THE STRANGE CASE OF MARIAN HALCOMBE'S QUEER DISGUISE

: In Wilkie Collins’s The Woman in White (1860), Marian Halcombe was never a man trapped in the body of a woman but a woman in disguise. Marian voluntarily sequesters her femininity and uses the man in her face to produce an unwomanliness that allows her to live in a limbo of liminality: her masculine façade is a weapon for escaping woman’s dependent femininity; her mustache protects her from being transformed into an object of desire. Miss Halcombe uses her ugliness as a weapon for independence in the Victorian system of gender stereotypes. Marian’s ultimate transformation allows her to outwit men and trespass the narrowest spaces of the masculine sphere during the first part of The Woman in White. This article revisits Wilkie Collins’ novel to argue that Miss Halcombe constructs a new identity by adopting a masculine façade and embodying traditionally masculine personality traits.