"Walking in the grounds towards the gate he saw Avis entering to the house with a broad oval wicker-basket covered with a white cloth." by Walter Paget (1863-1935)

Walking in the grounds towards the gate he saw Avis

Walter Paget (1863-1935)

1892

17.5 cm by 23.6 cm

Illustrated London News (8 October 1892): 547: 16.5 cm high by 23.5 cm wide. Scene from Chapter XV, "The Past Shines in the Present" (p. 546, top of the third column) in Thomas Hardy's of Thomas Hardy's The Pursuit of The Well-Beloved: A Sketch of a Temperament. Scanned image, caption, and commentary 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 the Victorian Web in a print one. ]

Commentary

Conveniently for Jocelyn's plan of wooing the daughter of his former fiancée, in order to makes ends meet young Avice must take in laundry, as he learns through his intial conversation with her in the scene illustrated in plate 9. When he observes her ironing through her window during his first evening at the modern "castle," he discovers that the old furnishings of her mother's cottage are gone, and deduces that young Avice is probably living a hand-to-mouth existence. In plate 10, Paget has captured the moment when Jocelyn realizes that Avice is doing the laundry for "Dell-o'-th'-rock Castle." Paget has positioned Jocelyn among the shrubbery in the background to imply the clandestine nature of his observation of the laundress, as if he is a prepubescenrt Peeping-Tom.

Subsequently, Jocelyn arranges a meeting in which (supposedly) he intends to complain about the laundy, but she answers his every concern with disconcerting self-assurance. Again, Hardy cannot resist creating a dialogue which renders his hero ridiculous, as his quizzing her about mangling and borax comes to nought. Since he has no further excuse for meeting her, Jocelyn can only await a further opportunity, distressed that the divinity he has pusued throughout his life has chosen so humble a dwelling as a mere laundress.

References

Buck, Anne. Victorian Costume and Costume Accessories. London: Herbert Jenkins, 1961.

Cunnington, C. Willet, and Phyllis Cunnington. Handbook of English Costume in the Nineteenth Century. Boston: Plays Inc., 1970.

Hardy, Thomas. The Pursuit of the Well-Beloved: A Sketch of a Temperament. The Illustrated London News, 8 October--17 December, 1892. Pp. 426-775.

Hardy, Thomas. The Well-Beloved with The Pursuit of the Well-Beloved (1892). Ware, Hertfordshire: Wordsworth Classics, 2000.

Jackson, Arlene M. Illustration and the Novels of Thomas Hardy. Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield, 1981.

Last modified 7 August 2002