Marian Halcombe Character Analysis

By Stephen Bray

Marian Halcombe is one of three heroines in 'The Woman In White' by Wilkie Collins. She plays a greater part than the others and narrates  two large sections of the book through her journal. The others are Anne Catherick and Laura Fairlie, (Lady Glyde/Mrs. Walter Hartright). Halcombe is an 'androgynous woman'. She has a body 'that a sculptor would have longed to model', but the facial characteristics of a youth.

Perhaps because of the masculine quality of her facial appearance we, (and no doubt Victorian society), may more readily accept the forthrightness of her thinking and speech, and the radical length to which she is prepared to go in order to help her step-sister?

Marian Halcombe is a diarist, and also the 'family' activist. When she meets Hartright for the first time she explains that her step-sister is 'nursing that essentially female malady' a slight headache'. One can only speculate that a euphamism is being used for another female malady. But if so, and regardless of whether Hartright appreciates it, then Marian Halcombe is already introducinga relationship with Hartright that borders on the intimate confidant of later conversations.

So from the beginning of their relationship she acts as the male hero Hartright's confidant. Indeed in the first epoch of the Work she does much to direct his actions, particularly in respect to decorum. It is she who sends Hartright away from Limmeridge House, and even helps him to go abroad in order to recover from the loss of Laura to Sir Percival Glyde.

One must ask, does not Marian herself have desires for Walter Hartright? He is after all more a member of her class, by virtue of their relative (lack of) wealth, than is Laura Fairlie? She professes near the end of the Book that she loves Walter as 'a brother'. This is when she has decided that Walter and Laura may marry.

Indeed Marian Halcombe so binds herself to Walter Hartright by during their joint investigation of The Woman In White, in the first epoch of the book, and by their both taking responsibility for Laura's welfare in the third epoch of the Story that their conversations are far more like those those of a husband and wife, (or perhaps today partners), than any words exchanged between Walter Hartright and his wife, (Laura Fairlie).

Whilst Victorian society purported to be morally upstanding, this stance is largely confined to the middle classes, upon whom commerce depended. It should be remembered that the artistic fraternity to which Hartright, (and of course Collins), belonged was often characterised by unorthodox relationships worthy of the gentry, or the working classes.

Marian Halcombe is then at once a conservative, a radical, an activist, a conversationalist, a true friend and companion, a person of remarkable character and intelligence ~ with the face of a man!