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Abstract
Beginning at the start of illustration's popularity, I explored how Walter Crane visually conflated Bluebeard and Henry VIII to challenge accepted belief in the rightness of male dominance in the household. To accomplish this, I examined how he juxtaposed Henry VIII being a known quantity as a historical figure against his Aesthetic designs of the Bride and home to argue that Bluebeard's violent control over his wife resulted in the inevitable collapse of their domestic harmony. Thus, Crane gives his readers the tools to both understand and critique for themselves, unjust household dynamics.
I then analyzed John Austen's illustration for the framing narrative of the Arabian Nights as a critique of using violence against women as a way to reclaim lost masculinity. I drew attention to how Austen uses the conventions of Orientalism and Victorian race science to externalize Shahryār's sadistic sexuality and physical violence onto the face of a Black eunuch, thus showing that not only is his hypermasculine persona assumed, but that in assuming it he "lowers" himself on the racial hierarchy. In communicating this through the lense of the Other, Austen engaged in a form of racial policing, where his male audience would be able to view the image and seek to distance themselves from the behavior exhibited as to avoid comparisons to non-whiteness.
Lastly, I examined William Heath Robinson's racially ambiguous Bluebeard figure to warn against the idea of cultural miscegenation embodied by the romantic archetype of "The Sheik". In doing so, I trace how Robinson's visual narrative works in collaboration with the text in order to discourage the romanticization of "cultural miscegenation" by white women by showing how seeking to engage in the culture of the Orient acts as a corrupting force in and of itself. In doing so, he impressed upon his audience that should they seek exoticism over safety, they would come to regret that action.
