Visions et divisions: Discours culturels de "Punch" et ordre social victorien (1850–1880) by Françoise Baillet

Abstract

Reviewed by: Visions et divisions: Discours culturels de "Punch" et ordre social victorien (1850–1880) by Françoise Baillet Eloïse Forestier (bio) Françoise Baillet, Visions et divisions: Discours culturels de "Punch" et ordre social victorien (1850–1880) (Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2022), pp. 254, €30 paperback. Another study of Punch! And in French, no less. In Visions et divisions: Discours culturels de Punch et ordre social victorien (1850–1880), Françoise Baillet treats us to the visual delights of this monument of art, humour, and social insight, the British weekly satirical periodical Punch, or the London Charivari, launched in 1841 by Henry Mayhew, Mark Lemon, and wood engraver Ebenezer Landells. This fresh scholarly plunge into the scene and beyond the printed page follows the rising tradition of editor studies, or the study of that network of minds and affiliations that lies behind the production of a single periodical, instigated by Laurel Brake, Aled Jones, and Lionel Madden in Investigating Victorian Journalism (1990) and more recently scrutinized for Punch by Patrick Leary in The Punch Brotherhood (2010). Brake and Leary apply group dimension and dynamics to the editorial agenda: no single "Mister Punch" perspective emerges, nor simply a report on Victorian times. Rather, a plurality of outlooks upon society lends a rich complexity to the relationship between the sketch artist(s), the reader, and the magazine itself. Taking into account these factors, Baillet focuses on the visual discourse of Punch, studying the subtle layers of significance between the drawing, the message, and the beholder. She chooses three decades of the mid-Victorian era (1850–80), the most conservative period of the Queen's reign but, at the same time, a period that was tested and tried by a series of societal and legal evolutions that shook the very foundations of Victorian society—a treasure of inspiration for the editors of Punch. Baillet's book is a well-balanced overview of both the content and production of Punch magazine. Divided into three parts that each contain two or three chapters (a table of contents would have been nice), the book focuses on three major issues that rattled the order and propriety of Victorian codes: social class movement, women, and the figure of the artist. All three themes presented a threat to a wishfully well-ordained society ruled by work, morality, and masculinity, a vision that the conservative male sketch artist editors of Punch also strongly supported and strove to maintain. Baillet demonstrates that the humour of the magazine is based on a kind of dystopia imagined along the clear-cut lines of Victorian values confronted with the changes of time: aristocratic idlers against time-constrained commoners, the Angel in the House against rising feminism, the responsibilities of citizenship against the violent-drunk recipient of these honours, or respectable society itself infected by the dilettante and the dandy. The stroke of pen and colouring have much to do with the art [End Page 467] of Punch. Straight lines, fine features, and clear colouring for masculinity, respectability, and honesty contrast with curves, thick features, and blurred lines and colouring for femininity, frailty, awkwardness, and deviousness. The clueless aristocrat fumbles his way through working London, women are given attributes of power and production while their distraught husbands are left with the duties of the household, the murderous working-class ruffian is given light justice and the right to vote, and the failed artist puffs his way around simpering salon loiterers. A mild yet certain sense of wrongness, which Baillet insightfully describes, pervades each of these vignettes. Thus she gives us in a nutshell the measure of the magazine's wit but also a clear perspective of what Victorian society defended for a certain type of reader (upper-middle- and upper-class white, predominantly male) through the eyes of similar-minded sketch artists. By exaggerating the traits and distorting reality to an extreme, for readers who shared the fears and concerns of the editors, the sketches of the magazine could provoke soothing laughter. With hindsight, and Baillet's help, they still do. One of the most difficult hurdles to overcome in a study of caricatures is to avoid doing the very thing they...