74 pages • 2 hours read
Wilkie CollinsThe Woman in White
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1860A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
Doubles
The double—a character who resembles another character closely—is a common motif in Gothic fiction that often serves to trouble the notion of identity as something fixed and stable. A character’s double often reveals submerged aspects of their own nature or hints at what they could be in other circumstances. The Gothic double has its roots in folklore, in which encountering doubles often presages disaster.
Both these elements of the double motif are at play in The Woman in White. The close resemblance between Laura and Anne plays a role in foreshadowing disaster, though the final explanation turns out to be mundane: The two women are half-sisters and share a father. Nevertheless, the effect is uncanny and hints that something mysterious and perhaps supernatural is afoot. It particularly serves to hint at the disaster that awaits Laura. After her encounter with her double, Laura reports that she felt as though she were looking in a mirror and was therefore unnerved by Anne’s physical frailty. The resemblance deepens through Laura’s hardship and illness, making this moment of recognition one that foreshadows Laura’s future. The doubling also creates ambiguity surrounding the identity of the woman Marian rescues from the psychiatric hospital, making the motif central to the novel’s exploration of The Elusiveness of Truth.
This motif is not limited to these two women. There are other echoes, similarities, and mistaken identities. Walter, for example, is mistaken for Sir Percival when he is met by Sir Percival’s servant outside the church at Welmingham. This moment of doubling places Walter in the role of Laura’s husband, making it all the more notable that Sir Percival is burned alive immediately afterward. This event clears the way for Walter to marry Laura and take his momentary double’s place. Here again, a doubling presages imminent disaster and foreshadows other future events. It also hints that despite their many differences, Walter and Sir Percival in some sense resemble one another in their relationship to Laura—a nod to even the kind and well-intentioned Walter’s sometimes patronizing treatment of his wife.
Animals and Pets
Animals constitute a second major motif. There are key interactions between animals and characters that reveal the latter’s natures in various ways. For instance, Sir Percival’s encounter with Laura’s Italian greyhound offers the first hint that he is a cruel and bad-tempered man. He reaches out his hand to pet the dog, and she “look[s] up at him sharply, [shrinks] away from his outstretched hand, whine[s], shiver[s], and hid[es]” (149). Vincent Gilmore, the Fairlie family lawyer, narrates this portion of the narrative. He notes, “It was scarcely possible that he could have been put out by such a trifle as a dog’s reception of him, but I observed, nevertheless, that he walked away towards the window very suddenly” (149). Gilmore is not an especially perceptive judge of character elsewhere, but here even he notes that the episode suggests Sir Percival’s pride and anger: “Perhaps his temper is irritable at times” (149).
This pattern continues throughout the novel. Marian’s discovery of a dying dog in the boathouse at Blackwater is both a shocking moment that associates the place with violent death and an encounter with a vulnerable creature. Marian’s kindness and care come to the fore while Margaret Poacher—who will later be Laura’s jailer—grins callously at the injured animal. Count Fosco cherishes his anthropomorphized mice and birds, treating them like children, but he also prides himself on his ability to control them. They therefore become symbolic of his relations with other people, which are characterized by domination, cruelty, manipulation, and control.
Blackwater Park
Blackwater Park, the scene of Sir Percival and Fosco’s conspiracy against Laura, is a symbol of both the men’s corruption and that of the aristocracy in general. Its very name evokes its dreary atmosphere, setting the stage for Marian’s first encounter with its “sluggish, shallow water” and its “rotten wreck of an overturned boat” (233). The house itself is “stifled” by too many trees, and the gardens are “ill kept” with “rank grass” and “dismal willows” (233). Blackwater is also home to animals less prepossessing than the dogs, birds, and mice the characters keep as pets. In explaining her dislike of the lake, Marian describes “a snake basking in the midst of the spot, fantastically coiled and treacherously still” (233)—an image that evokes both the story of Adam and Eve’s corruption and the threat posed by Sir Percival and Count Fosco, who are similarly “coiled” in preparation to strike. The overall description of the estate creates an oppressive mood and paints an image of the place as rotten, neglected, and dismal, which does not bode well for the happiness of the newly married couple living there.
