Victorian Illustrated Fiction - Michael Hollington (essay date 1990)
Michael Hollington (essay date 1990)
SOURCE: Hollington, Michael. “Dickens and Cruikshank as Physiognomers in Oliver Twist.” Dickens Quarterly 7, no. 2 (1990): 243-54.
[In the following essay, Hollington proposes that Dickens and Cruikshank related to each other as rivals in the art of physiognomy with their depiction of the characters in Oliver Twist.]
The aim of this essay is to explore in outline the nexus of relationships between writer, illustrator and reader in the representation of human appearance in a novel where it becomes clear at a very early stage that this is a question of considerable significance. The first metamorphosis of state undergone by the infant Oliver is a fall into a world of signification and interpretation based upon external appearance. Initially wrapped in a blanket, he is at first indecipherable, immune to any attempt to penetrate his outer wrapping and locate him in a system of differences: “it...
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