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In The Bride's Chamber
Harry Furniss
1910
14.4 cm high x 8.2 cm wide, framed
Dickens's Christmas Books, The Uncommercial Traveller, and The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices,the Charles Dickens Library Edition, VIII, facing 1 in the third division of the book.
[Click on the image to enlarge it.]
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
Hours upon hours he held her by the arm when her arm was black where he held it, and bade her Die!
"It was done, upon a windy morning, before sunrise. He computed the time to be half-past four; but, his forgotten watch had run down, and he could not be sure. She had broken away from him in the night, with loud and sudden cries — the first of that kind to which she had given vent — and he had had to put his hands over her mouth. Since then, she had been quiet in the corner of the paneling where she had sunk down; and he had left her, and had gone back with his folded arms and his knitted forehead to his chair.
"Paler in the pale light, more colourless than ever in the leaden dawn, he saw her coming, trailing herself along the floor towards him — a white wreck of hair, and dress, and wild eyes, pushing itself on by an irresolute and bending hand.
"'O, forgive me! I will do anything. O, sir, pray tell me I may live!'
'"Die!'
'"Are you so resolved? Is there no hope for me?'
'"Die!'
"Her large eyes strained themselves with wonder and fear; wonder and fear changed to reproach; reproach to blank nothing. It was done. ["The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices," Chapter Four, 72]
Again, as in "Captain Murderer" in "Nurses's Stories," the fifteenth chapter in the series of essays entitled The Uncommercial Traveller, Dickens reveals an almost morbid fascination (or perhaps a species of self-obsession) with the figure of Blue Beard, derived from Perrault's 1697 tale of a brutal, domineering serial killer of young women. Although Furniss's illustration renders the climactic scene of the interpolated tale in the Collins-Dickens collaborative novella dramatically, Dickens tells the short story in the limited omniscient, giving the reader access to the thoughts and feelings not of the victim-bride but of the psychopathic groom, in imitation of Edgar Allen Poe.
Bluebeard, gruesome fairy tale first recorded by Charles Perrault in 1697, and translated into English in 1729. . . . . The story was a favourite of CD's, and is frequently alluded to in his writings. The story of Captain Murderer in "Nurse's Stories" (UT) is a variant on the theme. BH 64; BR 41; CS 4, 8, 15; HT i 15; MED 13; OMF iv II; PP 20. [N. Bentley, M. Slater, and N. Burgis, The Dickens Index, 26]
First published as the fourth of five parts in Household Words over the course of October 1857, the inset narrative, called either "The Bride's Chamber" or "In The Bride's Chamber" from its chief setting, has often appeared in collections of ghost stories and Victorian tales of the bizarre and supernatural.
The Gothic tale reveals Poe's influence in Dickens's creation of the diabolical, self-justifying central character and blameless, malleable victim. However, Furniss actually puts a face to the pasteboard villain, and clearly establishes an eighteenth-century setting in the costumes and wainscoted room with the ornate, leaded pane window. Furniss suggests the killer's derangement by his distorted visage and bulging eyes, and represents the twenty-one-year-old bride's virginal innocence by her white gown and gesture of supplication. Although hardly "half-witted," in Furniss's illustration the bride is certainly "frightened" and "submissive" (70) some three weeks after her marriage to her former guardian and de facto step-father. Deborah Thomas reasonably speculates about the autobiographical implications of the madman's willing his wife to die as Dickens was shortly to separate from his wife of twenty years and forge a liaison with eighteen-year-old actress Ellen Ternan.
In the American Household Edition, illustrated by C. S. Reinhart, Furniss would have found a useful analogue in the "Captain Murderer" illustration (above), And the bride looked up at the glass, just in time to see the Captain cutting her head off for a contrast between a submissive beauty and maniacal killer, both in period costume. However, Captain Murderer's pose and the bride's lack of awareness in the Reinhart woodcut are rather more melodramatic than Furniss's realisation of husband's psychological and physical abuse.
Dickens, Charles. The Christmas Books, The Uncommercial Traveller, and The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices. Illustrated by Harry Furniss. Charles Dickens Library Edition. 18 vols. London: Educational Book Company, 1910. Vol. 8,
Dickens, Charles. The Uncommercial Traveller, Hard Times, and The Mystery of Edwin Drood. Illustrated by C. S. Reinhart and Luke Fildes. The Household Edition. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1876.
Thomas, Deborah A. Dickens and The Short Story. Philadelphia: U. Pennsylvania Press, 1982.
Created 9 August 2013
Last modified 5 January 2020