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Crucial to understanding the emotions which underlie Julia Flyte's renunciation of Charles Ryder in Brideshead Revisited is "Ruskin's description" of "a picture of Holman Hunt's called The Awakened Conscience' " (290). Julia, who has not seen the picture, concludes from Ryder's reading of Ruskin, "You're perfectly right. That's exactly what I did feel" (290). That these feelings were aroused by her brother Bridey's statement that Julia was "living in sin" (285, 287) has never been in dispute. However, both the title of Hunt's painting and the location of Ruskin's criticism require further explication.
Although Waugh, his editors, and his critics have consistently referred to The Awakened Conscience, the title Holman Hunt assigned to this work was not The Awakened Conscience but rather The Awakening Conscience. Waugh's apparent error links Hunt's painting to its Victorian predecessors, The Awakened Conscience by Richard Redgrave and The Awakened Conscience by Thomas Brooks.1 Because Waugh was not a casual observer of these Victorian painters, he should not have been prone to such an error. On the contrary, Waugh indicates his interest not only by the allusion in Brideshead but also by his prior claim that "The Awakened Conscience. ..is, perhaps, the noblest painting by any Englishman."2 Thus, Waugh's alteration of Hunt's title deserves investigation.
The painting which Waugh praises but mistitles depicts a young woman who has risen from her lover's lap, though her lover continues to hold her with one arm and to touch the keys of a piano with his free hand. Among the several features of the composition which label the relationship adulterous and emphasize the young woman's shocked awareness is the painting-within-the-painting, which portrays a repentant adulteress whose posture echoes that of the young woman. Additionally, the motifs on the picture's frame include "marigolds and bells, symbols of sorrow and warning" (Wood 137). Inscribed on the base of the frame is the following quotation from Proverbs: "As he thattaketh away a garment in cold weather/so is he that singeth songs to an heavy heart." Forthe catalogue of the Royal Academy's 1854 exhibition, Hunt furnished two additional quotations - one from Ecclesiasticus, the other from Isaiah (Landow 50-51, based on Frederick George Stevens, William Holman Hunt and His Works). Taken together, these visual and verbal signals...