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The First Epoch: Part 1, Chapter 1
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Woman in White, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Evidence and Law
Morality, Crime, and Punishment
Identity and Appearance
Marriage and Gender
Class, Industry, and Social Place
Summary
Analysis
It is the last day of July and a muggy evening in London. Walter Hartright, a poor drawing master who is in ill health because of the polluted air in London, leaves his cramped, stuffy room and goes to visit his mother and sister in Hampstead, which he does twice a week. On the way he thinks about his plans for the autumn and how he is going to earn money. His father, who has been dead for several years, was also a drawing master and worked very hard to become successful and have some money to leave to his family. Walter knows he should feel grateful for this, but his mood is gloomy as he approaches his mother’s house.
Although living conditions in Victorian cities improved throughout the nineteenth century, middle-class workers like Walter still lived in cramped and unhygienic conditions and the air in cities like London was notoriously polluted with smoke from factories. Walter’s father was clearly a hard-working industrial man to save up an inheritance for his family on a middle-class income, and Walter feels pressure to live up to his father’s example.
Themes
Walter arrives at his mother’s house and is greeted enthusiastically by his friend Professor Pesca, an Italian who Walter once saved from drowning. Pesca is an extremely short man who left Italy “for political reasons” and who is so grateful for his political asylum in England that he has thrown himself wholeheartedly into English life and customs. He is profusely grateful to Walter for saving him and constantly looks for a way to repay Walter for his help. Walter reflects that if he had not saved Pesca from drowning, he would never have happened upon the events that he is about to narrate.
Pesca’s political history and his reasons for coming to England are unknown and slightly mysterious. Pesca is clearly very happy to have escaped from Italy because he embraces English culture so enthusiastically. This reflects his cheerful and optimistic temperament and shows that he is a grateful person (and would also be comforting to Collins’s English readers). He is doggedly loyal to Walter, who once saved his life, and loyal to the country that has given him political asylum. Walter hints that Pesca will play an important role in the story.
Themes
