Mrs. Tetterby

John Tenniel

1848

Dickens's The Haunted Man, p. 52

Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.

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This is our first encounter with the domestic characters of the subplot, whom Dickens introduces simultaneously in the text, "Chapter II. The Gift Diffused." Tenniel weakly anticipates the domestic theme struck by Leech in the ninth plate, depicting Mrs. Tetterby surrounded by five of her eight children and her husband (back turned to her, right). In Leech's conception, Mrs. Tetterby will be heavy and middle-aged; here, she is younger and thinner — indeed, one could confuse her for Milly. Dickens's distributing the responsibility for the plates in this manner has created a dissonance; furthermore, the text will not explicate the two-part scene until several pages later