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. Hi, everyone. Well, we made it. Here we are on the other side. We've read the whole book. We finished the Woman in White. Congratulations. That's quite an achievement. It was a long time. We've been reading this book for a long time, all the way since January. And here we are. So this is our conclusion episode. So I'm not going to read any chapters today. There are no more chapters to read, but I am going to kind of wrap things up. We haven't talked yet about the end of the book. I'm not going to just leave you hanging. We are going to talk about the end and I have a few questions that I'm going to read and we'll do a recap and I will give you my final thoughts. I'll talk about the end and I'll kind of try to wrap everything up nicely so that we feel like we're ready to move on. And moving on is what we are going to do after this episode. So we are going to weekly episodes. We're entering Summer Session after today. So there won't be a Thursday episode this week and episodes will now be every Monday because Summer session is starting. So next week, week, next Monday, June 2, will be the first episode of Summer Session. And if you missed it, we are talking about fairy tales this summer. I'm really excited. I've gotten lots of wonderful emails from you guys saying that you're excited too. So I'm really happy to hear that. And we are going to really be diving in. And it's kind of like I always say, it's like a college class, only fun. And what I mean by that is it's a kind of deep dive into a topic. We'll have guests, there will be interviews. Sometimes it'll just be me talking. I'll be reading several fairy tales to you throughout the course of the summer. And we'll be talking about kind of what these stories mean in the grander scheme of Western literature generally. And hopefully it will help us to have a deeper understanding of some of the stories that we've read so far. Some of the books we've read so far and some of the books that will be coming up and just books and stories more generally. So I hope that you will stick around for that regardless. Please, please make sure that you are subscribed because the trailer for September's book will eventually drop right into your podcast feed. If you're subscribed, that'll happen in August. And then of course, the next book will begin in the beginning of September and that will drop right into your feed if you are subscribed. If you're not, you're going to have to go looking for it and you don't want to forget. So just hit that subscribe button. And while you're tapping things, if you've been enjoying this show, this is a great time to tap the five stars. It's a great time to leave a positive, positive review in your podcast player. Tell people, tell your friends about this show. Let them know what it is. They can go back and listen to all the books that we've done. You can go back and listen to books that you haven't heard before. If you joined us for Woman in White or one of the other books. If you haven't listened to, for example, Jane Eyre or Pride and Prejudice, you can go back and find those books now. It's a great time to do that. So I hope that you will do that. I hope that you'll tell your friends, and of course, I hope that you'll stick around for Summer Session. And even though this is the last episode in which we will be talking together about the Woman in White, it's not your last opportunity to talk about the Woman in White. Because tomorrow, Tuesday, May 27th at 8pm Eastern, is our next tea time. Tea Time is our monthly voice chats that we have over in our online community, which is called the Drawing Room, which is short for Women Withdrawing Room, because it's where we withdraw after the show. And this time we'll be talking about the end of the book. We'll have finished this book and we'll get to talk about our thoughts about it. It's like a phone call, so you get to talk if you want to. Of course, you don't have to talk, you can just listen. But if you want to, you can join in and I join in as well, and I chat with you. We'll talk about the book. You also can ask questions. This is a great time. Since we're in between books, you can just ask me anything you want and I will answer your questions and we'll talk about Summer Session and how we're feeling about going into this discovery of fairy tales together. And so that is available for those of you who are signed up for the Landed Gentry membership tier in the various membership options that we have in the drawing room. So if you would like to participate in that chat tomorrow, just scroll into the show notes of this episode and click on the link and there you'll be able to just sort of find out more information about the drawing room and what that's all about. And then if you're interested, you can sign up. And I hope that you will. This will be a really fun one and I would love to have some new people in our chat. And these are really lovely chats. I'm always so impressed with with them and I'm so happy to see you all there. And so I hope that if you haven't before, you'll feel like this is a great time and you'll join us. So hopefully I'll see you there. And it's exciting because it means we don't have to quite be done talking about this book after today. We've got one more opportunity before we move on on to the summer. And just a quick reminder that while you are there in the show notes, checking out the link to the drawing room, there are other links there that might be of interest to you. We have merchandise. This is a great time to pick up your T shirt or your mug or whatever it is that you might want, you can find. First of all, of course you can find the link to contact me, which I hope that you will keep doing. Now, after this episode and also throughout the summer, I'll still be taking your questions and comments. So that link is there. And there's also a link to the Buy me a coffee page. I always say you're not buying me coffee or buying me a tea, but that's like our tip jar, our donation page. And if you don't want to become a monthly supporter of the show, a member of the show, but you would like to give a little bit financially or you're able to do that, that's a link that you can find. This is also a good time. The book is over. Perhaps you'd like to just drop something into that tip jar. But of course, you don't have to. I'm just happy that you're here. I'm just happy that you're listening. Those are things that are there for you if you choose, but if not you, you can just listen. This podcast is free. It will always be what it is. And you're welcome to it. All right, so two things to say about the Woman in White before we get into our recap and our questions and my final thoughts. Okay, the first is to remind you that you now have my permission to seek out the terrible, terrible musical of the Woman in White, which is the origin of my love of this story. I hated the musical, but that is what introduced me to this story. I saw it and I thought, this is the worst musical I've ever seen. However, I can tell that this is a fantastic story. And I went away and read the book, and of course, I was right. It was a fantastic story. But the music for that musical is on Spotify, so you can look it up. If you look up the Woman in White musical, it's by Andrew Lloyd Webber, believe it or not. And basically, if you want a good laugh, I think you should listen to this music. You can also go on Wikipedia and look up the plot of the musical, because it is quite different. They make all kinds of terrible changes to the plot that make no sense and make everything worse. So you can look up the plot and then you can listen along to the music and then feel free to write to me and we can commiserate together. Of course, you don't have to do this. This is not like homework or anything. And you're probably thinking, why would I want to go and listen to this? You've made it sound so terrible, and perhaps you don't, but I think it's kind of funny because now you've read the book and you can listen and you can see what a terrible job they did. So maybe somebody else one day will come along and come up with a much better musical or a better stage adaptation of this show. But I did want to remind you, because I've mentioned that musical so many times, I did want to remind you that now it's allowed because there are no more spoilers. The whole book is done. So you won't be getting any spoilers by listening to that musical if you choose. So if you want a good laugh, go ahead on Spotify and find the Woman in White by Andrew Lloyd Webber. The other piece of Woman in White related information I want to share before we get to the rest of the episode is I know that a lot of you have been wondering what my recommendation is for the best movie adaptation of the Woman in White. You know, when we finished Jane Eyre, we talked in great detail about all of the various film adaptations of Jane Eyre. I did a whole episode on them in Summer Session, because last Summer's summer session was actually all about Jane Eyre. So we had a whole episode about film adaptations. And so many of you have been asking what's the best one to watch for the Woman in White? And I'm going to have to disappoint you here, I think, which is that I've actually never seen a film adaptation of the Woman in White all the way through because I haven't found one that I really feel like does the book justice. There is an old one from the 1930s. It has Sidney Greenstreet as Count Fosco. And while I don't feel like he acts particularly like I imagine Count Fosco, he looks just like him. So you could just look up a picture of that if you want because I think that's pretty fun. And then there are several, I think maybe three or so miniseries, miniseries of the Woman in White that have been done throughout the years. One's fairly recent one's, I think from the 70s, maybe one from the 80s. And to me none of them quite cut it. I think what happens is they get very into the kind of sensationalness of it all, the sensation novel of it all, which of course is there. The gothicness, the suspense, the kind of almost supernatural dread that happens in some parts of the book. So they. They go for that and then they kind of miss that. Also, though this book is kind of funny, this book is very exciting. This book is kind of action packed. So they miss the various facets of the kind of feeling of the book and it falls flat, at least to me. So I've never actually seen one all the way through. So if you decide to go away and watch the various adaptations, let me know which one you think the best one and I'll try to sit down and watch the whole thing. Or if you're a member of the drawing room, that's a great place to tell people which adaptation you think is best. That's exactly the kind of conversation that people are having over there. Not just in the tea time, but in the online chat that is going on all the time. Anytime I check, there are new messages. So it's very active over there. And you would definitely get some interest if you posted over there about which version of the Woman in White you've watched on. On TV or as a mov. Which one do you think is the best one? So I hope that you will share over there or you can let me know. But I'm sorry, I wanted to just apologize that I don't have a movie recommendation for this book specifically. Okay, so let's get into this final conversation about the woman in white. First. Let's just go over what happened at the very end. And then I've got some questions to read and we'll. We'll wrap this, this whole journey off. We'll wrap it all up. So here is the recap. Alright, so where we left off. Walter leaves Fosco's house after the agreed upon half hour goes by and he comes back to Laura and Marion and tells them that he's got the evidence that he needs. But then he leaves again and he finds the cab company and the cab driver who drove Laura and Fosco from the station. The cab driver remembers Fosco because he was so fat and Laura because her name was the same as his new wife's maiden name. And so Walter arranges for the cab driver to come with him to Cumberland. Walter then goes to Mr. Curl's office and tells him everything he's learned. And Mr. Curll agrees that this should be enough to prove that Laura is Laura. So Mr. Curl, Walter, Laura, Marian and the cab driver set off for Cumberland. They leave Laura and Marion at Todd's Corner and Walter and Mr. Curll go and speak to Mr. Fairley, who agrees to accept that Laura is his niece so that they won't take the whole thing to court. So Walter rounds up all the people who attended Laura's fake funeral and all the tenants and servants and everything around Limmeridge. And he tells them all about the conspiracy and shows them the proof that it isn't Laura buried in the churchyard. Then he brings in Laura herself and everyone recognizes her. And there's a huge kind of outpouring of joy. Laura's name is struck off the tomb and Anne's is engraved in its place. Then Walter, Laura and Marian go back to London. A little while later Walter is offered an assignment in Paris for a few days, which he takes because if he does a good job it will result in a permanent job at the newspaper in London. Before he goes, he asks Marian if she would like to kind of live her own life. If she'd like to go off and maybe get married or something. Because he and Laura want her to stay with them forever. But he wonders if that's not fair to Marian. But Marian says that she wants to stay with them forever and she hopes to help them raise any children that they might have. So Walter then leaves for Paris and he takes Pesca with him for a change of scene. And while they're there, Walter sees the man with the scar on his face coming out of Pesca's room. And Pesca is clearly very upset and wants to go home as soon as possible. Walter goes out on his own and passes the morgue where there's a large crowd. He goes in and he discovers that Fosco's body is laid out at the morgue. He is dead and the mark of the brotherhood has been erased with a T carved into his skin. The so the body is never officially identified, but Madame Fosco has him buried and she still lays flowers on his grave. The following year, Laura gives birth to a son. Soon after that, Walter goes on a business trip and when he returns, he finds that Marian, Laura and their child have gone to Limmeridge. So he follows them there and he's told that Mr. Fairley has died and their baby is now the owner of Limmeridge Estate. Okay, so I'm going to read. I think it's five. Just sort of quick comments just to give you a sort of flavor of how people are feeling here at the end of the book. The first one comes from Marian. She writes, why do you think Collins made such an issue of Marian's masculine qualities, both in her facial features and intelligence? And how does that relate to Fosco's attraction to her? Is this just Victorian sexism? I don't believe there was any gender bending in Collins's mind. I think Fosco was merely attracted to a woman he thought had gumption and was his intellectual equal, despite her less feminine physical attributes. And it would make sense that Collins might describe her countenance in such a way for two reasons. First, to physically differentiate her from her ultra feminine half sister, as well as Laura's other half sister and doppelganger Anne. And second, to quell any questions of Walter's feelings towards Marian, that is that he loves her only as a sister. I'm curious what you and your other listeners have to say about Marian's masculinity. The next one comes from Pam Shroud. Pam writes, the ending of this story is satisfying and makes sense. I must say that I was surprised by the end of Fosco, although I think I should have expected it, but I just thought he was going to disappear for some reason. Thank you again for sharing this story. This one comes from Carolyn McNulty. Carolyn says the gathering of everyone to hear Walter the detective's explanation was thrilling because that's the first time it was done. As a mystery fan, I found that very exciting. This one is from Laura, by the way. We have listeners named Laura, Marion, and Anne. So if there's a Walter out there, I really hope that you'll write in. Okay. But this one's from Laura. She says the baby. The baby is Landed Gentry. Oh, that's lovely. Okay. And this last one comes from Rachel Clevenger. Rachel writes, what a beautiful way to end the story, and what an honor to Marian. A sidekick can be a true hero. Okay, so what I would like to do in this last episode is just kind of revisit each of the main characters that we've been following and kind of wrap up their narratives and whatever themes and ideas we've been following via their actions and their personalities. And hopefully that will help us to feel that we can say goodbye to them, or at least goodbye for now. Right. Until we decide to read this book again. And I hope that you do, at some point, come back to this book on your own. You know, I said this last time, I think. But one of the things. One of the many things that I love about this podcast is that once we have read a book together, then that world and those characters belong to us forever. And you can go back and re listen or pick up your own copy and reread, or anytime someone tells you that they've read this book, you can revisit this world by talking with them. Or if someone's looking for a good book to read, you can recommend this book and revisit it that way. So we're saying goodbye to these characters for now, but they'll always be with us now. And that's a wonderful thing that. So Wilkie Collins saves Marian for last. Right? He does her the honor of letting her end the story. So I will save her for last as well. And so I'd like to start with Walter. I want to remind you of the book's very first line. Here's what it. This is the story of what a woman's patience can endure and what a man's resolution can achieve. Okay. So the woman, of course, is Laura, though I think we could add Marian to that description as well. But the woman is Laura and the man is Walter. It's the story. Story of what a man's resolution can achieve. And I think that's right. Once the crime of switching Laura and Anne has been committed. Right. The guiding force of the book is Walter, kind of relentlessly pursuing Laura's identity, or to put it another way, his, like, relentless pursuit of the truth. Walter resolves. That's what it means by his resolution. Right. He resolves to do whatever it takes to. For as long as it takes to get Laura's identity back. Not because he wants her to have her money or her land or anything like that. Not because he's afraid the guys from the madhouse will come and take her back. You know, at first that's an issue, but eventually Fosco tells Marian that he isn't going to do that to her. So his drive to get her identity back doesn't have anything to do with any of those kind of material issues. It's because her identity belongs to her. I mean, what are we if not ourselves, right? What are we if not the embodiment of our inner natures? And to have the world think that Laura wasn't Laura, but was really Anne, well, that wasn't acceptable to Walter just as a matter of principle. And so he resolved to bring her justice, and he did. But I think that Walter's own identity, right, his character arc, let's say in the story, was all about becoming the sort of person who was capable of doing what he did. You know, that first line says that the story is about what a man's resolution can achieve. And at least in my copy, man has like a capital M and woman has a capital W. So this is not just about some random man. It's not about any old guy. It's about what you can do when you are truly a man. And I think that is the journey that Walter was on throughout the course of the novel. The journey from kind of young drawing master to man, capital M. And I think in those last chapters that we read last time, we see the final iteration of his transformation, right? He's married Laura, thus becoming her legal protector, as opposed to Mr. Fairley or Percival or anybody else. He's told Mr. Fairley where to go, essentially. Remember when Walter worked for Mr. Fairley as the drawing master, he had to, like, bring him his box of coins and speak more quietly and not bang the door and everything like that. He had to basically kowtow to Mr. Fairley. But now, no. Walter is a man. Here is what he says, right? He reiterated these remonstrances, he being Mr. Fairley, at every available opportunity until I checked them once for all. By placing him firmly between two inevitable alternatives, I gave him his choice between doing his niece justice on my terms or facing the consequence of a public assertion of her existence in a court of law, right? And afterwards, after he's well and truly established Laura's identity, and in a scene which Carolyn points out in her letter, is clearly the precursor to that now very kind of overdone scene of the detective calling all the relevant people together and revealing how exactly the crime was committed. But in that scene, Walter basically states very clearly that he is now completely autonomous and completely in charge. Here's what he says. He says the only object for which we had entered his doors was accomplished. That I contemplated stopping in no man's house but my own. And that Mr. Fairlie need not entertain the slightest, least apprehension of ever seeing us or hearing from us again. Meaning he is the head of Laura's household now. He has no need for Mr. Fairlie or anyone else. He has completely come into his own. The fulfillment of his mission to restore Laura's identity has caused him to complete this transformation from hapless drawing master to man with a capital M. And what does he do then? Well, he goes off and fathers a child, right? Because he's a man. Okay? And that's what men do. So what can a man's resolution achieve? Right? The complete overthrow of a vast conspiracy. The restoration of a woman's identity, the creation of a family, the protection of the women in it. Essentially the ability to set the world to rights. I mean, things were very, very wrong for such a long time in this story, right? People's identities were confused. Not just Laura's, but Percival's too. Right. Percival claimed to be a baronet, but was just an illegitimate son. Fosco wasn't really Fosco. He had some other name that we never learn. And he was a spy. Even Pesca turned out not to be exactly what he seemed. So everything was hidden or wrong or mixed up, identity wise. And Walter uncovered it all. And. And this speaks a bit to Marian's question in her letter. Although I'll come back to it a bit again later when I speak about Marian's character. Marian, the character. But there was quite a bit of gender confusion going on as well. It wasn't just that Marian kept being compared to a man, although that's part of it. Mr. Fairley was clearly being compared to a woman, even though no one ever really came out and said it. He was very effeminate. He was always going on about his nerves, which is a typically feminine complaint, or would have been at that time. He was supposed to be the man of the house and Laura's protector, but he couldn't even begin to cut it in that department. So Mariana seemed male, Mr. Fairlie seemed female. And Count Fosco had this weird mix of both. Right? He ruled over his wife. He was incredibly vigorous. And people were drawn to him. And he had a sort of magnetism, though the women viewing his dead body at the morgue called him handsome, right? So all that seems very, very masculine. But then he wore all these pastel colored waistcoats and these pants with all this embroidery on them. He cooed at his birds and he screamed at the sight of blood and all of this. So Fosco had this strange, and I think to the Victorian mind at least, this kind of unnatural blend of male and female in him. So there was all this gender confusion, which Walter doesn't change or anything. But in being very clearly and very obviously the man here, he's kind of staking claim to the notion that he at least is writing the world order. He's undoing all this confusion and making things very clear. He's the man, he's in charge. And you can think of that what you want as a modern reader. But I think that is what is going on in the context of the book. Which then brings me, I think, to Laura, because Laura is the woman, capital W. So I know a lot of us had our issues with Laura throughout the book. There's a way in which she's been sort of a non entity. You know, the other characters have kind of leapt off the page and we feel we really know them. But Laura has always remained kind of an enigma, right? Walter and Laura's initial time together, where they fall in love at Limmeridge House, it happened mostly like off camera, so to speak. And essentially Walter told us that they were in love, but we didn't really see it happen. She spent a whole lot of the book kind of shell shocked and childlike. And when she did regain her old self, we sort of had to take Walter's word for that too. You know, we saw her as the kind of hollow shell of herself that she was when she came back from the asylum. But we didn't really get to see what she was like after that, when she felt better and was ready to marry Walter. So again, we sort of had to take Walter's word for it that she was now ready to be a wife and eventually a mother. And part of this, I think, is that Laura is the only one of the three main characters that we never get to hear from in her own words. We never get that really intimate connection with her. The way we got with Marian through her journal and with Walder through all the various narratives that were narrated by him. I mean, we even got really well acquainted with more minor characters like Mr. Fairley and Mr. Gilmore. And ultimately even with Fosco. But Laura always stayed more aloof. You know, we never got to know her, really. We only got glimpses of her through the eyes of the other characters. And. But I think it's worth going back to that first line and remembering that this is the story of what a woman's patience can endure. And I think endure is an interesting word because it implies a kind of strength, right? Endurance is something you have to have at least some kind of inner grit and determination to accomplish. It implies that there is some sort of external force working on you in some kind of negative way, and you've got to withstand that force. You've got to stay true to yourself. You've got to hold on to some core value or some core identity and not give in. And for Laura, we're being told, it was her patience that had to endure something. Essentially, she had to wait and wait calmly and with fortitude, right? What was she waiting for? Well, the restoration of her identity was the big one, but there were little things along the way, right? She had to wait to be reunited with Walter, wait and hold firm instead of signing Percival's document, wait for Anne at the boathouse, wait for Percival to let her out of her room when she was locked up, wait for Marian to come rescue her from the asylum, wait for her mental faculties to return, and on and on. Okay? Laura's strength was in her ability to wait and wait without being freaked out. And yes, she was horribly scarred emotionally by her experience in the madhouse and being told she was Anne, but she waded through that ordeal as well and came out the other side. You know, I think it's hard for us as modern readers to see that as strength, like the ability to wait patiently while awful stuff happens to you doesn't sound to most of us like real strength. We want her to speak up and fight back somehow to take things into her own hands and show some agency, the way that Marian does so often in the book. But for better or worse, that's not who Laura is. Right? Instead, Laura is steadfast and true. She's kind and virtuous and lovely. In the midst of all the gender confusion that was going on, Laura was feminine, as the Victorian readership would have understood that term. And her strength is the quiet strength of a woman. The ability to never falter in her virtue and her sense of right and wrong. The ability to stay kind and virtuous and lovely even in the face of. Of evil deeds and jaded men. Right? The ability to love with a pure love. Those who have been kind to her and loved her in return. And all those qualities, those feminine qualities, survived the conspiracy and her terrible marriage to Percival and her time in the madhouse and all of it. And at the end she takes her rightful place as a wife and mother. But I do think it's worth kind of pulling back a level and just acknowledging that a lot of Laura's character is the way it is for plot purposes. Okay, we touched on this at least once before, I think. But Laura has to be a kind of damsel in distress character because otherwise none of this stuff could have happened to her. Right. I don't think someone like Marian would have married Percival. I don't think someone like Marian would have put up with Percival's treatment or allowed herself to be drugged by Count Fosco or all the various things that had to happen. Plot wise to get Laura switch with Anne Catherick. So Laura has to be somewhat weaker, more trusting, more vulnerable as a character. And for plot purposes, Laura has to be the one that Walter loves. Right. If Walter had fallen in love with Marian and then Laura had become the victim of this whole plot, Walter might have tried to help her, like for Marian's sake, but he wouldn't have become the like justice seeking, avenging angel that we all now know and love. His heart just wouldn't have been in it in the same way. So there are plot reasons why Laura has to be the way she is. And there are plot reasons why we never get a glimpse into her inner world as well, why she's never one of our narrators. And the reason is, of course, because we have to not know for kind of a while whether she is ultimately going to live or die. I mean, Walter gives us a few hints throughout that things are going to turn out okay in some way, but we don't know until the very end that Laura is to going, going to make it out of this alive. And that adds to the suspense of the narrative. And that suspense would be removed if we'd had a narrative from her. So I think it's just worth mentioning that there are plot reasons to make Laura the sort of person that she is, but also that she does represent a sort of Victorian ideal of femininity. So here at the end, when the bad guys have been vanquished and the wrongs have been righted and the confusion and the false identities and everything else have been stripped away, we're left with a husband and a wife, a father and a mother, a man and a woman, capital M, capital W. And Baby Walter, Right. Laura and Walter's baby turns out to be the heir of Limmeridge. And the family gets to move back to Limmeridge House and Limmeridge Estate, where they belong. And this is the writing of the social wrong that's been done to Laura. Right? She was robbed of her place in the landed gentry, her place in the upper classes. And now that, too, has been set to rights. That confusion, that perversion of the rightful order of things has been set right. And I think we're meant to feel that this restores order and morality and correctness to the situation. Which brings me to Marian. Because Marian is, I think, the most real, the most vibrant, the most sort of believable character in the whole book. And I think Wilkie Collins knew it. I don't think this is simply our modern take on Marian. I think Collins knows that Marian is wonderful. And I think that's why he ends the book with her in the way he does. Remember, he says, marian was the good angel of our lives. Let Marian end our story. Okay? But it's interesting what happens to Marian at the end of the story. I think she does get sort of feminized in a way. I mean, calling her an angel has feminine connotations. But also this situation where her role is going to be to live with them forever and take care of their children, that's quite feminine as well. And this scenario, we are told, is what Marian wants. Right. Walter and Laura wonder if maybe they should let her go and live her own life. But it's Marian that says no. She wants to stay. Okay, here's what she says. There can be no parting between us till the last parting of all, meaning until death. Right? My heart and my happiness, Walter, are with Laura. And you wait a little till there are children's voices at your fireside. I will teach them to speak for me in their language. And the first lesson they say to their father and mother shall be, we can't spare our aunt. I mean, it is really touching. I always tear up at that part about the children speaking for her in their language. But I do think that for us, it can kind of feel a little bit like a letdown, right? For us, her happy ending would involve romantic love. You know, I've gotten a few matchmaking suggestions for Marian from you guys, right? Some of you wanted to get with Pesca. Others of you were hoping for a sort of last minute introduction of like, a tall, handsome stranger or something. But many of you wish that she had found love. And I think many of us Feel like it would have been cool if she had some sort of occupation as well, like if she became a female sleuth or someone who helped battered women or something like that. I think that would have felt satisfying. But whatever the situation, I think it's hard for us to feel that she will be completely content and just caring for the presumably many, many babies that Walter and Laura are planning to have. And yet she herself is telling us that this is, in fact, her greatest wish. And so this goes back to Marian's letter. Marian the listener, not Marian the character. This goes back to her letter and to the question of why there was this gender confusion around Marian in the first place. And I do totally agree that Wilkie Collins was not at all trying to imply that Marian felt that she was a man or that there was some sort of gender bending thing going on. I think Marian and everyone who knows Marian is very clear that she is a woman. But I think that in the same way that Mr. Fairley's many traits code female, right? His nerves, his fiddling with his coins, his dereliction of duty as head of the household and all of that, all of that stuff codes female for a Victorian audience, many of Marian's traits code male for that audience as well. So just like no one is confused about whether or not Mr. Fairley is a man. He definitely is. He's just like, sorry, excuse for one. No one is confused about whether Marian is a woman. She totally is. But there are things about her that the audience of the day would have felt didn't quite make sense in a woman, right? Her forthright way of saying what she means, her take charge attitude, her courage in the face of threats from men, her ingenuity, her ability to foil people's plans by using her intellect, all of this stuff, for better or worse, was seen as much more male than female. But, and this is kind of interesting, I think, while Mr. Fairley's feminine attributes make him icky and kind of useless, Marian's masculine attributes actually make her really cool and compelling, even to Victorian sensibilities. Okay, here's what Walter says about Marian, who had never failed us, yet, whose courageous self control did not fail us now, okay? Walter really admires Marian's courage and her ability to not cave under pressure and everything. These masculine attributes that set her apart from the demure, somewhat vapid women of the time, these attributes are actually positive, but they apparently make it hard for regular guys like Walter to feel any kind of romantic feelings towards her. And again, as Marian points out in her letter, this is also for plotline purposes. Right. There can't be any hint of romantic feelings between Walter and Marian because Walter has to stay true to his feelings for Laura throughout the story without wavering once. Okay? So Marian has to have something about her that kind of sets her outside the normal dynamics between men and women. Otherwise, it would be hard to understand why Walter is picking Laura over Marian, since he clearly values Marian very much and has a kind of intellectual connection with her. Her, which for us at least, is one of the things that we look for in a romantic relationship. So I think plot wise, anyway, these masculine traits kind of allow Willie Collins not to have to deal with the potential love triangle that might otherwise have developed between Walter, Marian and Laura. But none of this is to say that Marian isn't wonderful in her own right. She is. Collins knows it, Walter knows it, Lauren knows it, and, of course, Count Fosco knew it, too. And I think there's a way in which Fosco's disinterest in the right way to do things, right, the correct moral order that I was talking about before is what allows him to see Marian in a romantic light in a certain sense. I mean, Fosco has, like we were just saying, he has masculine and feminine traits. And Marian also has masculine and feminine traits. And Fosco is not like Walter. Walter wants to right wrongs and color inside the lines and set everything right that had gone wrong wrong. But Fosco doesn't care about any of that. So he's like, yeah, I'm into this Marian woman because she's wonderful in all the ways that we all agree she's wonderful. And it doesn't matter to me that she steps outside the boundaries of what's expected, because I also step outside the boundaries of what's expected. Except that, of course, this also means that the Count doesn't care at all for laws or morals or other things that are right or correct. So it's complicated. Right? Right. But that's what makes it interesting. But I do think that ultimately Marian has to exist within the confines of her social world, because if she doesn't, she'll be no better than the Count, essentially. And I think also it's important to say that from our more modern vantage, point, Marian clearly is very feminine. Right. We don't code her bravery and her ingenuity and her intellectual capacity as masculine. And she is also graceful and good at keeping house and compassionate and caring and all of this. So to us, she's just a really cool woman. And I think even to Wilkie Collins, she was as well. He just couldn't make her a romantic creature because the plot didn't allow for it and also because his Victorian sensibilities kind of couldn't quite get there. But as Rachel says in her letter, a sidekick can be a hero. And Marian certainly is a hero of this book and I absolutely love her and I know many of you do too. So the good guys win. Order is restored. Percival's dead into fire. Fosco is dead on a table in the Paris morgue with everyone staring at his dead body. Laura's identity is restored. Her inheritance is restored through her son. Anne is buried as she wanted, next to Mrs. Fairley. All is right with the world, right? It's a wild, wild ride. But we made it. We made it here to the end. You know, I could talk about this book forever, but we do have to stop eventually and I think this is as good a place as any. But if you would like to keep talking about this book, as I said at the beginning, please do consider heading over to the drawing room tomorrow and joining our tea time. It's Tuesday, May 27th at 8pm Eastern and we will keep talking about this book. There is more to say. You know, I chose to just end it by just talking about the three main characters, but we could go into lots more detail about Fosco or Percival or whoever. And I'm sure there's things that, you know, you would like to talk about that I didn't mention here. So that's the place to do it. Please join us over there in the drawing room tomorrow. And of course, please join us for Summer Session. That's what's happening next. The next episode will be on Monday, June 2, where we'll begin our discussion of fairy tales. I just want to thank you all one more time. Thank you for being a part of Storytime for grown ups in general. Thank you for being a part of this book. This show is nothing without you. Your comments, your questions, your donations, your additions in the drawing room, all of those things are what make this show what it is. And I'm so truly, truly grateful to you for being here. And thank you for coming along with me on the this insane journey of the Woman in White. So join me next week to dive into Summer Session. Make sure you're subscribed so you don't miss what the next book is going to be. And I hope that I'll see you in the drawing room tomorrow. Thanks so much for being here. Thank you so much for listening. Storytime for Grown Ups is now in summer session. We will be discussing fairy tales all summer long in weekly episodes which will drop on Mondays. I very much hope you'll join us.