Madame Fosco doing embroidery. — staff artist John McLenan's uncaptioned headnote vignette for the thirteenth serial number of Wilkie Collins's The Woman in White: A Novel, published on 18 February 1860 in Harper's Weekly: A Journal of Civilization, Vol. IV, "The Second Epoch": "The Narrative of Marian Halcombe, Taken from Her Diary," p. 90 in the 1861 volume and p. 229 the serial number. [Click on the image to enlarge it.]

Passage: Marian introduces the reader to Madame Fosco, neé Eleanor Fairlie

As Eleanor Fairlie (aged seven-and-thirty), she was always talking pretentious nonsense, and always worrying the unfortunate men with every small exaction which a vain and foolish woman can impose on long-suffering male humanity. As Madame Fosco (aged three-and-forty), she sits for hours together without saying a word, frozen up in the strangest manner in herself. The hideously ridiculous love-locks which used to hang on either side of her face are now replaced by stiff little rows of very short curls, of the sort one sees in old-fashioned wigs. A plain, matronly cap covers her head, and makes her look, for the first time in her life since I remember her, like a decent woman. Nobody (putting her husband out of the question, of course) now sees in her, what everybody once saw — I mean the structure of the female skeleton, in the upper regions of the collar-bones and the shoulder-blades. Clad in quiet black or grey gowns, made high round the throat — dresses that she would have laughed at, or screamed at, as the whim of the moment inclined her, in her maiden days — she sits speechless in corners; her dry white hands (so dry that the pores of her skin look chalky) incessantly engaged, either in monotonous embroidery work or in rolling up endless cigarettes for the Count’s own particular smoking. On the few occasions when her cold blue eyes are off her work, they are generally turned on her husband, with the look of mute submissive inquiry which we are all familiar with in the eyes of a faithful dog. The only approach to an inward thaw which I have yet detected under her outer covering of icy constraint, has betrayed itself, once or twice, in the form of a suppressed tigerish jealousy of any woman in the house (the maids included) to whom the Count speaks, or on whom he looks with anything approaching to special interest or attention. Except in this one particular, she is always, morning, noon, and night, indoors 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. It is quite possible that I may be altogether wrong in this idea. My own impression, however, is, that I am right. Time will show.

And the magician who has wrought this wonderful transformation — the foreign husband who has tamed this once wayward English woman till her own relations hardly know her again — the Count himself? What of the Count? ["The Story continued by Marian Halcombe, in Extracts from her Diary," "July 1st," p. 229; pp. 89-90 in the 1861 volume edition]

Comment

Countess Fosco, before her marriage a feminist who 'advocated the Rights of Women', is tamed by her sexual infatuation with her sinister husband in a way that seems to Marian [as narrator] dangerous. [Peters, 223]

Although this subversive side of her character is not immediately obvious in the text, McLenan imbues her features with a certain hard-featured tension; she rolls her husband's cigarettes, but she may do so more out of fear than love: "I should have held my tongue when he looked at me, as she holds hers" (90).

Related Material

• McLenan's full-size plate for the thirteenth number "Count Fosco and the Dog" for the 18 February 1860 number
• Fred Walker's poster: The Woman in White for the Olympic's October 1871 adaptation

Bibliography

Collins, Wilkie. The Woman in White: A Novel. New York: Harper & Bros., 1861 (first printing, 15 August 1860; reissued in single-column format in 1902, 548 pages).

Collins, Wilkie. The Woman in White: A Novel. Harper's Weekly: A Journal of Civilization. Illustrated by John McLenan. Vols. III-IV (16 November 1859 through 8 September 1860).

Collins, Wilkie. The Woman in White. Ed. Maria K. Bachman and Don Richard Cox. Illustrated by Sir John Gilbert. London: Minerva, 2006.

Peters, Catherine. "Chapter Twelve: The Woman in White (1859-1860)." The King of the Inventors: A Life of Wilkie Collins. London: Minerva Press, 1992. Pp. 205-225.

Vann, J. Don. "The Woman in White in All the Year Round, 26 November 1859 — 25 August 1860." Victorian Novels in Serial. New York: MLA, 1985. Pp. 44-46.

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Created 8 July 2024