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"Molly, let them see both your wrists. Show them. Come!"
John McLenan
23 March 1861
11.6 cm by 11.8 cm wide (4 ½ by 4 ⅝ inches) framed
Dickens's Great Expectations, in Harper's Weekly V (instalment 17): 173.
Plate 18 in the 1861 T. B. Peterson single-volume edition, facing p. 130.
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
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“If you talk of strength,” said Mr. Jaggers, “I’ll show you a wrist. Molly, let them see your wrist.”
Her entrapped hand was on the table, but she had already put her other hand behind her waist. “Master,” she said, in a low voice, with her eyes attentively and entreatingly fixed upon him. “Don’t.”
“I’ll show you a wrist,” repeated Mr. Jaggers, with an immovable determination to show it. “Molly, let them see your wrist.”
“Master,” she again murmured. “Please!”
“Molly,” said Mr. Jaggers, not looking at her, but obstinately looking at the opposite side of the room, “let them see both your wrists. Show them. Come!”
He took his hand from hers, and turned that wrist up on the table. She brought her other hand from behind her, and held the two out side by side. The last wrist was much disfigured, — deeply scarred and scarred across and across. When she held her hands out she took her eyes from Mr. Jaggers, and turned them watchfully on every one of the rest of us in succession.
“There’s power here,” said Mr. Jaggers, coolly tracing out the sinews with his forefinger. “Very few men have the power of wrist that this woman has. It’s remarkable what mere force of grip there is in these hands. I have had occasion to notice many hands; but I never saw stronger in that respect, man’s or woman’s, than these.”
While he said these words in a leisurely, critical style, she continued to look at every one of us in regular succession as we sat. The moment he ceased, she looked at him again. “That’ll do, Molly,” said Mr. Jaggers, giving her a slight nod; “you have been admired, and can go.” She withdrew her hands and went out of the room, and Mr. Jaggers, putting the decanters on from his dumb-waiter, filled his glass and passed round the wine. [Chapter XXVI, p. 173]
Molly brought her other hand from behind her, and held the two out side by side. As she did so, she took her eyes from Mr. Jaggers, and turned them watchfully on every one of the rest of us in succession." [p. 173]
The only 19th c. program that includes the sensational revelation that Molly, Jaggers' maid, has a criminal past, is that which appeared in Harper's Weekly in instalment 17. In theperiodical illustration, attorney Jaggers exhibits his maid's strength to his dinner guests, Pip, Herbert, and Drummle, at the table in Jaggers' Gerard Street rooms. Her appearance is otherwise unremarkable and somewhat feminine in the contemporary sense with her full skirt, apron, and flowing curls reminiscent of hairstyles in Gone with the Wind. In McLenan's treatment, Jaggers (looking much as has has done in previous illustrations) does not even turn his head, so that the caption seems to carry most of the illustration's meaning. He certainly does not "clap his large hand on the housekeeper's, like a trap, as she stretches it across the table" (173). Pip stares across the table at Molly's wrists as Jaggers casually sips his wine, as if asking his maid to roll up her sleeves (already revealing her forearms in the McLenan illustration) is unremarkable. Otherwise, Furniss's later version, is quite different because in Molly Shows Her Wrists (1910) the illustrator gives us no context (the dinner party of Jaggers's young gentlemen clients), and includes no background details. Whereas Furniss's housekeeper seems self-conscious, and may well be murmuring "Master, please!" McLenan's fashionably dressed middle-aged woman seems not to register the odd request.
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.
Paroissien, David. The Companion to "Great Expectations." Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 2000.
Created 20 November 2007 Last updated 23 November 2021