The theme of marriage in Wilkie Collins’ 

The Women in White is portrayed as a great

danger for women. Unlike in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, marriage is

considered the only salvation for women financially stable. The women’s characters

in this novel are deprived of their rights and independence, while men gain everything

in marriage. Several marriages in The Women in White emphasize the gender

disparities between men and women who are inferior to men. In marriage, Men

become more powerful while women lose their power to be subjected by men. In

other words, marriage creates unbalanced power between men and women. The case

is not different for rich women, but it worsens because their husbands inherit their

wealth and control their wives. Marriage displays the harshest suppression for women

as it establishes a hierarchy where men at the top and women at the bottom.

The protagonists only understand this essential autonomy after their blindness

shows them the starkest realities of human nature, tests their resolve to survive, and

ultimately leads them to meaningful, loving relationships.

Saramago examines what this physical “white blindness” (in which people only see

white light) does to his protagonists spiritually: for instance, after regaining his

sight, the doctor thinks that perhaps the world is already populated by “blind people

who can see, but do not see.”