Illustration for ‘The Mark of the Beast’

Artist: William Strang

1901

A Series of Thirty Etchings by William Strang, plate 3

Another example of one of Strang’s favourite motifs – a figure leaning over a figure in prostration. The scene here is the narrator’s worried contemplation of Fleete, who defaces the idol of Hanuman, is bitten by a leper priest, and seems to transform into an animal. Strang maintains the story’s ambivalence by endowing Fleete with an indeterminate face, not quite human, but not quite beast. The story is of course an allegory of imperialist fear, as the British engaged with seemed to be India’s inexplicable, irrational culture, and Strang stresses the text’s fearfulness by accentuating the image’s Gothic light effects. [Click on the image to enlarge it, and mouse over the text for links.]