"'I Don't Want To Go To Him!' She Sobbed." by Walter Paget (1863-1935)

"I Don't Want To Go To Him!" She Sobbed.

Walter Paget (1863-1935)

1892

18.2 cm by 14.5 cm

Illustrated London News (19 November 1892): 651

Scene from Chapter XXI continued, "A Grille Descends between The Vision and Him" (p. 642, top of the first column) in 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

After hours of anguish for Jocelyn during which Avice, sent to the post office, has apparently gone missing, she casually returns, having been out to see the night-life of the London streets. In the ensuing conversation, the truth comes out: Avice has married (after the island custom of 'walking out' and sexual relations) a quarryman named Isaac Pearston, probably a distant relative of the sculptor. After the two quarreled, Ike (as Avice calls him) left for Australia. Jocelyn determines that she must return to the island and her marriage; he will do his part by recalling Ike from Australia and setting him up in business. Surely Jocelyn must be tempted when, in the first-class carriage on the train to the south-west (see Plate 15), Avice expresses a preference for being married to him: "Aphrodite was punishing him sharply" (642). Throughout his interviews with Avice Jocelyn is concerned for her welfare (as Paget shows) and "almost as much distressed as she" (642), which he does not show.

Part Two ends in the middle of this instalment with the birth of Avice's daughter in her little cottage and, returning to London, Jocelyn's learning from Somers that the artist and Nichola Pine-Avon are to be married the next month. As Jocelyn remarks when he sees Avice's daughter in her arms, "Here endeth that dream" (642) indeed.

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