Gender, Race, and Class in English Children’s Illustrations:
1850-1900
Amy Chalmers ’11
It is easy to bring to mind an image from a childhood story or book;
many of our clearest memories come from the media that surrounded us as
children. Though innocent-seeming, some of these images are not neutral,
and in their artistic style reflect deeper cultural values and attitudes. My
research deals with three artists from the second half of the nineteenth
century, who not only illustrated children’s books, but also contributed
political cartoons to popular satirical magazines. The three artists that my
project focuses on are George Cruikshank (1792 –1878), Sir John Tenniel
(1820-1914), and William Makepeace Thackeray (1811-1863).
By comparing the physical traits of political caricatures to those of
characters in children’s illustrations by the same artists, I was able to analyze
a shared visual language in the images of people directed at two very
Fig. 1: Wells, Samuel Roberts. How to Read Character: A
New Illustrated Hand-Book of Phrenology and
separate audiences. Cultural trends, social and political climate, prejudices,
Physiognomy for Students and Examiners; with A
and aesthetic values of the Victorians contribute to the development of this
Descriptive Chart. New York: Samuel R. Wells & Co,
1875.
visual “language.” Also contributing to the “language of caricature”
employed by the three artists, as well as others of the time, was the
popularity of phrenology, or the study of the skull to determine innate character and tendencies, and of physiognomy,
which in the same way sought to determine character based on facial features (fig. 1). Scientific racism, or the use of
scientific methods to prove the superiority of certain races over others, is one example of widely accepted
“pseudosciences” of the nineteenth century. Phrenology, physiognomy, and scientific racism gained momentum during
the Victorian era in response to and in conjunction with other trends, such as
overpopulation and a growing lower class in cities, and the rise of Imperialism
and colonization. These cultural influences helped form the recurring visual traits
of characters that convey the illustrator’s, and often the reader’s, perceptions of
gender, race, and class.
Although primarily a political cartoonist,
George Cruikshank is best known today for his
illustrations of Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist (1838).
By the time he was twenty-eight, Cruikshank was the
“premier caricaturist in Europe”1 and a household
name. Over the course of his career as an enormously
prolific artist, Cruikshank published over 6000
graphic designs2 for various magazines, books,
advertisements, and other publications. His
recognizably “Cruikshankian” style exemplifies the
taste for the grotesque in art and literature of the
period, and the features of his figures are typically
Fig. 3: Cruikshank, George. “The Golden Goose.”
Grimm, Jacob and Wilhelm. German popular stories (J.
Ruskin and E. Taylor, Trans.). Oxford University: J.C.
Hotten, 1868. Google Books. Web. 5 August 2009.
greatly exaggerated to visualize their psychologies
and backgrounds. For example, in the cartoon “The Radical’s Arms” (fig. 2), two French
peasants stand beside a revolutionary guillotine. The peasants’ low social standing (and
therefore lack of refinement, restraint, and intellect) is made evident by their large mouths and noses, grotesque
expressions, immodest postures, and the woman’s burly figure. Towards the end of his career, Cruikshank illustrated
Fig. 2: Cruikshank, George. The
Radical's Arms. 13 November 1819
1
Vogler, Richard A. "George Cruikshank: Caricaturist, Illustrator, and Reformer." Graphic Works of George Cruikshank. New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1979.
Page 210.
2
Vogler, vii.
several children’s books, the most important of which is German Popular Stories, a collection of fairytales originally
written by the Grimm brothers and translated by Edgar Taylor for English audiences in 1823. The publication of these
Stories, with illustrations by Cruikshank, marked the introduction of a new genre of fairytales, and a budding market for
literature in general with the intention of being published for children. By the time Cruikshank began illustrating books,
he had a long-established language of caricature that was then translated to the characters of his book illustrations. The
figures in The Radical’s Arms can be compared to the villagers in the illustration for “The Golden Goose,” (fig. 3) in
which Cruikshank’s rural characters all have round features and open mouths, and the central woman is somewhat
masculine with a broad body. Cruikshank was especially adept at assigning, and consistently employing, specific
characteristics as indications of different classes.
Sir John Tenniel succeeded George Cruikshank as
England’s primary caricaturist at the height of his career and, like
George Cruikshank, published thousands of drawings in his
lifetime3. Sir Tenniel was a prominent and well-connected member
of the upper class, and his drawings for the magazine Punch were
thought to epitomize the feelings and values of the upper and
middle class (Morris 107). Many of Tenniel’s prints remain
familiar to young readers today because of his collaboration with
Lewis Carroll as the original illustrator for Carroll’s Alice’s
Adventures in Wonderland and its sequel, Through the Looking
Glass. Several of the characters in these two children’s books
resemble the “stock types” created by Tenniel to represent groups,
Fig. 5: Tenniel, John. Alice in Duchess House.
Digital image. Lenny's Alice in Wonderland
site. Web. 5 Aug. 2009. <http://www.alice-inwonderland.net/alice2a.html>.
classes, and races of people in his political cartoons. The
Alice books were published during a movement for
women’s rights in the United States and Britain, and the
tension created by shifting gender dynamics is evident in Tenniel’s depictions of Carroll’s
characters. For example, in his illustration of Alice’s Duchess, Tenniel draws her in the same manner as his “stock type”
of suffragettes in Punch. The Duchess (fig. 5) and the man dressed as a woman activist (fig. 4) share a masculine (and in
the case of the suffragette, an actual man’s) face, similar shoes and large head decorations. The Duchess is a powerful but
absurd woman in Carroll’s book, a detail that may coordinate with Tenniel’s
visual comparison.
Fig. 4: Tenniel, John.
“Mending the Lesson,”
cartoon, Punch, 20
December 1873 (detail).
Finally, I studied William Makepeace Thackeray, who was primarily
a writer (most famous for the novel Vanity Fair), but originally aspired to be
a painter, and was a “respected critic of contemporary art”4. He contributed
satirical cartoons as well as writings to Punch, and was an admirer of
Cruikshank5, an influence that is evident in his caricatures. Thackeray’s
cartoons are comically grotesque, and display the exaggeration of features
characteristic to Cruikshank. In 1854, Thackeray published the children’s
book The Rose and the Ring, also called A Fireside Pantomime, which
featured his own illustrations. The book is a fairytale about kings and queens
in an imaginary country, but also includes servants, footmen, and black
slaves, who are all visually stereotyped in accordance with the stereotypes of
cartoons in Punch and other publications. Drawings of actual monarchs (fig 7)
give indication of Thackeray’s inspiration for his portrayal of royalty in the
fairytale (fig 6), and The Rose and the Ring may be interpreted as a comment
on the vanity and arrogance of the monarchy.
Fig 6: Thackeray,
W.M. “King
Valoroso,” The Rose
and the Ring.
Hertfordshire, UK:
Wordsworth
Editions Ltd., 1995.
Print.
Fig 7: Thackeray, W.M. “Rex,
Ludovicus, Ludovicus Rex.”
Byerly, Alison. Realism,
representation, and the arts in
nineteenth-century literature.
Cambridge University Press:
1997.
By closely analyzing and comparing images, researching the biographies of these three artists, and exploring the historical
context in which they lived and worked, I was able to identify the way in which political cartoons informed children’s
illustrations of the same era.
3
Morris, Frankie. Artist of Wonderland: The Life, Political Cartoons, and Illustrations of Tenniel. Charlottesville: University of Virginia P, 2005. P.1
4
Buchanan-Brown, John. The Illustrations of William Makepeace Thackeray. North Pomfret, VT: David & Charles Inc., 1979. Page 6.
5
Buchanan-Brown, Page 25.