[Victorian Web Home —> Visual Arts —> Illustration —> Illustrations of Great Expectations —> John McLenan —> Next]
Mrs. Joe roughly washes and dries Pip's face in preparation for Pip's first visit to Satis House [uncaptioned]
John McLenan
15 December 1860
9.7 cm by 5.6 cm wide (3 ¾ by 2 ⅛ inches) vignetted
Dickens's Great Expectations,
Harper's Weekly IV (15 December 1860): 789.
Not reproduced in the T. B. Peterson single-volume edition of 1861
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
With that she pounced on me, like an eagle on a lamb, and my face was forced into wooden bowls in sinks, and my head was put under taps of water-butts, and I was soaped, and kneaded, and towelled, and thumped, and harrowed, and rasped, until I really was quite beside myself. (I may here remark that I suppose myself to be better acquainted than any living authority, with the ridgy effect of a wedding-ring, passing unsympathetically over the human countenance.) [Chapter VII, 790]
In this chapter headnote vignette, Mrs. Joe assists Pip in washing prior to his making his social debut at Satis House, where (through the agency of Uncle Pumblechook) Miss Havisham has invited him to "play" (though tellingly he does not understand what the word means). The specific moment realized occurs towards the end of the seventh chapter, immediately before the tail end or "curtain" of the 15 December 1860 instalmemt.
Leigh Dillard (2005), particularly with respect to this illustration, terms thirty-three-year-old McLenan "an American Phiz" who transforms the first-person narrative of the text to an objective or dramatic rendering that communicates directly Pip's feeling and experience by rough, almost hasty lines and deep, irregular cross-hatching. McLenan's style here is perhaps better suited than the beaux arts style of Dickens's British illustrator for the volume edition of the novel, Marcus Stone. Whereas Stone had considerable time to work on his eight illustration for the limited run of the Illustrated Library Edition (1862), McLenan was usually working under a time crunch for such illustrated, mass-produced mid-century periodicals as Harper's Weekly, which required considerable numbers of wood-engravings for each issue. Mass production necessarily meant less subtlety in the wood-engraving, which had to be executed rapidly for a weekly periodical.
Left: Frederick W. Pailthorpe presents Mrs. Joe in the caricatural style of Phiz, Cruikshank, and Leech in Mrs. Joe returning from an Expedition (1885). Centre: H. M. Brock's study of Pip and his dysfunctional family: And then they both stared at me (1910). Right: Felix Octavius Carr Darley's unflattering portrait of the vindictive older sister: Mrs. Gargery on the Ram-page (1888).
Allingham, Philip V. "The Illustrations for Great Expectations in Harper's Weekly (1860-61) and in the Illustrated Library Edition (1862) — 'Reading by the Light of Illustration'." Dickens Studies Annual, Vol. 40 (2009): 113-169.
Dickens, Charles. Great Expectations. Harper's Weekly: A Journal of Civilization. Il. John McLenan. Vol. IV.
______. ("Boz."). Great Expectations. With thirty-four illustrations from original designs by John McLenan. Philadelphia: T. B. Peterson (by agreement with Harper & Bros., New York), 1861.
______. Great Expectations. Volume 6 of the Household Edition. Illustrated by F. A. Fraser. London: Chapman and Hall, 1876.
Dillard, Leigh G., and Nancy M. West. "Miss Havisham on the Home Front: Literary Nationalism, Great Expectations, and Harper's Weekly." Nineteenth-Century Studies 26 (2012): 195-218.
Dillard, Leigh G. "A Transatlantic Vision: Drawing Great Expectations in its American Context: Paper presented at the Tenth Annual Dickens Society of America Symposium. Springfield Technical Community College. Session Three: "Sound and Sight." Springfield, MA; 15 October 2005.
Paroissien, David. The Companion to "Great Expectations." Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 2000.
Created 20 November 2007 Last updated 13 November 2021