W3 Flashcards
When was the woman in white written?
1859
Wilkie Collins deconstructs the marriage plot and ‘shows the bare bones beneath’
the ‘mask’ of the institution of marriage, exposing the ‘tottering foundation[s]’ of fragile gender norms
Collins exposes the falsity of the heteronormative ideals inherent in patriarchal culture
Marriage operates according to the market economy; cognisant of the way in which the ‘marriage market’ involves the commodification of women, over one hundred years before Irigaray
Luce Irigaray
1977 essay, ‘Woman on the market’ uses analogy of the marketplace as a site of exchange of women between men
marriage the phenomenon Max Weber described as ‘herrschaft’
a relationship of dominance and subordination
the absence of physical, sexual violence in the novel testifies to the extent of female ‘suppression’
Laura Fairlie’s silence discernibly pervades the entire text as she is excluded from her own story
Walter Hartright’s sense of ‘something wanting’ in ‘the woman in white’ pertains to marriage itself;
loss, absence, eradication of self –> Laura’s loss of her identity entirely in struggle against her husband. In eviscerating critique of inherent unfairness of institution of marriage, Collins strikes at blankness at heart of Victorian conception of marriage
Kate Millett Sexual Politics 1968
‘Marriages are financial alliances, and each household operates as an economic entity much like a corporation’
Percival Glyde’s marriage to Laura is solely an economic transaction
she is ‘sold’ into the ‘marriage market’
Tegan Zimmerman
women occupy a ‘permanent position as a commodity, a product of the intersection between capitalism and patriarchy’
Irigaray society quote
‘The society we know, our won culture, is based upon the exchange of women’ ;
Irigaray’s reinterpretation of Marx’s analysis of the comedy within capitalist exchange to argue women are exchanged between men in order to establish homosocial bonds
pertinent as women appear vehicles ‘for the transfer of property between her husband and her son’ (William A. Cohen)
LEvi-Strauss quote
‘the basis of marriage is not established between men and women, but between men by means of women’
William A Cohoe quote
‘uneasy dependence of patriarchy upon a female vessel to pass along wealth’
Laura giving in marriage quotes
she must ‘give herself in marriage when she cannot give her love’
Laura calls Glyde ‘the man to whom my father gave me, and to whom I gave myself’
‘It is very hard for a woman to confess that the man to whom she has given her whole life, is the man of all others who cares least for the gift’
Kathy Alexis Psomiades’ discussion of ‘heterosexual exchange’
foregrounds way in which women circulate as part of a ‘gift’ economy in a patriarchal marketplace
Laura has internalised objectifying, commodifying rhetoric…
such internalisation is derided through Mr Gilmore: ‘no daughter of mine should be married to any man alive under such a settlement as you are forcing me to make for Miss Fairlie’ conceals tacit conception of value of women subsisting only in potential exchange e.g. possessive and modal auxiliaries
Fosco articulation of society’s sanctioning such concept of self
‘you sell yourself for gold to a man you don’t care for, and all your friends rejoice over you’ (231)
Laura as ‘marketable commodity’, passed along in chain of males in process Simone de Beauvoir claims involves subordination of the female…
‘because she owns nothing, woman is not raised to the dignity of a person; she herself is part of man’s patrimony, first her father’s and then her husbands’
Lyn Pykett argues in ‘Collins and the Sensation Novel’ that
when Glyde’s marriage to Fairlie fails to ensure him full access to her fortune, he exploits her physical resemblance to Catherick in his attempt to switch the women’s identities
Irigaray’s speculation that to dress like a woman involves
a marketing of your body in ‘Women on the Market’
exploitative male gazes; links in chain of males, exploiting women they depict
- author himself; in ‘compiled’ text; narrative framed by men; editor and exertion of narrative authority
- ‘miniature portrait of [Laura’s] father’
- Figures secretly observing Marian and Laura
Cathy Gallagher Marxist approach
identifies books as commodities in Marx’s sense of physical objects. which have their value determined by exchange; author-text relationship replicates the commodity exchange progress
only in 1991 that rape within marriage became recognised as a crime in English law (Mary Beard)
‘the law has never successfully managed the transition from rape as a crime (of theft, from the Latin rapio) committed against the woman’s warden or guardian, her husband or her father, to rape as a crime committed against the woman herself’
systemic faults of legal system with regard to marriage referenced by Marian in desperate appeal to…
the ‘laws in England [which] protect women from cruelty and outrage’
JS Mill ‘The subjection of Women’ (1869)
position of wives aligned to the position of slaves; Mill declared that ‘the wife is the actual bond-servant of her husband; no less so, so far as legal obligation goes, than slaves commonly so-called.’
Childlike naivety of Laura’s helpless cry to Mr Gilmore affirms absurdity of desire; impossibility of ‘law’ helping
‘If you are married… pray make it law that Marian is to live with me’
