Why The Woman in White Has So Many Narrators

A woman dressed in white stops Walter Hartright on a road outside London and asks him how to get there. Walter can tell us what she says and how the encounter unnerves him. He has no way of knowing why she needs his help. That gap between what a witness sees and what a witness understands is where Wilkie Collins builds his mystery.

The Woman in White has multiple narrators because no one person witnesses the whole story. Walter introduces the novel by comparing its structure to a court case in which several witnesses give evidence. Yet he also questions whether the courts would have brought the truth to light. That tension gives the book its sharpest question. What does it take for someone’s account to be believed?

This guide discusses the novel’s setup and storytelling structure. It leaves the solution and ending unspoiled.

Walter Hartright is both witness and editor

Walter is a drawing teacher, and the opening gives him a scene worth looking at closely. A stranger appears on a quiet road, asks for directions and leaves him with questions he can only answer later. His account is vivid because he remembers how the encounter felt. Its limits become clear as soon as we ask what the woman knew that he didn’t.

Walter also helps assemble the testimony we read. When he hands the story over, we gain access to events he missed, but we’re still reading a collection he helped shape. The next time the narrator changes, look at where the previous account ends. Collins often uses that break to show exactly where one person’s knowledge runs out.

Marian Halcombe makes the journal an instrument of investigation

Marian’s journal brings us closer to Laura Fairlie, her half-sister, and to the pressure surrounding Laura’s marriage. The change in form matters. Walter opens by looking back on an encounter whose importance he now understands. Marian writes in dated entries, close to events she is still trying to interpret. An uneasy conversation can stay unresolved on the page because she has yet to find out what it means.

Her attention to small details makes her one of the novel’s most capable investigators. When Count Fosco keeps her talking in the drawing room, for example, she eventually asks herself what his wife might have been doing while she was occupied. The suspicion begins with an ordinary question about where someone was and how long she was gone. Collins makes that sort of attention feel as consequential as a dramatic discovery.

A document can carry more authority than a person

The lawyer Mr. Gilmore’s account of Laura’s marriage settlement shows how much turns on the wording of a document. Marian’s journal shows what the pressure surrounding the marriage feels like inside the household. Read together, the two accounts make it easier to see why private knowledge can be so difficult to turn into evidence other people will accept.

The difference between credibility and authority is what makes this Gothic mystery linger. A person may have excellent reasons to be afraid. A document may look official enough to settle a question. Collins asks us to examine how each claim was produced and who has the power to make it stick.

What to look for when the narrator changes

On a first read, keep track of the speaker and the kind of account you’re reading. When someone makes a confident claim, ask whether they saw it happen, heard it from another person, or drew an inference. Try this with Marian’s drawing-room scene. She knows how long Fosco kept her occupied. What his wife did with that time is still a question.

On a reread, watch for facts that remain the same even as their meaning changes. A narrator can report a detail faithfully and still misunderstand it. That’s where the comparison with a jury pays off. The novel gives us evidence in installments and asks us to revise our judgment as the witnesses come forward.

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If you’d like an annotated print edition, find the Penguin Classics paperback of The Woman in White on Amazon. It includes an introduction and notes by Matthew Sweet.

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