The Woman in White: The First Epoch: Part 1, Chapter 8 Summary & Analysis

Walter goes down for lunch with Marian and meets Laura and Marian’s servant, Mrs. Vesey. After lunch, Marian takes Walter for a walk in the grounds and tells him that, although, she has found no evidence yet among her mother’s letters of a connection with the woman in white, she intends to keep looking. They reach a “pretty summer house” and find Laura there, looking through her sketchbook.

Walter tells the reader that there is a watercolor on his desk where he sits writing—a portrait of Laura that he finished soon after their meeting—and he thinks how much lovelier Laura is in person than in this dull, “mechanical” sketch. On meeting her for the first time, in the summer house, Walter is struck by her beauty. At the same time, however, he notices something troubling and familiar about her face.

Laura is too shy to show Walter her drawings, which she feels are very rough. Marian teases them both and suggests that they take a drive in the carriage and let Walter compare their work to the scenery around Limmeridge house. Looking back over this carriage ride while he writes, Walter notes that he remembers every detail of his conversation with Laura on this trip.

When they arrive back at the house, Walter goes up to his sitting room and, while alone, begins to feel uncomfortable about his role at Limmeridge as a teacher—as he feels he has been too unguarded with Laura and Marian—and starts to wonder about the strange, familiar quality which he sees in Laura’s face. He retires to the drawing room with the ladies after dinner and finds Laura dressed in white clothes.

Laura plays the piano for the group, while Mrs. Vesey dozes in the corner and Marian continues to search through Mrs. Fairlie’s letters for mentions of the woman in white. It is a moonlit night and they have the drawing room doors open onto the veranda outside. Walter and Laura move out onto the veranda to look at the garden in the moonlight but have only been outside a few minutes when Marian calls Walter back inside.

Walter leaves Laura on the veranda and Marian calls him over to her seat beside the fire. Laura continues to walk back and forth on the terrace, before the open doors, singing softly to herself. Marian reads Walter a letter from her mother to Mr. Philip Fairlie, Laura’s father. The letter tells Mr. Fairlie about a new pupil at her school, the daughter of a woman called Mrs. Catherick. The girl’s name is Anne Catherick, and Mrs. Fairlie writes that she has developed a strong bond with the girl, who is a little strange, but very affectionate, and who has a habit of sticking very stubbornly to certain ideas once they have entered her mind.

Mrs. Fairlie’s letter explains that she gave Anne several sets of white clothes, feeling that little girls look best in white, and that, when she heard this, Anne vowed always to dress in white. Marian asks Walter if this young girl could be the woman who he met on the road. Walter believes it is possible and Marian reads the rest of the letter, which notes the inexplicable physical similarity between Anne and Mrs. Fairlie’s own daughter, Laura. As Marian reads these words, Laura comes to the door of the drawing room and Walter leaps up from his chair, startled suddenly by the realization that Laura, in fact, reminds him of the woman in white.

Walter begs Marian to call Laura in out of the moonlight to relieve its eerie effect. He feels that this similarity between Laura and the woman in white is a bad omen for Laura’s future. Marian whispers to Walter that they should keep this discovery from Laura, and they change the subject as Laura returns to the room.