« Visions et divisions, ou l'image au service de l'ordre social victorien », Images of Fear/Les Images de la peur. Volume 31. Ogée, Frédéric, Maurice Géracht et Ariane Fennetaux (Dir.), Paris: Interfaces, 2011, pp 27-40.
Résumé
Famously described by William Burn as “the age of equipoise,” the mid-Victorian period was nevertheless marked by a large amount of popular discontent which, in turn, generated widespread fears of disorder. This paper purports to explore the role played in such a context by representations — those of poverty in particular — in the attempt to maintain a social order which some thought was being threatened. At a time when ethics and aesthetics were widely considered as interdependent, British painting and illustration bore witness to the terrible living and working conditions of the poor, provided models for workmen to imitate and, most strikingly perhaps, suggested a human taxonomy which, it was hoped, would then help to avoid social upheaval.