Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

Old provincial society had its share of this subtle movement: had not only its striking downfalls, its brilliant young professional dandies who ended by living up an entry with a drab and six children for their establishment, but also those less marked vicissitudes which are constantly shifting the boundaries of social intercourse, and begetting new consciousness of interdependence. Some slipped a little downward, some got higher footing: people denied aspirates, gained wealth, and fastidious gentlemen stood for boroughs … ( Middlemarch ch. 11: 97) In the middle of the night, in the middle of the high road, the hero of Wilkie Collins's The Woman in White (1860) is startled by a touch on his shoulder, and turns to find ‘the figure of a solitary Woman’: There was nothing wild, nothing immodest in her manner: it was quiet and self-controlled, a little melancholy and a little touched by suspicion; not exactly the manner of a lady, and, at the same time, not the manner of a woman in the humblest ranks of life. (Epoch I, ch. 4: 24) It is bewildering, because contrary to all social norms, to encounter a solitary woman thus. To make sense of the situation, Walter Hartright needs to place her within the social order, which entails trying to read her ‘manner’ as a sign of her social standing. He seems to feel secure in his command of that language, and trusts that his audience likewise ... log in or subscribe to read full text