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Count Fosco
Madame Fosco is the wife of the Italian spy, Count Fosco, and seemingly a spy herself under the orders of the Count. She is the sister of Mr. Philip Fairlie and the aunt of Laura Fairlie, whom she comes to live with at Blackwater with her own husband and Laura’s husband, Sir Percival Glyde. Madame Fosco has been written out of the family will for marrying a foreigner and will only receive her share of the inheritance if her niece Laura dies before her. In her youth, Madame Fosco was a loud, uncontrollable, and opinionated woman who supported the “rights of women,” but she has changed drastically since her marriage to the Count. She spends most of her time rolling the Count’s cigarettes and does nothing without receiving his permission or instructions first. It is impossible to tell whether Madame Fosco is happy or not with this arrangement. The Count is extremely kind to her in public, and she displays extreme jealousy to any woman who talks to him, and extreme hatred of anyone who contradicts his opinions. Madame Fosco is not a pleasant woman; she is described as “viperish” and willingly breaks the law and conspires against her nieces to aid the Count and Sir Percival. After the Count’s death, at the hands of the Italian political organization which he has betrayed, Madame Fosco dedicates the rest of her life to writing books about Count Fosco and his political exploits. She seems to have had her spirit broken by the Count and ends up nothing but an extension of his own will and personality.
Madame Fosco Quotes in The Woman in White
The The Woman in White quotes below are all either spoken by Madame Fosco or refer to Madame Fosco. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
The Second Epoch: Part 1, Chapter 2
Quotes
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.
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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.
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Madame Fosco Quotes in The Woman in White
The The Woman in White quotes below are all either spoken by Madame Fosco or refer to Madame Fosco. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
The Second Epoch: Part 1, Chapter 2
Quotes
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.
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Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
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.
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