The Woman in White Themes

The law is presented as a flawed institution in Wilkie Collins’ novel The Woman in White. In the novel, Walter Hartright, a young drawing teacher who is in love with Laura Fairlie, tries to expose her husband, Sir Percival Glyde, and his accomplice Count Fosco, for trying to steal Laura’s inheritance. The case also concerns the mystery of the “woman in white,” a young woman named Anne Catherick who…

Justice is self-regulating in The Woman in White, as the characters who commit crimes are fittingly punished, while the virtuous characters receive suitable rewards in exchange for their efforts. The characters in The Woman in White are morally nuanced, however, and “good” characters are often willing to commit immoral or illegal acts if they are necessary to protect their loved ones, while “bad” characters sidestep punishment for long periods of time. Collins uses Walter …

Marriage is presented as a great risk for women in The Woman in White. Women in nineteenth-century Britain had fewer rights than men because of the societal belief that women were inferior to men. It was still very difficult for women to challenge their husband’s authority or to maintain control over their own assets once married. Throughout the novel, Collins is critical of marriage, as the female characters in the novel stand to lose…

Collins’ novel The Woman in White praises industry, hard work, and the “self-made” man. Nineteenth-century British society was rigidly organized by class, but social mobility was made possible through the rise of the middle class and the self-made man, meaning a man without family connections or land who became wealthy through his own efforts. The Woman in White reflects British, middle-class values of the nineteenth century: the virtuous, hard-working protagonist, Walter Hartright, triumphs over…