"Miss Dinah in Dishabille" by "Phiz" (Illustration for Charles Lever's "Barrington") (original) (raw)

Miss Dinah in Dishabille

Phiz (Hablot K. Browne)

1863

Illustration for Charles Lever's Barrington (Chapter 33, p. 267)

Image scan, caption, and commentary by Philip V. Allingham.

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Commentary

By the time Dinah and M'Cormick enact this comic man/comic woman scene, Josephine seems to have accepted the fact that the Barrington's live in a cottage rather than a castle, and that domestic cares rather than the pursuit of fashion and pleasure must be her daily concern. Skirts up (in the text revealing her "massive" ankles) and feather-duster in hand, Dinah, cleaning the house prior to the arrival of Withering and Major Stapylton for dinner, is shocked to find her inquisitive neighbour ensconced in a comfortable arm-chair in the drawing-room, compelling the Barringtons to invite him to the sumptuous feast he has detected in the kitchen. However, while Phiz depicts the major reading a newspaper, Lever clearly (if somewhat improbably) indicates that he is merely "musing and meditating" (267).

Last modified August 2002