‘The Ape and Her Two Young Ones’, by Charles Bennett

The Ape and Her Two Young Ones

Charles Bennett

1857

Hand-coloured wood engraving by Joseph Swain.

11 x 9 inches.

Charles Bennett, The Fables of Aesop, p.23.

See commentary below

Scanned image and text by Simon Cooke.

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The moral of the story is: ‘A plant may thrive better by the roadside than in a hot-house where a Fool is a gardener’ (p.22). The Fool in question is Mama Ape, who dotes on her twins to the point of extravagance. Their spoiled behaviour result in petty crime; the illustration shows a peeler returning one of the reprobates. Didactic in the usual manner, the image deploys a very typical proxy – an ape as a surrogate for a human. Interestingly, the book pre-dates the Darwinian revolution (1859) by a couple of years.

References

Bennett, Charles.The Fables of Aesop. London: Bradbury & Evans [1857].

Last modified 28 March 2014