How to Read Paintings: The Awakening Conscience by William Holman Hunt
The rise of female power
This is a memorable painting by any standard. Just look at the rich setting and detailed paintwork, not to mention the curious gestures of the two protagonists.
It is also something of a puzzle. Notice first the wide array of objects that suggest an underlying meaning: the cat beneath the table toying with a bird, the unfinished tapestry hanging from the leg of the piano — its threads spilling onto the floor below — the single discarded glove at the woman’s feet, the scroll of Alfred Lord Tennyson’s 1847 poem “Tears, Idle Tears” dropped onto the floor (it has been arranged into a musical score by Edward Lear), the clock on the piano top covered in a glass dome, even the ray of light in the bottom-right corner…
All these details — and more besides — are laden with symbolic intent. But what message is the artist, the Pre-Raphaelite painter William Holman Hunt, trying to tell us?
The central motif of the painting is, of course, the woman. She is seen standing up from the man’s lap, her attention spontaneously caught by the view through the open…
