In a letter to her publisher W. S. Williams (dated March 11, 1848), Charlotte Brontë urged that her novel Jane Eyre (1847) not be illustrated. Brontë warns that her unsightly characters would not find adequate representation in (the prevailing) idealizing images:
If, then, Jane Eyre is ever to be illustrated, it must be by some other hand than that of its author. I hope no one will be at the trouble to make portraits of my characters. Bulwer and Byron heroes and heroines are very well, they are all of them handsome; but my personages are mostly unattractive in looks, and therefore ill-adapted to figure in ideal portraits. At the best, I have always thought such representations futile.
Interestingly, Brontë extensively praises in the same letter the “truth” in the illustrations of her fellow writer William Makepeace Thackeray. Brontë, however, does not specify whether Thackeray’s truth in drawing extends to the depiction of ugly characters:
You will not easily find a second Thackeray. How he can render, with a few black lines and dots, shades of expression so fine, so real; traits of character so minute, so subtle, so difficult to seize and fix––I can only wonder and admire. Thackeray may not be a painter, but he is a wizard of a draughtsman; touched with his pencil, paper lives. And then his drawing is so refreshing; after the wooden limbs one is accustomed to see portrayed by commonplace illustrators, his shapes of bone and muscle clothed with flesh, correct in proportion and anatomy, are a real relief. All is true in Thackeray. If Truth were again a goddess, Thackeray should be her high priest.
We know of at least one case from the mid-nineteenth century in which an (author and) illustrator’s refusal to conform to expectations for beauty produced a public outcry. When Heinrich Hoffmann published his greatly successful German children’s book Struwwelpeter (1845), some critics complained, according to Hoffmann, about the distorted or grotesque (the “Fratzenhafte”) appearance of the accompanying images. Hoffmann defended his illustrations by arguing that traditional notions of aesthetics are meaningless for children:
“Da heißt es: ‘Das Buch verdirbt mit seinen Fratzen das ästhetische Gefühl des Kindes.’ Nun gut, so erziehe man die Säuglinge in Gemäldegalerien oder in Cabineten mit antiken Gypsabdrücken! Aber man muß dann auch verhüten, daß das Kind sich selbst nicht kleine menschliche Figuren aus zwei Kreisen und vier geraden Linien in der bekannten Weise zeichne und glücklicher dabei ist, als wenn man ihm den Laokoon zeigt.”
(Hoffmann, cited in F.S., “Wie der ‘Struwwelpeter’ enstand,” p. 770)
Works Cited
Brontë’s letter is cited from the edition by Clement Shorter. The Brontës: Life and Letters. Hodder and Stoughton, 1908, p. 402.
Brontë’s letter is briefly discussed in Sibylle Pantazzi. “Author and Illustrator: Images in Confrontation.” A History of Book Illustration: 29 Points of View, edited by William A. Katz, Scarecrow Press, 1994, pp. 585-600, p. 594.
F.S. “Wie der ‘Struwwelpeter’ enstand.” Die Gartenlaube, 1871, no. 46, pp. 768–70.
Content is forthcoming. Please check this site again soon.