Visual and Textual Layering

An example of the layers one encounters when deciphering an image is the periodicals’ different ways of representing the scene pictured here. This illustration accompanies the beginning of Chapter Eight in Harper’s Weekly. The scene pictured here is narrated from the perspective of Gabriel Betteredge conveying information from his daughter Penelope’s “awkward discovery” (Collins 57). This image reflects the framed structure of the encounter: an outside perspective watches Penelope, drawn in shadows in the back, as she observes Rosanna. In the American publication of this chapter, it always seems to be an outside perspective describing Rosanna; for all the expressed concern for the “poor girl” (57), it is not until her suicide note that her persepctive is accessible. 

In England, however, the chapter was released in close proximity to an anonymous poem called “Tyranny.” The speaker of the poem admires a garden of roses and laments their inaccessibility, “though free as fair in others’ sight” (“Tyranny” 17). In the experience of this speaker lies Rosanna’s perspective. A deformed housemaid, Rosanna’s “absurd” (Collins 57) love for Franklin Blake makes her wish he, like the flower “were not so fair” (“Tyranny” 12), because "it never seemed to occur to him to waste a look on her plain face" (Collins 57). The following stanza marks a turn for the speaker and illustrates, perhaps more effectively than Harper’s drawing, Rosanna’s perspective of the scene in question:

I lift it then, my own at last,

And hide it in my breast,

And there one dead-born blessing more 

Is buried with the rest. ("Tyranny" 37-40)

Whereas the speaker was unable to pick the roses before, they now realize that killing the flower to wear did not make them feel any more alive. In the novel, Rosanna replaces Franklin’s button-hole rose with one of her own, so that he will unknowingly wear it close to his heart. Like the poem’s speaker, however the act does not have the desired effect. Rosanna’s actions, described by Harper’s in both text and image, become less sinister and are, instead, incredibly sad when read in conjunction with this poem.

When reading detective novels, as with solving mysteries, it is important to consider all perspectives of a situation. This image aptly demonstrates how neglecting to do so may proclude important information; for example, the forshadowing of an imminent suicide plot.