The Woman In White Gender Roles

Many readers view The Woman in White, Wilkie Collins’s nineteenth century sensational novel, as a critique on marriage laws and gender norms within Britain during the 1800s. While gender lines are bent and perhaps even crossed, the male characters of The Woman in White seem at first glance to hold all the cards, and are not wary of reminding the females of that fact. While the dynamics of looking within The Woman in White can be understood as exposing patriarchal power structures and demonstrating the lack of capacity and autonomy women faced during the nineteenth century, in reality Collins utilizes the power of looking by strong, masculinized female characters as well as the feminization of male characters to subvert the typical patriarchal
Throughout The Woman in White, Marian serves as the clearest example of a powerful 19th century woman, both through her role as stand-in head of Limmeridge House due to Mr. Fairlie’s ill health, and her important role in solving the various mysteries throughout the storyline. Marian is a significantly fuller character than Laura, and though she is not immune to the power men sought to impose on women throughout the novel and period, she exerts a great deal of power throughout the novel herself. Marian’s narratives within The Woman in White are in the form of a diary, demonstrating her usage of the power of observation and looking, although not by sight. Marian spied on Count Fosco and Sir Percival Glyde, amassing power via her secret listening of the aforementioned conversation—thus ‘looking’ at someone who cannot look back. In stating she was “determined to go on at all hazards, and to trust for security to my own caution and to the darkness of the night, for Laura’s sake”, Marian demonstrates her bravery and commitment to exerting her power (320). Her falling ill as a result of her spying in the rain and cold further demonstrates the dangers of a woman exerting her power and her courage in doing so. In her incapacitated state, she serves as a clear example of someone being looked at who is incapable of looking back when it is revealed Count Fosco read her diary, stating “I bear witness, in the most disinterested manner, to the excellence of the stratagem by which this unparalleled woman surprised the private interview between Percival and myself” (337). However, while Count Fosco’s intrusion into her private diary at a time when her very life is at risk demonstrates the power is back in his, and therefore in the men’s, hands, her daring spying