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| Keywords: 1849-Cruikshank-feminism-caricature-Queens-Bench.jpg A New Court of Queen's Bench As it Ought to Be -- Or -- The Ladies Trying a Contemptible Scoundrel for a Breach of Promise an 1849 caricature by George Cruikshank for the 1850 Comic Almanack This is an elaborate satire on what the imagined results of women's rights efforts would be mocking the idea of women ever becoming lawyers judges and legal officers The early feminist movement had begun to attract public attention after the Seneca Falls convention of 1848 Much of the humour which may not be entirely obvious to 21st-century eyes was intended to arise from the way in which the rather grim and austere all-male world of the mid-nineteenth century English law receives various touches of feminine domesticity giving rise to juxtapositions which would have seemed ludicrously incongruous and inherently absurd to many at the time The auxiliary spaces around the main area of the courtroom are The Papas and Mammas Box The Brothers Sisters and Other Relations Visitors Gallery Prosecutrix's Boudoir Tea Room and Coffee Room At the left the female warder guards the prisoner/defendant while the female bailiff holds a staff The accuser sits next to the jury supported by a relative who casts a reproachful glare at the defendant The lawyers etc sit at the table; at the right the main prosecutrix declaims to the jury with piles of paper labelled Introductory Correspondence c c c Declaration Proposal c c c and The Breaking off in front of her The other lawyers going clockwise are looking at a mirror propped up against The Book of Beauty an advertisement for Don Giovanni at Her Majesty's Theatre Boz's Law Reports In Cause of Bardell v Pickwick a reference to an incident in Dickens' Pickwick Papers and La Belle Assemblée a fashion magazine Incongruous feminine touches include the ribbons and bows in the legal wigs of the lawyers and judges the huge floral centerpiece on the lawyers' table and the judges lawyers and jurywomen who are knitting embroidering smelling nosegays plying fans and eating sweets The blindfolded symbolic representation of Justice at the center top is dressed as a ballerina while the lion that serves as a supporter to the royal arms at upper right has the hairstyle and moustache of a parlour dandy and ladies' man of the period and the middle judge's book rests on a blindfolded cupid -- these last two suggesting that the judges' decisions will be influenced by the handsomeness of males who appear before the court All the males - other than the defendant and the father and brother of the plaintiff - are squeezed into the visitors' gallery at upper left Of course Cruikshank doesn't seem to find it remarkable that under the normal course of the British law in 1849 women defendants would face all male judges jury and lawyers working within a law passed by all male MP's Comic Almanack for 1850 1849 Creator George Cruikshank PD-old-100 Caricatures of the United Kingdom Gender-role reversals or women in power 19th-century caricatures 1849 cartoons Courts in art Boudoirs La Belle Assemblée Engravings by George Cruikshank Art and feminism Anti-feminism | ||||
