Miss Dinah in Dishabille

Phiz (Hablot K. Browne)

1863

Illustration for Charles Lever's Barrington (Chapter 33, p. 267)

Image scan, 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

By the time Dinah and M'Cormick enact this comic man/comic woman scene, Josephine seems to have accepted the fact that the Barrington's live in a cottage rather than a castle, and that domestic cares rather than the pursuit of fashion and pleasure must be her daily concern. Skirts up (in the text revealing her "massive" ankles) and feather-duster in hand, Dinah, cleaning the house prior to the arrival of Withering and Major Stapylton for dinner, is shocked to find her inquisitive neighbour ensconced in a comfortable arm-chair in the drawing-room, compelling the Barringtons to invite him to the sumptuous feast he has detected in the kitchen. However, while Phiz depicts the major reading a newspaper, Lever clearly (if somewhat improbably) indicates that he is merely "musing and meditating" (267).

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Last modified August 2002