When I encountered this image during our class’s trout gallery visit, it quite literally stopped me in my tracks. Salammbô is visually stunning in its composition as well as narratively intriguing. It instantly sparked several questions about the circumstances of the print as well as its cultural significance and origin. I was fascinated to learn that this beautiful work is inspired by a book of the same name by famous French novelist Gustav Flaubert. The book tells the story of Salammbo, the daughter of the chief magistrate of Carthage, and the subject of this print. In the novel, Salammbo communes with a python, a symbol of the powerful moon goddess Tanith to gain the courage to steal back a protective mystical veil from the attacking mercenaries. In doing so, she saves the people of Carthage from a violent siege.
When I first saw this image, I was shocked by the immediate physical danger that Salammbô seems to be in. The snake is portrayed as very large and almost menacing at first glance, with its jaws poised dangerously close to her face. However, upon closer inspection, I noticed the sensual way in which the python is constricting itself around her as if it is clinging to her curves. Additionally, Salammbô’s facial expression is one of ecstasy and pleasure, which is surprising given the circumstances. Her glance towards the viewer is almost inviting, which evokes ideas of exhibitionism. The shading of the man in the background also suggests that he is unseen by Salammbô, therefore assuming the role of an unsolicited voyeur. Themes such as these were very popular in French salon artwork at the time, and pieces like this were especially appreciated by Victorian male viewers.
For Victorians, sexuality was meant to be controlled and subjugated in everyday life whenever possible. Women were held to extremely high standards of modesty, and limited to procreative sex with their socially acceptable, lawfully wedded husbands. They were meant to uphold the image of “the Angel in the House”, pure and uncorrupted by the outside world, unable to lead lives of their own or do anything really without the permission of men. Stories like Salammbo directly contradict these social expectations in a fantastical way. The subject of this striking work of art is daring, powerful, and yes, sexual on her own terms! Unlike Biblical Eve, who was tricked by a snake into succumbing to temptation and causing the fall of man, Salammbô is entwining herself with this python because she believes it will save her people. Therefore, this piece stands in stark contrast to many of the widely held beliefs about women at the time. Salammbô’s sexuality in this print differs from both typical associations with the femme fatale (she is supposedly using it to do moral good) and the prudish and restrictive connotations associated with the real-world Victorian body. Based on these elements, it makes sense that the Victorians would be both fascinated and intimidated by this work, as it represents both an interesting foreign culture and “indecent” ideas about female sexuality.
Sources:
Williams, Kate. “The Victorians were no prudes, but women had to play by men’s rules”. The Gaurdian, 23 May 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/may/23/queen-victoria-sex-nudes-paintings-prudes-women. Accessed 9 April 2025.
The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica. “Salammbô”. Encyclopedia Britannica, 30 Apr. 2015, https://www.britannica.com/topic/Salammbo. Accessed 9 April 2025.
Taj Mahal-Agra is a really interesting image to me when it comes to the Victorian’s and British Colonialism. In the background, we see the Taj Mahal and some surrounding buildings as well as a far-reaching body of water that comes into the foreground of the print. Also in the foreground are some ruins of what once was possibly a building or some other piece of architecture that is now crumbling. The ruins in the foreground stand as a staunch difference compared to the beautiful and elaborate building that is the Taj Mahal. The ruins also signify the age of India, how it is an old country which contains old buildings and ruins.
While the Taj Mahal was built many years prior to Britain colonizing and gaining control of India, the difference between the ruins and the Taj Mahal shows an idealized belief of India before and after British control. Before British control, India was crumbling and falling apart. Now, it is able to remain as one structure, beautiful and exquisite. As well, the Taj Mahal is staunchly white while the ruins are much darker. This color difference makes it harder for the ruins to blend into the Taj Mahal. The dark color shows years and years of dirt and sand accumulating on the walls. Meanwhile, the Taj Mahal is pristine. This difference follows with the changes that England was implementing in India. They created a railroad system, abolished slavery and infanticide, all things that seem really good. Meanwhile, they also forced high taxes on Indian citizens and left many of them impoverished by selling goods at high prices but buying at extremely low prices (BBC).
The three men in the foreground also follow with this comparison. None of them are clothed in a way the British would consider proper. One of them is fetching water and one of them has a basket next to him and his garment is laying on top of him to make it seem like he was in the water fishing. The last person is looking in the other direction and has a shield on his back. His front is facing away so it cannot be seen what he may be holding but it seems he is on lookout in case anyone attacks. The way the two men collect fish and water is interesting too because they are not industrialized in any way. They are using their hands and catching the fish and filling the water in what would be considered the hard way.
The fact that there is a man on watch shows that there is a level of fear that they could be attacked. To a British, this could be seen as a barbaric community. Three men from a pre industrialized India, or an India before British rule. The body of water separates the men and ruins from the Taj Mahal and the India that the British rule over and consider better. They don’t want this version of India to seep into the westernized, idealized version that Britain has created.
While the portrayals of Western women and non-Western women were quite different in Victorian era art, one theme that seemed to be present in both representations was the role of nurturer. While there are multiple examples of this theme across the artworks, I will focus on two. My example of the Western nurturer is “Feeding the Motherless.” In this image, a woman is feeding a nest of young birds. As they have no mother, she must step in to provide them with motherly love. This not only emphasizes the expectation that women be caring and protective towards the young, but it also shows that this expectation extends past children and applies to all creatures (including animals and husbands).
“Within the Lines Siege of Agra 1857” E.W. Fallerton
My non-Western example comes from the image, “Within the Lines Siege of Agra 1857.” In this artwork, a woman is looking at and cradling a baby. The woman is portrayed as non-Western (presumably Indian, as the title suggests) through her tanned skin and the scarf on her head. According to the title of the work, the woman and the child are in Agra during a time of violent conflict. Here, the theme of protection arises again as it seems like she is working to keep herself and the child safe from the dangers outside. The main way that this image differs from “Feeding the Motherless” is the fact that the woman is experiencing a conflict of some kind, furthering the imperialist stereotype that non-Westerners are savage and violent. Yet, despite this, the message of motherhood and nurturing still persists, showing that no matter whether a woman is Western or not, she is expected to act as a caregiver.
Re-introduced as the White King’s Messengers, the March Hare and the Mad Hatter of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland are transformed in Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass. In a play on regional pronunciations, the Hare becomes “Haigha” and the Hatter, “Hatta.” However, the recurring characters are only identifiable through the embedded illustrations by John Tenniel. Carroll’s description within the narrative itself completely obscures the character’s familiar identities. Upon approach to Alice and the White King, “Haigha” is described as “skipping up and down, and wriggling like an eel…with his great hands spread out like fans” (Carroll 186). Although the first action suggests the hopping of a hare, the subsequent simile likening him to an “eel” and mention of his large “hands” confuses our understanding of what “Haigha” is. Is he a human or an animal? If the latter, what species?
Immediately following this idiosyncratic description, the White King declares “Haigha” is “an Anglo-Saxon Messenger” and explains his odd movement as a result of his “Anglo-Saxon attitudes” (Carroll 186). Here, Carroll seems to be using the historical definition of “attitude,” meaning “[a] posture of the body proper to, or implying, some action or mental state” (“Attitude” n. 2.a.). The description of “Haigha” as “Anglo-Saxon” also identifies him as human, complicating the initial description. Furthermore, this description displaces this character in time, since the Anglo-Saxons lived several centuries ago, perhaps suggesting that the Looking-Glass World exists somewhere outside of our linear chronology.
Fig. 1
“Hatta” is introduced in a similarly vague manner, watching the fight “with a cup of tea in one hand and a piece of bread-and-butter in the other” (Carroll 189). While the tea and bread reference the first book’s “mad tea party,” this new version of “Hatta” is neither mad nor a hatter. While identifiably human, “Hatta” is not labeled as “Anglo-Saxon. However, his character is similarly displaced in time, at least within the narrative, as he first appears in the White Queen’s story on page 164 (Fig. 1). The White Queen uses “the King’s Messenger” as an example of “living backwards,” serving a prison sentence for a crime has not yet been tried for, or even committed (Carroll 164). This story is illustrated by an image on the opposite side of “Hatta” chained up in a jail cell, his elusive hat hanging on the wall above his head. “Hatta” is thus aligned with the concept of “living backwards,” jumbling chronological clarity.
While “Hatta” appears twenty pages prior to his official entry into the narrative, “Haigha” is not given visual form until noticeably after his introduction. The first drawing of “Haigha” comes on page 190 and pictures him retrieving a sandwich from his bag to hand to the King (Fig. 2). This illustration breaks into the text a full two pages after this action has occurred, scrambling the relationship between the textual and visual narratives that are being told. This divide is accentuated by the recognizability of the March Hare in Tenniel’s drawing as a hare (albeit with hands), opposing the vaguely human description in the text.
Fig. 2
A second illustration on the opposite page (191) features “Haigha” and “Hatta” at last in the same frame, in which the “latta” (latter) sips from a teacup, a half-eaten piece of bread held in his other hand (Fig. 3). This drawing closely mirrors the character’s textual introduction, yet Tenniel has notably added a top hat, the identifiable accessory of the Mad Hatter. While Carroll’s writing obscures the clarity of these characters’ identities, Tenniel’s images work in contrast to help the reader find familiar faces in a bizarre, unfamiliar world.
Overall, the effect of this dissonance between text and image, interwoven together within this book, disrupts the reader’s perception of time within the narrative as well as its characters. Embodying the uncertain linearity of a dreamscape, the Looking-Glass World confuses our understanding of reality and reliability.
Perhaps the most recognized cultural export from Lewis Carroll’s 1871 novel Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There, the poem “Jabberwocky” first appears in a book Alice discovers during her initial encounter with the Red Queen and King in the looking-glass room. At first glance, “Jabberwocky” is complete nonsense, with about a quarter of its verbiage entirely products of Carroll’s mind (known as nonce words); Alice herself can hardly make sense of the poem, only able to deduce that “somebody killed something” (Carroll). However, she additionally notes that the poem “[fills her] head with ideas,” though she cannot fully articulate them (Carroll). It seems that “Jabberwocky” may be more familiar than it appears.
In short, “Jabberwocky” details the defeat of the monstrous Jabberwock at the hands of an unnamed protagonist and his heroic reception with the prize of the monster’s head. Carroll structures the tale of the Jabberwock as a ballad, consisting of seven quatrains. In a traditional ballad, the first and third lines of each quatrain would be written in iambic tetrameter, and the second and fourth lines would be written in iambic trimeter. With the exception of one line, Carroll follows iambic rhythms, but he alters the traditional ballad meter by placing only the fourth line in trimeter:
’Twas bri-llig, and the sli-thy toves
Did gyre and gim-ble in the wabe:
All mim-sy were the bor-o-goves,
And the mome raths out-grabe.
Even without knowledge of technical terminology for meters, a Victorian reader who might be familiar with more traditional ballads would subconsciously (if not consciously) pick up on this auditory resemblance. This similarity in form, coupled with the poem’s narrative structure—the hero’s journey, made more clear by Humpty Dumpty’s later clarification of some “nonsense terms”—establishes that Carroll is directly referencing and twisting the traditional form of the ballad poem.
Each stanza of “Jabberwocky” serves a distinct narrative purpose, allowing it to be easily unpacked and analyzed. Humpty Dumpty explains several of these nonce words to Alice within the first quatrain, allowing it to be somewhat translated: it was four o’clock in the afternoon, and the lithe toves were ambling about the grass near a sundial. The birds were miserable, and the lost pigs were bellowing. Carroll establishes the known, which allows the protagonist to journey away from it once they hear their call to action. This call materializes in the second quatrain, in which the protagonist’s father warns him of the dangers that lurk. He seems hesitant to face this threat in the third, ultimately loitering until the Jabberwock appears in the fourth. He slays the beast in the fifth, and returns home with his spoils in the sixth. The seventh quatrian fully repeats the first, confirming to the reader that normalcy has been restored.
Carroll closely follows the structure of the hero’s journey, a narrative that Alice would certainly be familiar with even as a child. Ultimately, though “Jabberwocky” speaks of creatures and locations unfamiliar, Carroll bridges the gap between Wonderland and our world with just enough difference to warp the familiar past recognition.
After Alice becomes a queen, she tries to enter through a doorway, but stops when she cannot figure out which door to enter based on her position. She remarks, “…and then I’ll ring the –the-which bell must I ring?’ she went on, very much puzzled by names. I’m not a visitor, and I’m not a servant. There ought to be one marked ‘Queen,’ you know-” (Carroll 207). This reminded me of the discussions of sign, signifier, and signified that we had in class. The words above of the door, “servant” and “visitor,” carry no real meaning and do not modify the door in any significant way; the door still opens and closes the same way no matter what it is labelled as. Much like Humpty Dumpty’s explanation of the Jabberwocky poem’s words, this scene enforces the subjective nature of words. For example, even though no part of the definition of “visitor” signifies that Alice should not be able to open the door, Alice assigns her own additional meaning to the word that prevents her entering.
On the flip side, however, Alice is creating new definitions of words in order to maintain a balance in the upside-down world. Alice’s roles as pawn and queen were well defined, the change from one to the other being defined by a physical signifier (the crown). Now that she has progressed from a pawn to the Queen, she does not want to be associated with a lower hierarchical level. In the quotation, “ought” is italicized, drawing attention to the importance of traditionally practiced social standards.
Thus, Alice’s apprehension at entering into through the door is based in paradox. She makes up new definitions of the words above the door in order to reinforce the very real hierarchies she lives in. Perhaps Carroll was attempting to poke fun at how rank and social status tied people to certain groups, professions, and neighborhoods in the real world. Although these distinctions are arbitrary, they still reflect the power of words and labels to limit people’s movement.
As an artist paints personhood and life into a painting, viewers, too, observe the life of the subject. Though, how do concerns of consent to view these figures given personhood place shape Victorian visual culture? Victorian obsession with wanting the power to look and observe at what cannot look back at them reveals a disconnect between the control of the artist and the lack thereof of the woman in The Fair Dreamer Illman Brothers painting.
The woman’s lack of power in the ability to look at her viewers relates to her physical positioning on the tree as her pose is passive with her sleeping, yet potentially sexually suggestive, inviting a dangerous unwanted gaze in her direction. The arm’s resting across the forehead, her clinging to an emerging branch from above, and the dangling of her dainty feet suggest the absurdity and staging of the painting as she is hanging onto a tree’s form that does not seem to want to hold onto her. The open posture resting on a tree alluding to resting on a bed warrants her form to a scrutinizing gaze riddled with sexual desires. The painting’s layout of a posed woman in an untamed natural world gives agency to the male viewers’ gaze as the woman cannot advocate for her own desires but instead fulfills the needs of the people she was painted for—audiences viewing her framed canvas existence. Her powerlessness in an unconscious state becomes over-romanticized with the woman’s beauty and title, The Fair Dreamer, as her Victorian lace, silk dress, hat, perfect side profile, and fair skin embed themselves into her dreamy, awe inspiring aesthetic Victorian appeal and distract from the problematic dynamic of watching an unconscious woman.
At first glance, the summer’s day depicting a woman’s restful moment from her boat ride placed in the lower right-hand corner is overwhelmingly beautiful. The curve of the large trunk, the wispy leaves, long weeds, water, and mountains set the pastoral landscape, though the woman’s materialism with her extravagant way of dress contrasts her relationship to nature. Her passive and sexually suggestive body rests against the tree as if it has melted into its curves and yet, her fabric juxtaposes those natural curves, making her body unnatural. Her way of dress and access to a secluded spot transported by a boat suggests her high social standing with wealth and female mobility. She is the epitome of Victorian consumption with her fabrics unnaturally set against a dark trunk, taking up space on the print. Her displacement in a natural world as an unnatural, consuming and materialist being is exoticized. Exiting an era of Victorian art that was once “placid, sexless, emphatically un-mystical domesticity that dominated British art” and instead entering a “…mixture of mysticism and ‘fleshliness’ (i.e., sensuousness”), especially in connection with female subjects,” understanding women as sexual entities in fantasy worlds proliferated this exoticism (Victorian People and Ideas, Altick 1973, 290). Just as viewers overpower the woman’s experience, the aestheticism of this fantasy overpowers the reality of women’s changing roles with the New Woman movement. This print begs the absurd question, why resist the social ills of a patriarchy when you can daydream in fantasy land?
Altick, Richard D. “The Nature of Art and Its Place in Society.” Victorian People and Ideas: A Companion for the Modern Reader of Victorian Literature, W.W. Norton, 1973.
In Fantasy: The Literature of Subversion, critic Rosemary Jackson offers a generic analysis to help better understand fantasy. To Jackson, “[t]he fantastic exists in the hinterland between ‘real’ and ‘imaginary,’ shifting the relations between them through its indeterminacy” (35). As a genre of subversion, fantasy tests the bounds of reality. By “[p]resenting that which cannot be, but is, fantasy exposes a culture’s definitions of that which can be” (23). Fantasy primarily accomplishes its subversive goals by using motifs of invisibility, transformation, and, notably, non-signification. Frequently, fantasy foregrounds “the impossibility of naming [an] unnameable presence, [a] ‘thing’ which can be registered in the text only as absence and shadow” (39). This emphasis on non-signification easily applies to Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There (1871). According to Jackson, “Carroll’s Alice books…reveal his reliance upon portmanteau words and nonsense utterances as a shift towards language as signifying nothing, and the fantastic itself as such a language” (Jackson 40). Alice enters a world of “semiotic chaos, and her acquired language systems cease to be of any help” (141). In Wonderland and the Looking-Glass, “[t]he signifier is not secured by the weight of the signified: it begins to float free” (40). Though Jackson provides a thoughtful and thorough analysis of the novels, I would argue that she fails to account for a fundamental aspect of Carroll’s texts: John Tenniel’s illustrations.
As Jackson points out, fantasy highlights “problems of vision” (45). “In a culture which equates the ‘real’ with the ‘visible’ and gives the eye dominance over other sense organs,” she writes, “the un-real is that which is in-visible” (45). Yet in the Alice books, Carroll makes the unreal visible and the unspeakable seeable through John Tenniel’s illustrations. Carroll and Tenniel worked in close collaboration when designing the Alice illustrations. In fact, Tenniel might have even based his drawings on original sketches created by Carroll himself (Hancher 39). Historian Michael Hancher rightly argues that Tenniel’s illustrations “make up the other half of the text, and readers are wise to accept no substitutes” (5). Without both halves, the Alice books do not work. The illustrations do not serve as mere adornments to the plot; they actively contextualize and shape it.
At multiple points in the text, Carroll does not even attempt to describe the fantastical creatures he creates. Instead, he defers to Tenniel’s illustrations. When Alice encounters “a Gryphon lying fast asleep in the sun,” the narrator directly addresses the reader in a parenthetical aside: “If you don’t know what a Gryphon is, look at the picture” (80). Similarly, when Alice encounters the King of Hearts at a trial, she notices he wears “his crown over [his] wig” (94). Again, instead of describing this unusual attire, the narrator instructs the reader to “look at the frontispiece if you want to see how he did it” (94). The unspeakable—or at least the hard to explain—is made knowable through illustrations.
At other points in the text, Tenniel’s illustrations ground Carroll’s nonsense words by attaching them to concrete, visible objects. When Alice reads “Jabberwocky,” for instance, she remarks that the poem is “rather hard to understand” (132). As readers, we know that this is because the poem is nothing but nonsense; Carroll explicitly tells the reader in the preface that the terms in “Jabberwocky” are “new words” of his invention (115). Still, Tenniel provides the nonsensical word “Jabberwocky” a signified object to cling to. Before looking at Tenniel’s illustration, the reader only knows that the evil Jabberwocky has “jaws that bite,” “claws that catch,” “eyes of flame,” and some sort of “head” (130). After looking at Tenniel’s illustration, though, they can completely fill in the blanks left by Carroll’s sparse description. Tenniel takes significant artistic liberties, creating a monstrous creature with wings, antennae, whiskers, scales, and a long, twisting tail (131). The miniature warrior at the creature’s feet is undoubtedly the “beamish boy” of the poem, poised to strike the creature’s head off with his “vorpal sword” (130). Since the sword of Tenniel’s illustration looks like a typical knight’s weapon, the reader can assume that the nonsensical adjective “vorpal” means something along the lines of “sharp” or “dangerous” rather than “curved” or “tiny” (131). Similarly, the average trees in the background of the illustration indicate that a “Tumtum tree” is not a particularly remarkable plant (130). As far as the viewer can see, the Tumtum trees in the forest do not grow candy or sprout upside-down. According to Tenniel’s illustration, a Tumtum forest looks just like any other. Jackson argues that Carroll’s nonsense words “float free” without signified objects (40). However, she fails to recognize that Tenniel’s illustrations pull them back to the ground, limiting their potential meanings.
John Tenniel’s “Jabberwocky”
Tenniel’s illustrations also modify Carroll’s overall plot. When Alice meets the White King in Through the Looking-Glass, she encounters his two messengers, Haigha and Hatta. Nothing in the text indicates that either of these characters is familiar to Alice; she speaks to both of them as if she has never met them before. Tenniel’s illustrations might raise some alarms, however. Haigha is depicted as a rabbit, though nowhere in the text is he described as having any leporine features (196). Meanwhile, Hatta is depicted wearing an oversized hat with a price tag fastened to the side (198). For readers of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, the illustrations would be immediately recognizable as the Hatter and the March Hare. Hatta looks identical to the Hatter, while Haigha shares obvious physical similarities to the March Hare—namely two large ears. There are some slight differences between Haigha and the March Hare. In the first novel, the March Hare seems to have a darker fur color and darker eyes than Haigha (59). Still, a rabbit near the Hatter unmistakably calls to mind the March Hare. Without Tenniel’s illustrations, it would never be clear that residents of Wonderland can pass into the Looking-Glass alongside Alice. Of course, Carroll’s text implies this crossover. The name “Hatta” clearly echoes the name “Hatter,” while the name “Haigha,” according to the White King, is meant to rhyme with “mayor,” meaning it would be pronounced “hare” (195). Still, Carroll never draws any connections explicitly. Tenniel’s illustrations, on the other hand, leave little room for doubt: the Hatter is certainly one of the White King’s messengers, while the March Hare is likely his other. Once again, Tenniel reduces the ambiguity of Carroll’s text with visual cues for the reader.
At the beginning of the first novel, Alice asks herself a salient question: “[W]hat is the use of a book…without pictures or conversations?” (7) Carroll’s fanciful tales and Tenniel’s beautiful illustrations seem to answer Alice directly, asserting that a book is nothing without its pictures. The marriage between Carroll’s words and Tenniel’s drawings simultaneously complements and complicates Jackson’s definition of fantasy. On the one hand, their partnership emphasizes “that which cannot be said, that which evades articulation [and] that which is represented as ‘untrue’ and ‘unreal’” (Jackson 40). When words fail, Carroll is forced to defer to Tenniel to fill in the blanks with images. As in Lovecraftian horror, some creatures and settings simply defy language. On the other hand, Carroll and Tenniel’s collaboration challenges the notion that fantasy must create a complete “disjunction between word and object” (38). Tenniel provides the reader some ground to stand on, even as it shifts and shakes beneath their feet. New words and new creatures are given life through seeing them. Tenniel clarifies that smoking caterpillars have hands (38), Mock Turtles have bovine heads (83), and talking flowers have tiny faces (134). Carroll’s nonsense is made less nonsensical through Tenniel’s refashioning of his text.
One could hypothetically read the Alice books without Tenniel’s illustrations, but they would miss a fundamental aspect of the text: vision. Throughout her journeys, “Alice learns by looking, as does the reader, the other eye-witness of both her books” (Hancher 246). Carroll’s text suggests that a mere gaze can refigure, refine, and redefine language as we know it. To put it more plainly, to see is to mean, and to mean is to see.
Works Cited
Carroll, Lewis. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass. Penguin Classics, 2015.
Hancher, Michael. The Tenniel Illustrations to the “Alice” Books, 2nd Edition. Ohio State University Press, 2019. JSTOR, doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv30m1f0f. Accessed 7 Apr. 2025.
Jackson, Rosemary. Fantasy: The Literature of Subversion. Routledge, 2003. EBSCOhost, research.ebsco.com/linkprocessor/plink?id=3d1a59e5-395f-3130-b732-52a5d20930b1. Accessed 3 Apr. 2025.
Our first day in the Trout Gallery, there was an engraving called Fannie’s Pets with a girl in the middle surrounded by birds, rabbits, frogs and fish. It made me think of theillustration in Alice‘s Adventures in Wonderland after the scene where Alice and all the animals do the caucus race(Carroll 19).I think this illustrationis showing Alice handing “round as prizes” the comfits she found in her pocket (Carroll 19); Fannie is also feeding the birds around her which is maybe why it made me think of Alice.Besides Fannie and the animals, there is also a creepy guy watching Fannie from the shadows behind her and a house in the background. Both these made me think of the idea of surveillance in Alice. I think there are two different levels of surveillance; the first is the Queen, and the second is some higher power (maybe the narrator?). The Queen is so quick to behead people that everyone is wary of her seeing/hearing them doing something “wrong”. The cards painting the roses red, for example (Carroll 63) or the scene where the Cheshire Cat asks Alice if she likes the Queen: “‘Not at all,’ said Alice: ‘she’s so extremely–‘ Just then she noticed that the Queen was close behind her, listening: so she went on ‘–likely to win…'” (Carroll 68). There also seems to be some magical god-like presence. At the beginning, when Alice is trying to get through the little door, but she’s too big, and then she leaves the key on the table when she shrinks if feels like something is trying to help her get through the door. She finds the “drink me” bottle “(‘which certainly was not here before,’ said Alice)” (Carroll 5).At some points, it feels like the narrator is the all-powerful being; they know what Alice is thinking at times, but it’s not exactly in third person, because sometimes the narrator addresses the audience, and sometimes they refer to themselves with “I” (“…fancy curtseying as you’re falling through the air! Do you think you could manage it?” [Carroll 3]). It’s hard to tell though if this second surveilling force exists or if it is just dream logic.
Fannie’s Pets (Illman Brothers)/Alice in Wonderland (p19)
The Illman brothers distributed many images of ideal femininity to the reading public, such as “Health and Beauty.” A glowing, conventionalized woman pauses as she descends a veranda staircase. She is surrounded by classicized architectural elements like the doric column and classical male busts receding into trees and a dark skyline. Nonetheless, both she and her dress reflect light, if not seem to be the source of light (there seems to be some suggestion of an antithetical back lighting as well). Her dress style is closer to an earlier Regency fashion, indicating idealization of past femininity. Though she is supposed to be moving, the only movement in this engraving is the suggested wind moving her ribbons – her dress folds are perfectly arranged behind her, and she is balanced on her left toe with a perpetually bent knee. The image gives the illusion of her choice to leave the structure, but she does not seem compelled to continue walking – trancelike, she remains safe in the illuminated territory. She is a time-transcendent stand in for the title’s allegory – contained, suspended and submissive. She communicates that there is only one way to embody such desirable traits: a surrender of identity.
Though she is the paragon of classicized femininity, there is also the joint suggestion there is also a temptation to keep looking when women exercise individuality. In Mona Caird’s “The Yellow Drawing Room” the unnamed narrator toggles between viewing Clara and Vanora:
“My ideal woman would consider it almost indelicate to play with words in this fantastic fashion. I glanced at my grey-blue goddess. How comfortably certain one felt with her of enjoying conversational repose! Dear Clara! With what admirable good taste she carried out one’s cherished ideas: she fitted them like a glove. I completely, ardently approved of Clara. To her I rather ostentatiously devoted myself for the rest of the afternoon, but I was furtively watching her sister” (Caird 105).
The narrator condemns Vanora’s linguistic “play” by using the word as a diminutive, then claps back with the precise alliterative phrase “fantastic fashion” to show his outward disdain for the action. But it is also important to note that he calls it, “almost indelicate” – there is a certain amount of personality that is negotiable here. “My ideal woman” is also “my blue-grey goddess,” a possessive phrase which allows him to express “one’s” (his) “cherished ideas.” But then, in the next sentence, the narrator uses an Austenian anticlimax to describe his feelings toward this ideal woman: “I completely, ardently approved of Clara.” She is the textbook woman, she makes one “comfortably certain” (in which we can see man and wife in the dual consonant but different “c” sounds), she fits the model perfectly “like a glove.” And yet, she is only worthy of a “glance,” and a patronizing, “Dear Clara!” – his “blue-grey goddess,” like the color, bores him. Even when “devoted” to her, the narrator can gather all this information in that same “glance,” while he is “furtively watching” the more interesting subject: Vanora.
In both the print and story, there is a dissonance between performed and fugitive identity: the external identity is policed, accepted and honored, and there is no attempt to understand the personality behind the performance, and when a genuine personality is presented, it is shown back into the idealized box. Like the Illman Brother’s woman’s ribbons, a woman is supposed to be moved, not move for herself.
Works Cited:
Caird, Mona. “The Yellow Drawing Room.” Dreams, Visions and Realities: An Anthology of Short Stories by Turn-of-the-Century Women Writers, London, International Publishing, 2003, pp. 104-110.
Illman Brothers. “Health and Beauty.” The Trout Gallery Archives, https://collections.troutgallery.org/objects-1/infoquery=mfs%20all%20%22illman%22&sort=0&page=13.
When I encountered this image during our class’s trout gallery visit, it quite literally stopped me in my tracks. Salammbô is visually stunning in its composition as well as narratively intriguing. It instantly sparked several questions about the circumstances of the print as well as its cultural significance and origin. I was fascinated to learn that this beautiful work is inspired by a book of the same name by famous French novelist Gustav Flaubert. The book tells the story of Salammbo, the daughter of the chief magistrate of Carthage, and the subject of this print. In the novel, Salammbo communes with a python, a symbol of the powerful moon goddess Tanith to gain the courage to steal back a protective mystical veil from the attacking mercenaries. In doing so, she saves the people of Carthage from a violent siege. 
Image credit: https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.ebay.com%2Fitm%2F205082576172&psig=AOvVaw2PII8eU6S7qjGt45W5nJ7w&ust=1744202402683000&source=images&cd=vfe&opi=89978449&ved=0CBQQjRxqFwoTCPDkk7m6yIwDFQAAAAAdAAAAABAJ
