Ezra Jennings in Conversation with Gabriel Betteredge

Ezra Jennings depiction in the image featured in Harper's Weekly illustrates Ezra leaning on a chair with a single hand, while his other arm is drawn clutching himself and his hat. Ezra Jennings' in the illustration appears huddled and shadowed next to the larger and brighter Gabriel Betteredge. Harper's visualization of the exchange supports "the negative implications heaped upon opium users" (Prindle, pp 56) and the social stigma placed on opioid users in the middle-class circle. Joshua Prindle engages with the complications of middle-class chronic pain sufferers and their fear to turn to opioid treatments in his dissertation Opium and Addiction in Wilkie Collins Armadale and The Moonstone; "Chronic pain sufferers found themselves stuck between making the decision of experiencing constant pain and either trying to hide their condition and subsequent substance use, or being publically vilified" (56).

 Ezra Jennings experiences the effects of societies prejudices against his solution to his chronic suffering. He is regarded as spreading the "disease" of addiction to Franklin Blake, from the perspective of Betteredge. The illustration appears to support the idea of the "vilified" opium user as it leaves Ezra Jennings in the shadow, looking menacing and closed off from the audience. This projection of social stigma on the illustration confuses the binary of Abnormal and normal. It treats Ezra Jennings' addiction/suffering as an instance of abnormality in comparison to the other characters; however, the attention brought to the disability is an act of normalization in itself. 

Works Cited: 

Prindle, Joshua. Morality and Medicine: Opium and Addiction in Wilkie Collins's and Armadale and The Moonstone. Iowa State University, Ann Arbor, 2017. PhD Dissertation. ProQuest, http://ezproxy.lib.ucalgary.ca/login?url=https://search-proquest-com.ezproxy.lib.ucalgary.ca/docview/1918648853?accountid=9838.

Harper’s Weekly: A Journal of Civilization. July 18th 1868. Pp 430-464