[Mrs. Joe roughly washes and dries Pip's face in preparation for Pip's first visit to Satis House]
John McLenan
1860
9.2 cm. by 5.6 cm wide
Dickens's Great Expectations,
Harper's Weekly 4 (15 December 1860): 789
Not reproduced in the T. B. Peterson single-volume edition of 1861
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
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: "With that, she pounced on me, like an eagle on a lamb, and my face was squeezed 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.)" Dillard, particularly with respect to this illustration, terms 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.
References
Dickens, Charles. Great Expectations. Harper's Weekly: A Journal of Civilization. Il. John McLenan. Vol. IV.
Dickens, Charles. ("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.
Last modified 20 November 2007