Scene in the Hospital for Incurables on Blackwell's Island

This full-page image, “Scene in the Hospital for Incurables on Blackwell’s Island,” appears two pages after The Moonstone in Harper’s Weekly. In W. S. L. Jewry’s illustration, two American women aid a sick man as he lies in a hospital bed. His bed is in the foreground and is cast in a bright light so as to draw the viewer’s eye to the scene. One woman peels fruit for the young man while the second woman (who appears to be dressed in religious habit) reads to him at his bedside—nourishing both his body and spirit. In the background, a third nurse cares for a patient, while a second unattended patient peers towards the sick man with concern. While this image doesn’t visually signal its ties to the American nation, the accompanying title positions this scene within an American hospital. It is a scene that conveys empathy between genders, classes, and physicalities.

 This image works in tandem with the images on p. 132¹ to frame Wilkie Collins’s story within the periodical. Both pages are dominated by images of Americans helping the less fortunate, and both critique the upper-middle class attitudes towards the poor that are represented in Chapter XV of The Moonstone. They function as nationalist propaganda by simultaneously criticizing the lack of empathy in the British class system (as represented by Cuff’s and Betteredge’s treatment of Mrs. Yolland) and falsely depicting “America’s precarious post-war national identity” (28) as unified and classless.

Notes

1. See “George Washington and Relieving the Poor” in this exhibit

Works Cited

Leverenz, Molly Knox. "Illustrating The Moonstone in America:Harper's Weekly and Transatlantic Introspection." American Periodicals 24.1 (2014): 21-44. Web. 5 Oct. 2015.