Illustrating The Law and the Lady
KaraM
1960
3} The Law and the Lady Illustrations
Representing Womanhood
In the essay “Cosmetic Tragedies: Failed Masquerade in Wilkie Collins’s The Law and the Lady,” Aviva Briefel details the themes of appearances and concealment of appearances running through the novel. Although Briefel does not discuss the illustrations, these themes informed them and the illustrations further emphasized the themes to the serial reader. For example, many of the images employ deep shadows, and frequently depict a character with his or her back turned, contributing to the novel’s theme of concealment.
The artists of The Graphic employed to work on The Law and the Lady had their work cut out for them in representing the first person narrator and protagonist, Valeria. She gives a physical description of herself in some detail in the novel’s first chapter, although dark hair and a pale complexion leave plenty of room for variation, and she certainly varies from artist to artist. Furthermore, because she serves as witness, observer, and storyteller throughout the novel, the reader looks at scenes through her eyes—which necessarily presents difficulty for the artists seeking to include her in their artwork. Perhaps this in part explains her occasionally rather blank expressions; even if readers are seeing and experiencing with her, as protagonist, she can’t be left out of the picture. Sydney P. Hall seems to manage this problem a little better. His engravings attempt to place the viewer looking with Valeria—her face is often angled toward the main focus of the scene (which is frequently Miserrimus Dexter, although also the lawyer, Mr. Playmore, and sometimes an object).
Representing Womanhood
In the essay “Cosmetic Tragedies: Failed Masquerade in Wilkie Collins’s The Law and the Lady,” Aviva Briefel details the themes of appearances and concealment of appearances running through the novel. Although Briefel does not discuss the illustrations, these themes informed them and the illustrations further emphasized the themes to the serial reader. For example, many of the images employ deep shadows, and frequently depict a character with his or her back turned, contributing to the novel’s theme of concealment.
The artists of The Graphic employed to work on The Law and the Lady had their work cut out for them in representing the first person narrator and protagonist, Valeria. She gives a physical description of herself in some detail in the novel’s first chapter, although dark hair and a pale complexion leave plenty of room for variation, and she certainly varies from artist to artist. Furthermore, because she serves as witness, observer, and storyteller throughout the novel, the reader looks at scenes through her eyes—which necessarily presents difficulty for the artists seeking to include her in their artwork. Perhaps this in part explains her occasionally rather blank expressions; even if readers are seeing and experiencing with her, as protagonist, she can’t be left out of the picture. Sydney P. Hall seems to manage this problem a little better. His engravings attempt to place the viewer looking with Valeria—her face is often angled toward the main focus of the scene (which is frequently Miserrimus Dexter, although also the lawyer, Mr. Playmore, and sometimes an object).
7 November 1874
The Graphic (artist unknown)
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5 December 1874
The Graphic (artist Sydney P. Hall)
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Illustration for The Law and the Lady, Chapter 7
The Graphic, 3 Oct. 1874
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While the scene Arthur Locker tried to censor does not appear as one of the 25 illustrations, another of the novel’s most-written-about scenes is depicted in the third installment: Valeria enlists a chambermaid to help improve her appearance prior to meeting Major Fitz-David (the end of chapter seven):
‘Look at your complexion, ma’am. You will frighten him if he sees you like that. A touch of colour you must have. Where do you keep it? What! you haven’t got it? you never use it? Dear, dear, dear me!’ For a moment, surprise fairly deprived her of her self-possession! Recovering herself, she begged permission to leave me for a minute. I let her go, knowing what her errand was. She came back with a box of paints and powders; and I said nothing to check her. I saw, in the glass, my skin take a false fairness, my cheeks a false colour, my eyes a false brightness—and I never shrank from it. No! I let the odious deceit go on; I even admired the extraordinary delicacy and dexterity with which it was all done. ‘Anything’ (I thought to myself, in the madness of that miserable time), ‘so long as it helps me to win the Major’s confidence! Anything so long as I discover what those last words of my husband’s really mean!’ The transformation of my face was accomplished. The chambermaid pointed with her wicked forefinger in the direction of the glass.‘Bear in mind, ma’am, what you looked like when you sent for me,’ she said. ‘And just see for yourself how you look now. You’re the prettiest woman (of your style) in London. Ah, what a thing pearl powder is, when one knows how to use it!’ (55) William Small’s illustration seems to capture the scene well. The chambermaid—no apparent beauty herself—wears an expression as sly and snide as we might expect: “she was a middle-aged woman, with a large experience of the world and its wickedness written legibly on her manner and on her face” (54). Valeria’s expression evokes her inner qualms despite outward determination. Notably, Valeria looks very beautiful here, and as the chambermaid is seen working on her hair (which precedes the scene above), this is her before the woman “transforms” her face. Of course, we’re only seeing half her face, and complexion may be difficult to convey in an engraving, but it seems that Small intends to render this scene on the side of absurdity—the absurdity of cosmetics being a “necessity” for Valeria to reach her aims. |
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Collins’s novel enters into the “cosmetic tragedy” literature of the Victorian period, a discourse rife with contradiction, or competing philosophies. Briefel explains: “Although the cosmetic tragedy delineates the dangers that a woman might face in trying to enhance her image, it simultaneously warns of the dire consequences of not being able to achieve physical enhancement. It is at once a moralistic condemnation of artificial adornment and a means of conveying to women the importance of using beauty products carefully enough to conceal their flaws without destroying themselves or others in the process” (465). In The Law and the Lady, Valeria’s painting her face is a necessary means to holding an audience with Major Fitz-David, who has information she needs to solve the mystery of her husband. As Valeria notes in the next chapter, when the servant’s report that she is pretty changes the Major’s mind about not seeing her, “So far, one thing at least seemed to be clear. I had done well in sending for the chambermaid. What would Oliver’s report of me have been, if I had presented myself to him with my colourless cheeks and my ill-dressed hair?” (Collins 57).
“There is a strong sense in this literature that if she cannot control her own image, a woman will not be able to perform her social functions,” Briefel writes (465). It is true of Valeria the prevailing Victorian notion that a woman’s “ugliness threatens to have serious repercussions both for herself and for those around her” (465). If Valeria doesn’t make herself pretty, Major Fitz-David won’t take the time to see her. If she doesn’t see Major Fitz-David, she won’t discover her husband’s secret. Collins (and by extension, William Small) is in a sense working within and against cosmetic tragedy literature, although in 1874 the critique was nothing new. Punch magazine had already been satirizing the beauty industry, including publishing a cartoon in 1872, which, except for predating The Law and the Lady, could have been parodying Small’s illustration. The image shows a maid helping a woman with a coarse face beautify herself in front of a mirror—the maid is literally assembling the woman, about the screw the woman’s upper body onto her lower as the woman applies makeup and sports an enormous hairdo. |
Extracts from the Diary of a Coming Woman
Punch, 27 January 1872
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The depictions of Valeria appearing before each fiction installment in The Graphic can also be compared to other depictions of women in the magazine. In “Text in Context: The Law and the Lady and The Graphic,” Catherine Delafield explores how “material within the periodical operated both as a contextual reference point and in combative dialogue with the themes of the novel,” such as how other text or images representing women, or advertising to women, might have emphasized or contrasted with The Law and the Lady’s Valeria (144). The interplay between different parts of the periodical and the novel and illustration was “part of the original textual experience for readers” (135).
Eight pages after William Small’s illustration of Valeria with the chamber maid, “The Graphic’s advertisements reinforced the chambermaid’s skills,” offering products to clear the complexion and revive hair (Delafield 147). These were commonplace advertisements, which nevertheless interacted with Collins’s text and Small’s illustration. While the deceased Sarah Macallan never appears in illustration (perhaps to avoid confusion), Delafield notes that “after the instalment describing Sarah Macallan’s suicide, Hagan’s Magnolia Balm made claims to be a ‘toilet miracle’ which could change complexions by ‘infusing vitality into the skin’. A long paragraph of text asserted that ‘it is quite certain that a fresh and rosy complexion will attract more admiration’” (147). Regardless of whether or not it was intended, the eerie proximity of ad and story would be hard for a reader to ignore. It seems reasonable to suppose that having read that week’s installment of The Law and the Lady, a Victorian woman might have thought twice about “Hagan’s Magnolia Balm.” (Or perhaps she might have wished Sara Macallan had been able to use Hagan’s in order to have avoided arsenic.)
Although “cosmetic masquerade gives Valeria a tangible presence in the novel,” Small at least makes her expression skeptical (Briefel, 469). We can give him credit for that.
Eight pages after William Small’s illustration of Valeria with the chamber maid, “The Graphic’s advertisements reinforced the chambermaid’s skills,” offering products to clear the complexion and revive hair (Delafield 147). These were commonplace advertisements, which nevertheless interacted with Collins’s text and Small’s illustration. While the deceased Sarah Macallan never appears in illustration (perhaps to avoid confusion), Delafield notes that “after the instalment describing Sarah Macallan’s suicide, Hagan’s Magnolia Balm made claims to be a ‘toilet miracle’ which could change complexions by ‘infusing vitality into the skin’. A long paragraph of text asserted that ‘it is quite certain that a fresh and rosy complexion will attract more admiration’” (147). Regardless of whether or not it was intended, the eerie proximity of ad and story would be hard for a reader to ignore. It seems reasonable to suppose that having read that week’s installment of The Law and the Lady, a Victorian woman might have thought twice about “Hagan’s Magnolia Balm.” (Or perhaps she might have wished Sara Macallan had been able to use Hagan’s in order to have avoided arsenic.)
Although “cosmetic masquerade gives Valeria a tangible presence in the novel,” Small at least makes her expression skeptical (Briefel, 469). We can give him credit for that.
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"Clear Complexions" ad from The Graphic
10 October 1874
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"A Brilliant Complexion" ad from The Graphic
6 March 1875
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"Brazilian Balm" to "soften and correct the skin" ad from The Graphic
6 March 1875
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These ads appeared in the same issues of The Graphic as installments of The Law and the Lady. Advertisements could have been influenced readers' experience of the novel, and vice versa.
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Hair product ads from The Graphic
10 October 1875
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With Sydney Hall taking over illustration for The Law and the Lady, Valeria became more uniform and recognizable from image to image. As noted earlier, Hall often places her in an observing role, although when she is fully facing the viewer her expressions tend to be rather bland, generally “thoughtful”—with the exception of her ride with Ariel, in which she manages an O-shaped mouth. Hall is a skilled artist, particularly when it comes to Miserrimus Dexter and Ariel, but perhaps Valeria wasn’t his strong suit. In writing about Robert Barnes’s illustrations for Hardy’s The Mayor of Casterbridge, Philip V. Allingham writes, “Barnes excelled at juvenile figures, so that his Elizabeth Jane is very fetching in both face and figure, as one might expect from reading Hardy’s novel, although she seems to possess little of the intellectual striving with which Hardy invests her” (30). Certainly the artist provided one of a myriad interpretations of a text, based on his reading of it and his particular set of skills. Hall did many portraits of political leaders who tended to be men, and just perhaps this is why his Dexter, Benjamin, and Mr. Playmore are more arresting than his representation of Valeria. His illustrations of her leave her complexity to the text.
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Parnell Commission at the Royal Courts of Justice
By Sydney P. Hall
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Illustration for The Law and the Lady, Chapter 18, by Sydney P. Hall
The Graphic, 28 Nov. 1874
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