this one, it is impossible to say whether Walter and Marian revive memories that have been concealed to their possessor or whether they provide her with the information she needs to play her part. It is impossible to say, in other words, whether they are helping Laura recover or are helping her (or someone else?) become what they need her to be.

The questionable status of Walter's sympathetic access to Laura's interiority in the second half of the novel is only intensified by a close examination of his encounters with her in the first. At the beginning of the novel, Laura is described as having the kind of psychological complexity necessary for sympathy: before she is placed in the insane asylum, she clearly has thoughts, feelings, and desires of her own. Nevertheless, even at this point in the novel, each description of Walter's sympathetic bond with his future wife is indistinguishable from an account of projection. And each account of projection is, in turn, indistinguishable from sensationalism. The first time they meet, for example, Walter describes his future wife in the following terms: