[Lizzie Hexam looking into the flames]

James Mahoney

1875

Wood engraving by the Dalziels

7.2 cm high by 5.6 cm wide

Mahoney's second Illustration for Dickens's Our Mutual Friend

The image of Lizzie Hexam, sitting before the brazier in her Limehouse hovel, has an almost hypnotic effect on the dissolute young attorney Eugene Wrayburn. By choosing this image of the nobility possible within the working classes for the title-page vignette, Mahoney focuses our attention on the novel's secondary plot. [Continued below]

Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham

[You may use this image without prior permission for any scholarly or educational purpose as long as you (1) credit the person who scanned the image and (2) link your document to this URL in a web document or cite it in a print one.]

In directing attention to Lizzie, Mahoney does not focus our attention on the novel's prinary plot, the death and resurrection of John Harmon as John Rokesmith, and his romance with Bella Wilfer, the story's other, middle class dynamic and changing heroine. The fortunes of both young women rise and their status in the middle class assured by "good" marriages.

Bibliography

Dickens, Charles. Our Mutual Friend. Il. James Mahoney. Household Edition. London: Chapman and Hall; New York, Harper Brothers, 1875.

Last modified 9 December 2010