Katherine Gutierrez

There’s Something About Marian: Feminist Disability and Crip Futurity in Wilkie Collins’s The Woman in White

Much of the literary criticism and scholarship surrounding Wilkie Collins’s The Woman in White focuses on Marian Halcombe, more specifically, her unique gender presentation, and defiance of Victorian social norms. Marian has always fascinated readers as a complex, multi-faceted, gender-variant, Victorian character. But what if our obsession with Marian has as much to do with disability and crip visibility as it does her gender non-conformity? From a feminist framework, this paper will demonstrate how Marian is the embodiment of Alison Kafer’s conceptualization of crip futurity and crip time through the narrative structure of Marian’s diary, the impact her disabled state has upon the temporality of the novel, and her successful creation of an alternate future for herself and her sister.

This paper will argue that a feminist, disability studies, and crip theory interpretation of The Woman in White has much to add to the conversations surrounding social construction, ideology formation, social justice, and human variation. By addressing the borders of disability both theoretically, and through a reading of The Woman in White, I intend to show that disability studies, feminist theory, and crip theory are all integral to our understanding of the novel. Only when Marian Halcombe is understood as a transgressive crip figure, can the scope of her impact on crip futurity and the imagined futures of disability and its importance be made fully apparent to a modern reader. Marian Halcombe’s character truly illustrates how vital looking back in literature is, in order to look forward to the future of disability and social change.

Katherine Guiterrez is a PhD Candidate at St. Louis University.