THE MOONSTONE HARPER'S WEEKLY IMAGE OF MISS CLACK

This image can be found accompanying the first page of the nineteenth installment in Harper’s Weekly. It depicts Rachel’s response to Miss Clack after she informs Rachel that she was trying to convert her mother to Christianity before death “snatched her out of [her] hands” (Collins 261). Here we can see one of the major elements that signal Harper’s willing adoption of sensationalism. The image is large and placed in the center of the page, similar to the idea of a signboard that Mansel mentions (qtd. in Anderman 27). Anderman remarks that the illustrations in Harper’s Weekly “work together in each installment to anticipate and retell the serial’s emotion” (52). This is certainly the case here as the image references the conclusion of the most climactic scene in Miss Clack’s narrative. It is here that she sees repercussions to her persistent, and ill-timed, evangelizing. The selection and placement of this image then show the publisher’s aim to entice the reader and highlight the important themes displayed in the installment. The theme depicted is the incongruity between Miss Clack’s perception of herself and how others perceive her. For instance, in this section, she claims to be “ shocked and grieved, but, needless to say, not offended” (Collins 262). This illustration, however, points this out as a falsehood through her cowering body language and expression. The context here slightly alters Miss Clack’s characterization by making the misrepresentations in her narrative more apparent.

Works Cited

Anderman, Elizabeth. “Serialization, Illustration, and the Art of Sensation.” Victorian Periodicals Review, vol. 52, no.1, 2019, pp. 27-56. Project Muse, doi: https://doi.org/10.1353/vpr.2019.0001. Accessed 01 December 2019.

Collins, Wilkie. The Moonstone, edited by John Sutherland, Oxford University Press, 1999.