Anne Catherick's Mother Full Character Analysis

Jane Anne Catherick Full Character Analysis

By Stephen Bray

Mrs. Jane Anne Catherick is one of the more complex characters in the story of 'The Woman In White' by Wilkie Collins.

It is really too easy and too simplistic to dismiss her as a bad woman. She is a woman of the servant classes who desires the respectability and lifestyle of her employers.

She has been seduced, and abandoned by Phillip Fairlie the father of Laura Fairlie, whilst in service. As a result she has born his child Anne Catherick who possesses a remarkable likeness to Laura, even as a child.

But Phillip Fairlie does not attempt to help her. When she comes to Limmeridge in order to attend to her sick sister he is away and as far as we know Phillip Fairlie and Jane Catherick do not meet after Anne's birth.

There is something untold about the history of Jane Catherick, her unfortunate daughter Anne, Phillip Fairlie and Sir Percival Glyde. We must question how it came to pass that Laura Fairlie was promised to Sir Percival Glyde. Why was Phillip Fairlie friends with such a man? How did it come to pass that Eleanor Fairlie came to marry the swindler Fosco? We can only assume that there are deep problems within the Fairlie family, perhaps going back for generations?

Jane Catherick eventually marries an honest man, who accepts Anne as his own. She loses him when she is tempted by Sir Percival Glyde into helping her to falsify the Parish records at Old Welmington.

More than being pregnant with Phillip Fairlie's child, her assistance of Glyde is her undoing for although it brings her the physical comforts that she desires it also loses her the respect of her community, (who believe that she and Glyde were lovers), and her fear and hatred of him slowly erode her soul.

Nevertheless, once Glyde is consumed by the fire at Old Welmington Vestry she writes at length to Walter Hartright making a full confession of her part in the mystery of 'The Woman In White'. This is a curious thing to have done, for although she doesn't sign the letter, it would still have implicated her if Hartright had wanted to bring it before the proper authorities. It was then a risk. Why might she have taken it?

We can only speculate that she must have needed to do something active consummate with the action of fate, which removed Glyde from her life, in order to render herself at peace in the world. maybe her letter was that action?

Jane Anne Catherick represents particular class of person. Probably born into service she could never hope through industry to match the fortunes of those who employed her. Her only hope would be a good marriage and the temptation of many attractive servant women to believe that their wealthy employers would treat them respectably having taken possession of their bodies must have been great. They are not to be blamed. Many employers were seemingly 'all powerful'. Others used charm. Some sons of the gentry might have even thought that their families would let them take brides from the servant classes. Whatever, there were many in Collins' day who would find themselves 'with child' as a result of intimate encounters with their male employers, or their friends.