Category: 2025 Posts

Victorian ideas of a society being “redeemed by art” as described by Richard Altick rest on the function of looking. Culture, to some Victorians, was “a function, in the first instance, of the eyes”—the quality of the “inner life” was determined by what someone was surrounded with, ideally beautiful things (281). This is quite similar to medieval English ideas of sight, with the differences being physical. To the Victorians, beauty improved your inner self, including your morality and happiness, hence helping society. To English folks in the Middle Ages, looking upon beauty not only improved your morality and happiness, but also your physical health and appearance. In fact, it was a common romantic trope (as in medieval romances as a genre) that physical beauty was equated with inner beauty as well as wealth. Though a fictional trope does not translate directly into the real world, its existence does still reflect a cultural trend. It is one similar to the Victorian equation of beauty in your surroundings with morality as well as wealth. 

But to an extent, the medieval equation of physical beauty in the person with all these things is actually shockingly similar to the Victorians. While I have no evidence of any Victorian writer arguing that in the real world, beautiful and healthy people are always surrounded by beauty and wealth and have perfect souls, Victorian prints—works of fiction, much like medieval romances—strongly suggest the idealistic notion. 

I’ve had the recent privilege of looking at a collection of prints that were distributed in Victorian England, particularly ones produced by the Illman Brothers that feature women as the main subjects. Because I am focusing on images with women, I will not be considering if the equation of beauty with morality with health with money with art also applies to men. I will, though, be focusing on how it might apply to women, and the significance of that gendered analysis. 

“Expectation” is a standout example of one of these art women being surrounded by beautiful objects. She is the beauty standard—a soft face, accessorized hair, and an expensive, modest dress. The luxury of her clothing, as well, suggests equating wealth with beauty. Furthermore, she is framed by angels, flowers, swirls, and fruits. Angels suggest both purity and innocence, a subtle comment on the woman’s morality as represented by the objects or art that surrounds her. Whether it reflects her morality, or causes her normative morality, is unclear. Flowers adorn lots of art—stereotypically beautiful objects that bring joy and life, also perhaps suggesting the youth and femininity of the woman here. Decorative lines, as well, are shown. Interestingly, there is also fruit hanging from the frame. This ripe fruit might imply fertility and health for the woman shown. Through her appearance and these surrounding objects, then, not only the morality, but the external beauty and physical health of the woman is emphasized.

“Health and Beauty”’s title already carries a suggestion that the central woman is both physically fit and gorgeous. She stands tall and proper, an image of extravagance on top of those two previously mentioned features. Not only does her clothing display extra fabric, intricately patterned, but her environment is one that is grand and expensive. A large classically-styled pillar can be seen in the background, along with a decorated railing adorning the steps she descends. The woman’s health and beauty, then, is native to her wealthy and art-filled environment.

“Fannie’s Pets” is an interesting image for multiple reasons. First of all, it features two figures, a woman and a man, as opposed to the previous images only featuring one central character. Second of all, it includes animals as central elements. The woman, presumably Fannie, is assumed to own every shown bird and mammal in the image; their shapes and appearances suggest both elegance (such as the birds) and sweetness (such as the rabbits). Her ownership over them implies that she is wealthy, one of the features in the equivalent list. Because they demonstrate a bond with her, flocking to her side, she is also implied to be moral. The way the animals surround her and gaze up at her evokes a motherly image of Fannie, as well as indicates that she is a trustworthy individual. Finally, a man exists in he image to one side, also gazing in awe at the scene unfolding before him. His awestruck expression may also speak to Fannie’s kind and motherly qualities, as well as perhaps her physical beauty that attracts the man’s gaze. To conclude, these three above images are only some of the most prominent examples of Illman Brother’s prints that suggest fictionalized women must check off a list of desirable qualities, and that having one of the qualities inherently leads to the others. This draws a tentative connection between medieval romance genre ideas of moral character, class, and physicality, and Victorian attitudes towards art.

Works Cited:

Altick, Richard. “Art and its Place in Society.” Victorian People and Ideas, Norton: New York, 1973.

 

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.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/articles/zx8sf82#zgyq2v4

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).

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.

“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.

 

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.

 

Dictionary Source:

“Attitude, N., 2.a.” Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford UP, December 2024, https://doi.org/10.1093/OED/1203692887.

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?

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

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.

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 the illustration in Alice‘s Adventures in Wonderland after the scene where Alice and all the animals do the caucus race (Carroll 19). I think this illustration is 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)

https://collections.troutgallery.org/Media/images/1988.21.63_Prim-LoRes.jpg