Magazine Illustration for "An Imaginative Woman"

Magazine Illustration for "An Imaginative Woman"

Jules Goodman made six illustrations for Thomas Hardy's "An Imaginative Woman," the headnote being an abstract piece picturing Ella, the protagonist, and the poet character Robert Trewe, whom she falls in love with despite not formally meeting. On the left of the picture, Trewe is within a mirror that's bottom portion of frame blends into a jumble of notes, presumably poems. Ella being an aspiring poet, the mirror points to her seeing herself within Trewe as a fellow writer, and the proximity to the poems to his likeness is a nod to Ella's approximation of Trewe being totally dependent on his writing, as she never got the chance to speak to or see him before his suicide. On the right of the picture, Ella is standing amongst what looks to be either large rocks or the remnants of a destroyed ship; either way she appears to be afloat on something in an ocean. A ship may be likely, as Ella's eventually unwanted husband often sails for days on business, perhaps the abstraction of the image reveals Ella's true hopes for her husband on his excursions. The water is surely a metaphor for Ella's swirling emotions, and divided attention, as the Trewe obsession overtakes her focus on domestic obligations.

Jules Goodman

Paul Mall Magazine

Philip V. Allingham

April 1894

Philip V. Allingham

Rights given by publisher

http://www.victorianweb.org/art/illustration/goodman/pva.html

Lithograph, 9.6 by 10.6 cm.

Lithograph