why the white faced women have white faces

[L Lawliet]

Ever since TBB we have known the 2 white faces women as members as Count Olaf's troupe and have helped him with his Nefarious, a word which here means evil and wicked, plans. Up until The Slippery Slope we don't know very much about either of them. On page 304 of TSS is says " 'We don't think it was a coincidence that our home burned to the ground, ' said the first woman. 'We lost a sibling in that fire, Olaf.' ". Earlier in the book on page 114 one of them says " Having a white face is worse than both of your situations", and we know that they wear their make up at all times. Combining both these quotes I believe that TWFW where home at the time of their house fire and where badly burned in the blaze. Thus their need to cover their faces in white powder to hide scars.

-L

Discuss:        

[Dante]

That seems like a reasonable concluision to draw, and if you tie it together with one of the remarks made by the man with a beard but no hair and the woman with hair but no beard as they're plotting the imminent capture of the Snow Scouts, it's implied that the villains tend to burn down the homes of anyone they "recruit," perhaps so that their captives have no home to return to and no alternative to villainy.

[L Lawliet]

Makes sense. When I was reading ATWQ WDYSHL the twin sisters that worked for the knight family (their names have slipped my mind) reminded me very much of the 2 white faced women.

[lorelai]

I like your conclusion, L. Zada and Zora reminded me a bit of the women too. If you want to think they're the same, it makes them cooking in WDYSHL and being appreciative of Sunny's cooking in TSS aneat parallel.

[L Lawliet]

Jan 2, 2016 14:18:19 GMT -5 lorelai said:

I like your conclusion, L. Zada and Zora reminded me a bit of the women too. If you want to think they're the same, it makes them cooking in WDYSHL and being appreciative of Sunny's cooking in TSS aneat parallel.

I didn't really think about Zada and Zora (thank you!) being similar to the white faced women until i was looking for the part about them talking about the fire and I read where they lifted Sunny's casserole dish in unison and it reminded me of Zora and Zada.

-L 

[A comet crashing into Earth]

I never thought that the white-faced women might be hiding facial burns, but it does seem like an appropriate and interesting backstory for a member of the troupe. I'm not much one for having headcanons when it comes to ASOUE, but some ideas are so elegant that it gets difficult not just to accept them.

I don't really think they're so similarity to Zada and Zora, though - while the White-faced women's actions and lines in ASOUE are too few to give us a very comprehensive idea of their personalities, they do seem to clash with those of Z&Z. Besides, Z&Z are twins (I believe), and the WFW claim to have lost a sibling (sister? Triplet? I don't remember the exact word they used). When discussing the Quagmires, Snicket makes it clear that there's a clear distinction between 'twins' and 'triplets who lost a sibling'. If these two sets of characters were supposed to be thematically connected, I don't think DH would've made them differ in a way which he goes out of his way to stress as important elsewhere.

[Hermes]

I don't think anything is said about the WFW being twins or triplets; we only know that they are sisters because of that line. So they could be Z and Z as far as that goes.

On the other hand, I had always had the impression that they were children when their house burnt down, and that, as the sinister duo's words suggest, they were recruited at that time, which means their life as maids to the Knights is hard to fit into the story. (And if O burnt their house down when they were children, they must be younger than him.)

[lorelai]

I agree about adopting explanations--I'm rather fond of the idea, first mentioned on this site, that Josephine went to Curdled Cave to wait for Widdershins and just couldn't convey this to the Baudelaires, among others.
Oh I don't think there's anything truly connecting Z&Z to the white-faced women, just that the cooking is a nice link that someone could use to connect them if they were inclined. As for the dead sibling, sibling is the only word that's used, as L quoted, and we don't know how the white-faced women are related, but it's pretty clear the sibling isn't a twin/triplet, given how DH uses the term. They could be twins who lost an older or younger sibling, or sisters of differing ages who lost a brother or sister; we're left to speculate.

[L Lawliet]

Thanks for all the responses everyone!

As for the Z&Z being the WFW i was only stating that i found an interesting similarity between the 2 sets of siblings. I do find the theory interesting although unlikely.

Oncnce again thanks so much!

-L

[gliquey]

The idea that the white powder hides their scars is a very interesting one. I think the line that makes it most plausible is the one from TSS above. I've always considered that passage (p.114-115) to be nothing more than a bit of humour - Fernald complains about his idiosyncratic physical abnormality, then Kevin complains about his, which is quite silly, and then it culminates with the white-faced women complaining about putting makeup on, which is even sillier. However, there's no indication that the white-faced women are anywhere near as self-pitying or idiotic as some of the other troupe members, so there could be a good explanation for their contempt of their white faces.

One reason Handler might have originally thought of for giving the women white faces (combined with the idea that each troupe member had to have one unique trait) would be that they are actors. We see Justice Strauss excited about getting a makeover backstage before the performance of The Marvelous Marriage; well maybe the white-faced women liked their powdered faces enough to decide to keep them on / reapply powder all the time.

But them having to put makeup on because of scarring from the fire that left them orphans would explain their negative attitude towards their white faces, and also nicely links together two parts of TSS, which is one of the few novels where they get anything more than passing mentions as part of the list of troupe members (along with their last-minute reveal in TAA and job performing the cranioectomy in THH).

[Skelly Craig]

We've already discussed this, actually, but it's nice for this to have its own thread. I think I read this theory on the Snicket Wikipage first.

[Dante]

Jan 4, 2016 18:39:14 GMT -5 gliquey said:

But them having to put makeup on because of scarring from the fire that left them orphans would explain their negative attitude towards their white faces, and also nicely links together two parts of TSS, which is one of the few novels where they get anything more than passing mentions as part of the list of troupe members (along with their last-minute reveal in TAA and job performing the cranioectomy in THH).

That's true; it's easy to forget, but the white-faced women, up to TSS, were always the least important and least characterised troupe members. (Well, apart from the wart-faced man.) I'm not really sure why that is; there doesn't seem to be anything precluding them from being as funny as the other troupe members. Top of the list for the TAA rewrite in my head is a scene where the children have to sneak into the kitchens to steal disguise elements, and there's a stealth situation around the metal-masked cooks and some ambiguous yet sinister hints.

[J-Bird]

Jan 4, 2016 18:39:14 GMT -5 gliquey said:

One reason Handler might have originally thought of for giving the women white faces (combined with the idea that each troupe member had to have one unique trait) would be that they are actors. We see Justice Strauss excited about getting a makeover backstage before the performance of The Marvelous Marriage; well maybe the white-faced women liked their powdered faces enough to decide to keep them on / reapply powder all the time.

But them having to put makeup on because of scarring from the fire that left them orphans would explain their negative attitude towards their white faces, and also nicely links together two parts of TSS, which is one of the few novels where they get anything more than passing mentions as part of the list of troupe members (along with their last-minute reveal in TAA and job performing the cranioectomy in THH).

I always thought that they were just actors doing actor stuff, but the house drama with Olaf and their villainy makes obvious that the notion of two normal actors on Olaf's troupe is silly. On another note, does having someone burn down your house and then recruit you to do evil make sense? This probably didn't happen when TWFW were children because Olaf hates children. I don't know.

[lorelai]

The WFW might not have been recruited. I always thought some of Olaf's troupe had to come to him as adults and simply had villainous bents, unrelated to VFD (probably because my exposure to ASOUE was with the audiobook of TBB that had that interview with Handler/Snicket, and he takes pains to mention the weirdness/wrongness of meeting Olaf and deciding you wanted him as a boss).
One of them says she'd never heard of the Snicket file when she first joined (TSS chapter 3), so it's plausible they never heard of V.F.D. and joined as adults--maybe even as actors at first, and the reason they use the "fight fire with fire" expression when we learn about their past is because they suspected/knew the fire that took their sibling was arson? At any rate, my reading was always that they're accusing Olaf when they mention the fire, and the series certainly implies adults are much easier to trick and lie to than children.

[Dante]

One of the white-faced women says on TSS page 304, "We don't want to participate in your schemes anymore. [...] For a while, it was fun to fight fire with fire, but we've seen enough flames and smoke to last our whole lives." This indicates that they probably joined Olaf voluntarily.