The 'fallen woman' in Victorian painting: Hunt, Egg and the double standard

Who was the Victorian 'fallen woman'?

The 'fallen woman' was a figure of Victorian art and fiction: a woman who had lost her sexual innocence outside marriage and, in the moral language of the day, her place in respectable society ^[9]. Wikipedia describes the term as an archaic phrase for a woman who had lost her innocence and fallen from God's grace, which in nineteenth-century Britain became closely tied to the loss of chastity and to promiscuity ^[9]. It covered a wide range of cases, from prostitutes to rape victims, working-class women and women with damaged reputations ^[9].

The phrase rested on an expectation that women's sexuality should be confined to marriage and supervised by men ^[9]. A man who had the same experience before marriage did not suffer the same label. That asymmetry is the heart of what historians call the Victorian double standard, discussed further in the page on Victorian morality and the double standard.

The social background was urban and large. Wikipedia refers to Henry Mayhew's mid-century attempts to count the prostitutes of London, and describes rescue efforts, mostly led by middle-class women, that ranged from strict and punitive homes to Dickens's more humane Urania Cottage, supported by Lady Burdett-Coutts ^[9]. Painters did not need to look far for subjects.

In painting, the theme took several forms. Some works showed the moment of awakening to guilt, others the aftermath of adultery, and others the dead or dying woman by a river, inspired by Thomas Hood's poem 'The Bridge of Sighs' ^[5][9]. The two most discussed British examples are Hunt's The Awakening Conscience of 1853 and Egg's three-part Past and Present of 1858, and they are the subject of this page. Several of the same themes appear in literature, as described in fallen women in the Victorian novel.

Key 'fallen woman' paintings of the 1850s

Work	Date	Subject	Where to see it
The Awakening Conscience, William Holman Hunt	1853 (shown at the Royal Academy 1854)	A kept woman rises from her lover's lap at the sound of a song; the missing wedding ring, the cat and bird and the tangled threads carry the moral [3]	Tate Britain, London [1]
Past and Present, Nos 1-3, Augustus Egg	1858	A husband discovers his wife's adultery; years later the children pray and the mother is destitute by the river [5][6]	Tate Britain, London [2]
Found, Dante Gabriel Rossetti	Conceived 1851	A country drover recognises his former sweetheart in the street; she turns away [9]	Not covered in the sources opened
Found Drowned, G. F. Watts	c. 1848	A drowned woman beneath a river arch; a likely influence on Egg [6]	Not covered in the sources opened

What does The Awakening Conscience show?

The Awakening Conscience shows a young woman rising from a man's lap at a piano and gazing out of a window, in a scene that its title and its objects identify as a mistress and her lover ^[3]. William Holman Hunt painted it in 1853 in oil on canvas, measuring 76 by 56 centimetres, and it is now at Tate Britain ^[1][3]. At first sight it can look like a marital quarrel, but the symbols make clear that the couple are not married ^[3].

The details do the work. The article on the painting notes that the position of her left hand emphasises the absence of a wedding ring, although rings are worn on every other finger ^[3]. A cat under the table is toying with a bird, and threads lie unravelled on the floor; Wikipedia lists these among the reminders of the woman's 'kept' status and wasted life ^[3]. An unfinished tapestry hangs on the piano ^[3].

The music also tells a story. Edward Lear's setting of Tennyson's 1847 poem 'Tears, Idle Tears' lies discarded on the floor, while the music on the piano is Thomas Moore's 'Oft in the Stilly Night', whose words speak of missed opportunities and sad memories of a happier past ^[3]. In the mirror behind her, a sunlit garden is reflected, a sign of the world she has left ^[3].

The setting is a rented house. Wikipedia reports that Hunt had hired a room in a 'maison de convenance', a house where lovers took their mistresses, to capture the feeling of the place ^[3]. He later said that the initial idea came from Peggotty's search for Emily in Dickens's David Copperfield, an account recorded in his 1905 book Pre-Raphaelitism and the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood ^[3].

The painting was bought by the Manchester industrialist Thomas Fairbairn, who paid 350 guineas, and shown at the Royal Academy in 1854 alongside Hunt's The Light of the World ^[3]. Fairbairn asked Hunt to soften the woman's expression, and Hunt retouched the painting in 1864 and again in 1886 ^[3]. The model for the woman was Annie Miller, to whom Hunt was for a time engaged, according to Wikipedia ^[3].

How did Ruskin read Hunt's painting?

Ruskin read the painting as a moral drama and defended it publicly, because many viewers, he said, stared at it and left without understanding it ^[7]. His letter to the editor of The Times was published on 25 May 1854. He thanks the paper for printing his earlier notes on Hunt's main picture and explains that the story of The Awakening Conscience is clear, yet misunderstood ^[7].

According to his own account, the scene shows a young woman who has been singing with the man who seduced her, and who is struck by the words of the song. Ruskin describes the man at the piano, singing without looking at her and striking the keys with a gloved hand, while the song reaches 'numbed places' in her heart and she springs up in agony ^[10]. He describes the girl's beauty breaking into sudden horror, with trembling lips, clenched teeth and eyes that show both fear of what lies ahead and tears for the past ^[10].

He also reads the furniture. For Ruskin every object in the room becomes tragic when read correctly, and the 'fatal newness' of the furniture signals the absence of the accumulated associations of a real home ^[10]. In the closing part of the letter he points to a torn bird on the floor, to a picture of a woman taken in adultery above the fireplace, and to the hem of her dress, which the painter has worked thread by thread and which may soon be soiled when her feet fail her in the street ^[8].

His conclusion is compassionate. He writes that no other picture on the Academy's walls confronts the moral evil of the age so directly, and he credits the painting with waking mercy in the thoughtless cruelty of youth and turning the severity of judgment into compassion ^[8]. The letter shows that moral painting in the 1850s was not simply condemnation. Ruskin and Hunt both wanted viewers to feel pity as well as disapproval.

Not all critics were convinced. Wikipedia quotes the Athenaeum of 1854, which wrote that the painter of the 'Bridge of Sighs' could not have conceived a more painful-looking face, and it notes that Hunt's patron wanted the woman's expression softened ^[3]. The reaction suggests that the picture was seen as strong, even uncomfortable, material for a Royal Academy exhibition.

What story does Egg's Past and Present tell?

Egg's Past and Present tells, in three paintings, how a middle-class family breaks up after the wife's adultery, and what becomes of the wife and daughters afterwards ^[5][6]. The three oil paintings of 1858, each 63.5 by 76.2 centimetres, were designed to be shown together as a triptych ^[5]. They were exhibited at the Royal Academy that year without a title, and the exhibition caption was a fictional diary entry beginning with a date, 4 August, which says that a man referred to as 'B-' had been dead for more than a fortnight ^[5][6].

The central scene is a drawing-room. The husband has just come home, as his hat and luggage suggest, and holds a crumpled letter that seems to be a love letter intercepted from the wife's lover. The wife lies prostrate in front of him, begging for mercy ^[6]. An apple lies in two halves, one on the table with a knife through it and one on the floor, which the Tate Papers article reads as the wife's fall, both physical and social ^[6]. The children's house of cards has toppled, echoing the collapse of the family, and above the wife's miniature hangs a picture of Adam and Eve being driven out of Eden ^[6].

The two outer paintings show the aftermath. In one, the daughters pray in a bare bedroom for their mother after their father's death. In the other, the mother sits beneath a river-side arch, with an infant, in gaslight ^[5][6]. Ruskin pointed out, and the Tate article repeats, that both scenes show the same night under the same small cloud beneath the moon ^[6]. A playbill on the wall of the arch advertises two plays at the Haymarket theatre, Victims and A Cure for Love, and a poster nearby advertises pleasure excursions to Paris ^[5][6].

Wikipedia places the arch at the Adelphi in London and notes that the infant in the last scene may be the child of the affair, and that it is unclear whether the child is asleep or dead ^[5]. The Tate Papers article says G. F. Watts's Found Drowned (c. 1848) is a likely influence, as is the Bridge of Sighs tradition more widely ^[5][6].

The work has a legal context. The Matrimonial Causes Act 1857 had moved divorce into the civil courts the year before the triptych was shown, and Wikipedia suggests that the paintings reflected anxieties about family life after that change, though it marks the claim as lacking a citation ^[5]. No source opened here shows that Egg had the Act in mind. The story of that Act is told in the page on adultery and divorce law in England.

What do these paintings reveal about the double standard?

They reveal a double standard by what they leave out as much as what they show: the consequences fall on the woman, while the man's part is shown briefly or not at all ^[3][5][6]. In The Awakening Conscience the man is a figure at the piano who, in Ruskin's account, sings without looking at her. In Past and Present the husband appears once, at the moment of discovery, and the lover is, according to a letter by Ruskin quoted in the Tate article, a 'sham count' with a moustache whom the picture does not clearly identify ^[6].

Contemporary critics read the works in different ways. The surface reading of Egg's triptych is a warning against adultery. The Tate Papers author argues for a deeper reading that criticises loveless, financially motivated marriages, with the two plays and the Balzac novel in the room as clues ^[6]. Wikipedia likewise notes that Egg leaves viewers to decide whether the wife should be condemned or pitied ^[5].

Reviews were mixed. The Art-Journal found the subject too poignant for a series of paintings, while the Athenaeum went further and called the work 'an impure thing', saying that Egg had gone beyond the acceptable limit of painted horror ^[6]. Holman Hunt, believed to be the anonymous author of Egg's early biography, said it was not a favourite picture with the public ^[6]. A work meant as a moral lesson could still be thought too disturbing to hang.

The theme was not only about women. Wikipedia's article on the fallen woman mentions Rossetti's Found, conceived in 1851, which shows a country drover recognising his former sweetheart in the street while she turns away, so that the man's part in her fall is at least implied ^[9]. It also records Jessie Ackermann's argument that men, not only women, should be treated as sinners in rescue work ^[9]. These voices were exceptions in a culture that mostly judged women.

Where can they be seen today?

Both works are at Tate Britain in London, and the Tate's own pages list them as on display ^[1][2]. The Awakening Conscience came to the Tate in 1976, donated by Sir Colin and Lady Anderson, after being sold anonymously at Christie's in January 1946 ^[3]. Past and Present is listed by Tate in three numbered parts ^[2]. Wikipedia states that Sir Alec and Lady Martin gave the paintings in 1918 in memory of their daughter Nora ^[5]; the Tate pages opened for this article give no credit line.

Visitors should check Tate's current displays before travelling, because the 'on display' status can change and the pages opened for this article do not carry a date. The paintings' titles also deserve a note: Egg is not known to have used the name Past and Present, which first appears in an advertisement for a Christie's sale after his death in 1863 ^[5][6].

Augustus Egg, born in London in 1816 and elected to the Royal Academy in 1860, died in Algiers on 26 March 1863 ^[4]. Hunt retouched his picture in 1864 and again in 1886 ^[3]. The pair of works remain the clearest examples in British painting of the way art could use the home, the piano and the apple to tell a story about sex outside marriage without showing it.

Frequently asked questions

Why is the woman in The Awakening Conscience not wearing a wedding ring?

Because she is a kept mistress, not a wife. The painting's left hand is positioned to emphasise the absence of a wedding ring, although she wears rings on every other finger ^[3]. It is one of several details that tell the viewer the couple are unmarried.

Are the paintings on display at Tate Britain?

Tate's pages for The Awakening Conscience and for Past and Present, No. 1, say they are on display at Tate Britain ^[1][2]. The pages do not give a date, so it is wise to check before visiting.

Did any Victorian paintings show 'fallen men'?

Hardly, in the sources opened here. Rossetti's Found shows a man recognising a former sweetheart who has fallen, but the figure who falls is still the woman ^[9]. The wider critique of the double standard came mainly from writers and reformers such as Jessie Ackermann, who argued that men should also be treated as sinners ^[9].

How did Victorian audiences react to these works?

With a mixture of admiration and unease. Ruskin defended The Awakening Conscience in The Times in May 1854, but the Athenaeum found it a painful sight ^[3][7]. Egg's triptych was called too poignant by the Art-Journal and 'an impure thing' by the Athenaeum ^[6].

Was Past and Present Egg's own title?

No. The three paintings were shown untitled at the Royal Academy in 1858, and the title first appears in a Christie's advertisement of 5 May 1863, after his death ^[5][6]. Wikipedia suggests it may come from a misreading of Ruskin's Academy Notes ^[5].

Who modelled for The Awakening Conscience?

Annie Miller posed for the woman, according to Wikipedia, and the buyer, Thomas Fairbairn, later asked Hunt to soften the woman's expression ^[3]. The man may be based on Thomas Seddon or on Augustus Egg himself ^[3].