Collins' Villain in The Woman in White

COLLINS' VILLAIN IN THE WOMAN IN WHITE

Criminals, it was felt in the 1850s, were becoming cleverer-geniuses in

some cases. In fiction that founded a line of anti-heroes, which begins

with Fosco-who discourses with scientists on equal terms-and leads to

that strange contradiction, the academically distinguished arch-

criminal¹

Victorian society had an almost desperate fear of rampant crime, heightened by the notion that John Sutherland observes: 'Criminals, it was felt…, were becoming cleverer.' Legislation reflected this concern, with the Police Act of 1856 that established an intelligent police detective force; authors 'quickly and profitably exploited'² it. Wilkie Collins' The Woman in White is a detective novel that focuses on two criminals in particular: Sir Percival and Count Fosco. Percival, who forged and later destroyed records of his parents' marriage, is guilty of far more in the eyes of the law, but, ultimately, Count Fosco is seems to be more the villain of the text. He is easily the more threatening and dangerous man, and the more formidable foe to our heroes. Fosco is also the criminal character that is a direct response to Victorian fears. However, with his wit, charm, grace, and intelligence, Fosco is a strangely likeable man. He remains threatening, dangerous, and contemptible as the enemy of the heroic trio; yet there are doubts, until closer inspection, as to the extent of his evil. Though he is defeated and killed as we might hope a villain would be, sympathies certainly develop for Fosco in the reader. The question arises, then, of how the development of sympathy for Fosco might affect the reader. Despite his villainous tendencies against the heroes of the novel, and their hatred of him, can we even brand Fosco a villain when we harbour such sympathies for him?

In the conventional sense of the word, perhaps we can: both Count Fosco and Sir Percival are 'guilty or capable of great wickedness, unprincipled or depraved.'³ Fosco is certainly 'capable of great wickedness,' regardless of how much sympathy the reader has for him. I will explore below the extent to which he is 'unprincipled or depraved,' that is, immoral. Percival qualifies easily: his imprisonment of Anne, his refusal to release Laura from her engagement, and his imprudent behaviour are all demonstrative of his villainy. Furthermore, both Percival and Fosco are enemies to our heroes Marian, Walter, and Laura. In this conventional sense, it becomes clear to the reader that Percival is the novel's villain long before Fosco has seemed to have surpass him. He is quickly thrown into sinister light by Anne Catherick's letter:

I saw down into his inmost heart. It was black as night, and on it were

written, in the red flaming letters which are the handwriting of the

fallen angel, 'Without pity and without remorse. He has strewn with

misery the paths of others, and he will live to strew with misery the

path of this woman by his side.⁴

In marrying Laura, Percival frustrates the love blossoming between she and Walter, and fixes himself in villainous dimensions. Fosco, however, develops beyond Percival to far greater dimensions of a less immediately glaring sort: he is the more potent, dangerous, and frightening. Percival's violent outbursts are upsetting, but are nothing in comparison to Count Fosco's ability to get what he wants: in attempting to obtain his wife's signature, Percival elicits only tears and Laura's pen, thrown down. Fosco's chastisement of Percival is entirely appropriate: 'You idiot!' (220). Percival is not clever; he cannot be the new criminal that Victorian society most fears, and he does not inspire fear in our heroes. He foils his own efforts (and the easiest method of obtaining the money that he needs) with his imprudent behaviour. He is held at ransom by the secret that he was careless enough to allow Mrs. Catherick to discover. Ultimately, he destroys himself in an act of clumsy stupidity. When information from only Fosco and Percival are able to restore Laura's identity, Walter begins with Percival 'where there is the best chance of success' (406). Sir Percival is not half the villain that Count Fosco is.

Unlike Percival, Fosco is constantly in perfect control of his behaviour. When the Baronet has all but driven his wife from the room with his demands for her signature (which is every bit as important to the Count's finances), Fosco speaks 'with a gentleness which seemed to address itself to [Laura and Marian's] forlorn situation instead of to [themselves]' (220). On the occasion when he does appear to lose his temper in the novel, it is to his purpose: Fosco insults Dr. Dawson in order to remove him from Blackwater Park-he 'descended on the miserable man in an irresistible avalanche of indignation, and swept him from the house' (550). The Count is charismatic, entertaining, endearing, 'a handsome man' (566), 'his movements are astonishingly light and easy' (194), and above all, he is extremely intelligent. He has all this in his favour (a strangely likeable man, as mentioned); these resources make him extremely capable, and, in opposition to our heroes, extremely frightening for them. Marian recognises the danger of the man early on, and warns Laura: 'Whatever you do, don't make an enemy of the Count!' (220).

I have described Count Fosco as a considerably more dangerous man than Sir Percival, who is a fool in comparison, and I have mentioned many of the admiral faculties that Fosco has to his advantage. I've also mentioned that The Woman in White reflects Victorian fears of the clever criminal, and although Fosco orchestrates the fraudulent conspiracy against Laura, he is not nearly the criminal that Percival is in the novel. Why, then, is Count Fosco such a villain over Percival? The answer lies considerably with his opposition to the heroes of the novel, but one must ask whether or not Count Fosco is actually a bad man. Supposing he were an evil, immoral man, then with such ability to achieve his own desires, he could almost certainly be declared, without contest, a terrible villain. Conveniently, a moral discussion at the boathouse reveals much about the Count's morality. He seems at first to be an amoral man, rather than an immoral one: his concerns in life are founded in practicality; he seems to act as it will promote his own interests, and by no other principle; and he denies the existence of any universal morality to which he should subscribe.

Here, in England, there is one virtue. And there, in China, there is

another virtue. And John Englishman says my virtue is the genuine

virtue. And John Chinaman says my virtue is the genuine virtue…. Ah,

nice little Mousey! come, kiss me. What is your own private notion of a

virtuous man, my pret-pret-pretty? A man who keeps you warm, and gives

you plenty to eat. And a good notion, too, for it is intelligible, at

the least.⁵

Fosco claims to share the mouse's 'intelligible' amorality; his scruples are certainly utilitarian alone. He seems, in effect, to be dismissing the notion of virtue altogether, aided by his light-hearted tone and illustration through mice. He goes on, however, to point out the moral failures in every society, and in identifying moral failure, he shows himself to be wholly aware of moral code-what is fundamentally right and wrong. Having argued that 'We in England are free from all guilt of that kind [the killing of innocent people by the authorities]-we commit no such dreadful crime-we abhor reckless bloodshed with all our hearts' (208), Marian is answered by Fosco with,

John Bull… is the quickest old gentleman at finding out faults that are

his neigbours'…. Is he so very much better in this way than the people

whom he condemns in their way? English Society, Miss Halcombe, is as

often the accomplice as it is the enemy of crime…. Is the prison that

Mr. Scoundrel lives in at the end of his career a more uncomfortable

place than the workhouse that Mr. Honesty lives in at the end of his

career? When John-Howard-Philanthropist wants to relieve misery he goes

to find it in prisons, where crime is wretched-not in huts and hovels,

where virtue is wretched too.

(209)

Fosco is correct, but in acknowledging these social wrongs he validates his own notion of moral code. Perhaps he has given up on society, and so cares for nothing but himself, but nevertheless Count Fosco is aware of the immorality in his actions. He condemns himself once again in his elucidating narrative at the end of the novel: 'I might have taken Lady Glyde's life…. [I] took her identity instead. Judge me by what I might have done. How comparatively innocent! how indirectly virtuous I appear in what I really did!'⁶ A revealing word here is 'comparatively.' Fosco knew that what he was doing was wrong, immoral. It is fitting that his downfall and death should have been brought about by his being a traitor, treachery being a moral failing of sorts, illustrated by the T-shaped wound removing his mark of the 'Brotherhood.' Count Fosco is in many aspects an admirable man, but he is touched by evil. His flaw is immorality, and it renders him villainous, and dead by the end of the novel.

For all that is admirable about him though, perhaps we are meant to sympathise with this villain. If my phrase is paradoxical, then perhaps Sutherland's better describes Count Fosco as an 'anti-hero.'⁷ Surely the reader's sympathy for the character makes his demise all the more poignant, and emphasises the evil that touches him. We are unsurprised to read that an unadmirable man falls to his demise through his wickedness; we are surprised and affected, however, by the revelation of evil in and the eventual fall of a man with whom we sympathise. Furthermore, since the anti-hero, Fosco, has so much in him to admire, particularly in his intelligence, the evil in him is all the more: surely the more meditated the crime, the more wicked the criminal. As his own sympathies become apparent to the reader, perhaps a sense of complicity develops in him-he has been sympathising with the villain. This effect might aid the brief moral lesson of the novel in chastising the reader, or it might simply add to the sensational qualities of the novel: the reader feels naughty. The only danger, perhaps, in Collins' fostering sympathy for the villain in The Woman in White is the detrimental effect on the reader's sympathies for the heroes, Marian in particular. As she presents him in the novel, she quickly takes a disliking to the Count, which can prove irritating-he is, at this stage, wholly admirable. Here may be a shortcoming of Collins' narrative technique: if his heroine, narrating, cannot dictate the reader's sympathies even to the point of retaining them for herself, then perhaps the testimonial structure distances the reader too far from the characters. Collins' pseudo-documentary novel might suffer from impersonal presentation, or at least the problem of divided sympathies in the reader.

Collins' has reflected in Count Fosco the fear in mid-nineteenth century society of an increasingly intelligent sort of criminal, despite the fact that the Count isn't the most criminal character in the novel per se. He is, however, the novel's clear villain: the most threatening, dangerous character, and the most daunting opposition to our heroes. Always careful to behave impeccably, the Count is far from an obviously evil man, but with careful consideration, it becomes apparent that he is, indeed, an immoral character. Provided that we might be allowed by definition to hold sympathies for a villain, Count Fosco's villainy is certain. He is, otherwise, a villainous anti-hero.

NOTES
¹ John Sutherland, 'Wilkie Collins and the Origins of the Sensation Novel,' Dickens Studies Annual 20, 243-58, p. 244
² Sutherland, p. 244
³ 'Villain,' New Shorter OED 1996
⁴ Wilkie Collins, The Woman in White, Penguin Popular Classics, 1994, p. 66
⁵ Collins 208
⁶ Collins 556
⁷ see above