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The Woman in White: Hartright 8

Storytime for Grownups

Thu Jan 16 2025

Summary

Storytime for Grownups: The Woman in White – Hartright 8

Episode Overview In the January 16, 2025 episode of Storytime for Grownups, host Faith Moore delves deeper into Wilkie Collins' classic novel, The Woman in White, specifically focusing on Chapter Eight of Hartright's narrative. This episode combines thoughtful discussion, listener interactions, and an engaging reading of the chapter, enriched with insightful commentary to enhance the listening experience.

Engaging with Listeners: The Temptation to Read Ahead Early in the episode, Faith Moore and her co-host address the enthusiastic responses from listeners who are eager to read the book ahead of the podcast's release schedule. The co-host shares sentiments of both joy and frustration, saying:

“[00:44] Co-host: …it makes me so happy because that's exactly how you're supposed to feel when you're reading this book.”

However, they also express the challenges of adhering to the release timeline:

“[02:08] Co-host: …waiting is part of the experience of this book. So if you would like to join in in that way, I invite you to wait.”

This balance highlights the interactive nature of the podcast and the mutual passion for the literary journey.

Introducing the Drawing Room Community Faith and her co-host introduce the Drawing Room, an online community designed for listeners to discuss The Woman in White in real-time. Inspired by the traditional Victorian drawing room—a place for social gatherings and literary discussions—the Drawing Room serves as an extension of the podcast's immersive experience. Addressing a listener’s confusion, the co-host clarifies:

“[05:04] Co-host: So our online community is the Drawing Room because… it's the place to sit and chat together.”

This platform aims to foster a sense of camaraderie among listeners, encouraging deeper engagement with the literature.

Recap of Previous Chapters Before diving into Chapter Eight, Faith provides a concise recap of the story's progression:

“[08:12] Faith: Where we left off. Walter wakes up in his room at Linridge House…”

Key developments include Walter Hartright’s interactions with Marian Halcombe and Mr. Fairley, setting the stage for the unfolding mystery surrounding the Woman in White.

Listener Analysis: Character Descriptions and Sensation Novels A thoughtful listener, Sarah F., offers a critique on character portrayals in the novel, particularly the unconventional descriptions of Marian Halcombe and Mr. Fairley. The co-host responds by exploring the essence of the sensation novel genre, emphasizing the underlying atmosphere of unease in seemingly normal settings:

“[10:32] Co-host: …sensation novel is that there is just this sort of atmosphere of not quite rightness to otherwise very ordinary events…”

They dissect Sarah's observations, highlighting how Marian's and Mr. Fairley’s atypical descriptions contribute to the novel's suspense and gothic elements:

“[12:30] Faith: And as Sarah says, that's kind of jarring. So, I mean, Walter's initial impression of Marian is kind of funny… but it's also jarring and odd.”

This analysis enriches listeners' understanding of character development and thematic depth within the story.

Reading of Chapter Eight: Key Plot Points The core of the episode features Faith reading Chapter Eight of The Woman in White. Significant events in this chapter include:

Introduction of Mrs. Vesey, the governess, and her contrasting portrayal alongside Miss Halcombe.
Hartright’s growing intrigue and unease with the characters at Linridge House.
The mysterious appearance of Miss Fairlie and the introduction of Anne Catherick, adding layers to the narrative’s suspense.

Faith intersperses the reading with analytical pauses, ensuring listeners grasp the complexities of the plot and character motivations.

Closing Thoughts and Listener Engagement As the episode concludes, Faith reiterates the importance of listener interaction:

“[07:47] Faith: …I'd love to know what you thought of the chapters. Is there anything you'd like me to clarify?”

She encourages ongoing dialogue through her website and emphasizes the community aspect of the podcast, fostering a supportive environment for literary enthusiasts.

Notable Quotes

Co-host on Reading Ahead:
“[02:08] Co-host: …waiting is part of the experience of this book. So if you would like to join in in that way, I invite you to wait.”
Listener Comment on Character Descriptions:
“[10:03] Faith: Introduction to the inhabitants of Limmeridge House was so unsettling…”
On the Sensation Novel Genre:
“[10:32] Co-host: …sensation novel is that there is just this sort of atmosphere of not quite rightness to otherwise very ordinary events…”
Clarifying the Drawing Room:
“[05:04] Co-host: So our online community is the Drawing Room because… it's the place to sit and chat together.”

Conclusion This episode of Storytime for Grownups seamlessly blends literature appreciation with interactive discussion, deepening listeners' engagement with The Woman in White. Through insightful analysis, reader interactions, and immersive storytelling, Faith Moore continues to create a rich auditory experience for classic literature enthusiasts.

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Transcript

Faith Moore (0:00)

Hello and welcome to Storytime for Grown Ups. I'm Faith Moore and this season we're reading the Woman in White by Wilkie Collins. Each episode I'll read a few chapters from the book, pausing from time to time to give brief explanations so it's easier to follow along. It's like an audiobook with built in notes. So brew a pot of tea, find a cozy chair and settle in. It's story time.

Unknown Co-host (0:42)

Hi.

Faith Moore (0:42)

Welcome back.

Unknown Co-host (0:44)

Okay, so many, many of you have been telling me that you can't help it. You've gone out and you've bought the book and you just have to read ahead because you cannot wait for the next episode to find out what happen. Which makes me so happy because that's exactly how you're supposed to feel when you're reading this book. But I have to tell you that I cannot wait to hear from you. It's like torture putting out each episode, waiting for the Monday or the Thursday when I get to put out the next episode and then waiting for your emails to come in to know what you think of the episodes. And I don't get to read ahead. There's no reading ahead on your emails. So I would just like to tell you I feel, feel your pain. I understand. I'm also kind of sitting here on tenterhooks because I cannot wait to hear what you think after each of these episodes. So thank you for writing in. Thank you for those emails. I love to get them.

Faith Moore (1:40)

But also I would just like to.

Unknown Co-host (1:42)

Make a very quick pitch for not reading ahead. So many things in this world are instant. Now you can binge an entire season of television. You can find information at your fingertips. You know, you want to know what was the name of that actor in that show? Boom, there it is. You want to know what they serve at the restaurant that you're going to.

Faith Moore (2:04)

There's the menu. Everything is instant.

Unknown Co-host (2:08)

And I do think there's something to be said for waiting for that feeling of like, oh, I just absolutely have to know. I have to know what's next. Of sitting with that, of thinking about it, of wondering about it, of talking to people about it and coming up with ideas and thoughts and guesses and conjectures about what's going to happen and then finally, finally getting to know what it was. Anyway, you do you. I'm not judging you. I understand that feeling. And I might also go out and buy the book of your emails if I possibly could. So I get it. Do what you want to do. But I do want to just say that just make the case for waiting. And remember, this book came out serially.

Faith Moore (24:27)

We turned off into a winding path while she was speaking and approached a pretty summer house built of wood in the form of a miniature Swiss chalet. The one room of the summer house, as we ascended the steps of the door, was occupied by a young lady. She was standing near a rustic table, looking out at the inland view of moor and hill, presented by a gap in the trees, and absently turning over the leaves of a little sketchbook that lay at her side. This was Miss Fairley. How can I describe her? How can I separate her from my own sensations and from all that has happened in the later time? How can I see her again as she looked when my eyes first rested on her, as she should look now to the eyes that are about to see her in these pages. The watercolor drawing that I made of Laura Fairley at an after period in the place and attitude in which I first saw her lies on my desk. While I write I look at it, and there dawns upon me brightly from the dark greenish brown background of the summer house, a light youthful figure clothed in a simple muslin dress, the pattern of it formed by broad alternate stripes of delicate blue and white. A scarf of the same material sits crisply and closely round her shoulders, and a little straw hat of the natural color, plainly and sparingly trimmed with ribbon to match the gown, covers her head and throws its soft pearly shadow over the upper part of her face. Her hair is of so faint and pale a brown, not flaxen, and yet almost as light, not golden and yet almost as glossy, that it nearly melts here and there into the shadow of the hat. It is plainly parted and drawn back over her ears. And the line of it ripples naturally as it crosses her forehead. The eyebrows are rather darker than the hair. And the eyes are of that soft, limpid turquoise blue. So often sung by the poets, so seldom seen in real life. Lovely eyes in color, lovely eyes in form. Large and tender and quietly thoughtful, but beautiful above all things in the clear truthfulness of look. That dwells in their inmost depths. And shines through all their changes of expression. With the light of a purer and a better world. The charm, most gently and yet most distinctly expressed. Which they shed over the whole face. So covers and transforms its little natural human blemishes elsewhere. That it is difficult to estimate the relative merits and defects of the other features. It is hard to see that the lower part of the face. Is too delicately refined away towards the chin. To be in full and fair proportion with the upper part. That the nose, in escaping the aquiline bend. Always hard and cruel in a woman, no matter how abstractly perfect it may be, has erred a little in the other extreme. And has missed the ideal straightness of line. And that the sweet, sensitive lips Are subject to a slight nervous contraction when she smiles, which draws them upward a little at one corner towards the cheek. It might be possible to note these blemishes in another woman's face. But it is not easy to dwell on them in hers. So subtly are they connected with all that is individual and characteristic in her expression. And so closely does the expression depend for its full play in life, in every other feature, on the moving impulse of the eyes. Does my poor portrait of her. My fond, patient labor of long and happy days. Show me these things? Ah, how few of them are in the dim, mechanical drawing. And how many in the mind with which I regard it so he's made a painting of her, but really it's his memories of her that he's describing. A fair, delicate girl in a pretty light dress, trifling with the leaves of a sketchbook. While she looks up from it with truthful, innocent blue eyes. That is all the drawing can say. All perhaps, that even the deeper reach of thought and pen can say in their language either the woman who first gives life, light and form. To our shadowy conceptions of beauty. Fills a void in our spiritual nature. That has remained unknown to us till she appeared. Sympathies that lie too deep for words, too deep almost. For thoughts are touched at such times by other charms than those which the senses feel. And which the resources of expression can realize the mystery which underlies the beauty of women is never raised above the reach of all expression until it has claimed kindred with the deeper mystery in our own souls. Then and then only has it passed beyond the narrow region on which light falls in this world from the pencil and the pen. So he's saying that a woman can be beautiful, but she becomes something even more than beautiful when she sparks emotions in the viewer. Think of her as you thought of the first woman who quickened the pulses within you, that the rest of her sex had no art to stir. Let the kind candid blue eyes meet yours as they met mine, with the one matchless look which we both remember so well. Let her voice speak the music that you once loved best, attuned as sweetly to your ear as to mine. Let her footstep, as she comes and goes in these pages, be like that other footstep to whose airy fall your own heart once be time. Take her as the visionary nursling of your own fancy, and she will grow upon you all the more clearly as the living woman who dwells in mine. Among the sensations that crowded on me when my eyes first looked upon her, familiar sensations which we all know, which spring to life in most of our hearts, die again in so many and renew their bright existence in so few, there was one that troubled and perplexed me, one that seemed strangely inconsistent and unaccountably out of place in Miss Fairlie's presence. Mingling with the vivid impression produced by the charm of her fair face and head, her sweet expression and her winning simplicity of manner was another impression which in a shadowy way suggested to me the idea of something wanting. At one time it seemed like something wanting in her, at another, like something wanting in myself, which hindered me from.

Faith Moore (36:01)

The most trifling of the questions that she put to me on the subject of using her pencil and mixing her colors, the slightest alterations of expression in the lovely eyes that looked into mine with such an earnest desire to learn all that I could teach and to discover all that I could show attracted more of my attention than the finest view we passed through or the grandest changes of light and shade as they flowed into each other over the waving moorland and the level beach. At any time and under any circumstances of human interest, it is not strange to see how little real hold the objects of the natural world amid which we live can gain on our hearts and minds. We go to nature for comfort, in trouble and sympathy and joy only in books. Admiration of those beauties of the inanimate world which modern poetry so largely and so eloquently describes is not, even in the best of us one of the original instincts of our nature as children. We none of us possess it. No uninstructed man or woman possesses it. Those whose lives are most exclusively passed amid the ever changing wonders of sea and land are also those who are most universally insensible to every aspect of nature, not directly associated with the human interest of their calling. Our capacity for appreciating the beauties of the earth we live on is, in truth, one of the civilized accomplishments which we all learn as an art and more. That very capacity is rarely practised by any of us, except when our minds are most indolent and most unoccupied. How much share have the attractions of nature ever had in the pleasurable or painful interests and emotions of ourselves or our friends? What space do they ever occupy in the thousand little narratives of personal experience which pass every day by word of mouth from one of us to the other? All that our minds can compass, all that our hearts can learn, can be accomplished with equal certainty, equal profit and equal satisfaction to ourselves in the poorest as in the richest prospect that the face of the earth can show. There is surely a reason for this want of inborn sympathy between the creature.

Faith Moore (43:01)

From the place where I sat, I could see Miss Halcombe's graceful figure, half of it in soft light, half in mysterious shadow, bending intently over the letters in her lap, while nearer to me. The fair profile of the player at the piano was just delicately defined against the faintly deepening background of the inner wall of the room. Outside on the terrace, the clustering flowers and long grasses and creepers waved so gently in the light evening air that the sound of their rustling never reached us. The sky was without a cloud, and the dawning mystery of moonlight began to tremble already in the region of the eastern heaven. The sense of peace and seclusion soothed all thought and feeling into a rapt, unearthly repose, and the balmy quiet that deepened ever with the deepening light seemed to hover over us with a gentler influence still when there stole upon it from the piano the heavenly tenderness of the music of Mozart. It was an evening of sights and sounds never to forget. We all sat silent in the places we had chosen. Mrs. Vesey still sleeping, Miss Fairlie still playing, Miss Halcombe still reading, till the light failed us. By this time the moon had stolen round to the terrace, and soft, mysterious rays of light were slanting already across the lower end of the room. Room. The change from the twilight obscurity was so beautiful that we banished the lamps by common consent when the servant brought them in and kept the large room unlighted except by the glimmer of the two candles at the piano for half an hour more. The music still went on after that. The beauty of the moonlight view on the terrace tempted Miss Fairlie out to look at it, and I followed her. When the candles at the piano had been lighted, Miss Halcombe had changed her place so as to continue her examination of the letters. By their assistance, we left her on a low chair at one side of the instrument, so absorbed over her reading that she did not seem to notice when we moved. We had been out on the terrace together, just in front of the glass doors, hardly so long as five minutes, I should think. And Miss Fairlie was, by my advice, just tying her white handkerchief over her head as a precaution against the night air, when I heard Miss Halcombe's voice, low, eager and altered from its natural lively tone. Pronounce my name, Mr. Hartright, she said. Will you come here for a minute?

Faith Moore (50:54)

Instance in the most oddly sudden, surprised, half frightened way. Although she is dressed very neatly, her clothes show a sad want of taste in color and pattern. So I arranged yesterday that some of our darling Laura's old white frocks and white hats should be altered for Anne Catherick. Explaining to her that little girls of her complexion looked neater and better all in white than in anything else. She hesitated and seemed puzzled for a minute. It then flushed up and appeared to understand. Her little hand clasped mine. Suddenly she kissed it, Philip. And said oh so earnestly, I will always wear white as long as I live. It will help me to remember you, ma'am, and to think that I am pleasing you still when I go away and see you no more. This is only one specimen of the quaint things she says so prettily. Poor little soul. She shall have a stock of white frocks made with good deep tucks to let out for her as she grows. Miss Halcombe paused and looked at me across the piano. Did the forlorn woman whom you met in the high road seem young? She asked. Young enough to be 2 or 3 and 20? Yes, Ms. Halcombe, as young as that. And she was strangely dressed from head to foot. All in white. All in white. While the answer was passing my lips, Miss Fairley glided into view on the terrace for the third time. Time. Instead of proceeding on her walk, she stopped with her back turned towards us and leaning on the balustrade of the terrace, looked down into the garden beyond. My eyes fixed upon the white gleam of her muslin gown and headdress in the moonlight. And a sensation for which I can find no name, a sensation that quickened my pulse and raised a fluttering at my heart, began to steal over me. All in white. Miss Halcombe repeated. The most important sentences in the letter, Mr. Hartright, are those at the end which I will read to you immediately. But I can't help dwelling a little upon the coincidence of the white costume of the woman you met and the white frocks which produced that strange answer from my mother's little scholar. The doctor may have been wrong when he discovered the child's defects of intellect and predicted that she would grow out of them. Them she may never have grown out of them. And the old grateful fancy about dressing in white, which was a serious feeling to the girl, may be a serious feeling to the woman still, meaning the woman in white, may be this girl, Anne Catherick, now grown up, but still keeping her promise to always wear white. I said a few words in answer. I hardly know what. All my attention was concentrated on the white gleam of Miss Fairlie's muslin dress. Listen to the last sentences of the letter, said Miss Halcombe.