‘Molly’s New Bonnet’ by George du Maurier

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Molly’s New Bonnet

George du Maurier

Wood engraving by Joseph Swain

6½ x 4¼ inches

Gaskell, Elizabeth.Wives and Daughters, The Cornhill Magazine 10 (August 1864): facing p. 129.

This is the first illustration to Gaskell’s novel and one of the artist’s most telling. It establishes the author’s informal tone by concentrating on what are apparently insignificant moments while endowing the characters with a distinct visual identity. Gaskell provides limited pictorial detail to work with, and du Maurier treatment of Molly as a broad-faced and resolute individual is a significant enhancement of the source-material. [Continued below]

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Elizabeth Gaskell (homepage)

Scanned image and text by Simon Cooke.

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The illustrations are particularly important as a means of tracking her growing up; she appears first of all in the present design as a child, and is regularly pictured as she becomes an adolescent and young woman. The consistency of the portrayal underlines the emphasis on a real life, lived, as it were, in real time. It is difficult to envisage Dickens’s stories without the assistance of Phiz, and du Maurier’s realism, both physical and psychological, is a natural match with Gaskell’s prose.

Bibliography

The Cornhill Magazine . London: Smith Elder, 1864.

Created 23 January 2017