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 •

•
THIRD EDITION

AN INTRODUCTION TO VISUAL CULTURE

Marita Sturken I Lisa Cartwright

OXFORD
UNIVERSITY PRESS
 chapter 7 Brand Culture: The Images
and Spaces of Consumption 257
Brands as Image, Symbol, and Icon 260
The Spaces of Modern Consumerism 265
Brand Ideologies 272
Commodity Fetishism and the Rise of the
Knowing Consumer 278
Social Awareness and the Selling of Humanitarianism 283
Social Media, Consumer Data, and the Changing
Spaces of Consumption 288
DIY Culture, the Share Economy,
and New Entrepreneurism 293

chapter 8 Postmodernism: Irony,

Parody, and Pastiche 301
Postmodernity/Postmodernism 302
Simulation and the Politics of Postmodernity 307
Reflexivity and Distanced Knowing 31 I
Jaded Knowing and Irony 316
Remix and Parody 322
Pastiche 325
Postmodern Space, Arch itecture, and Design 330

chapter 9 Scientific Looking, Looking

at Science 337
Opening Up the Body to the Empirical Medical Gaze 340
Medicine as Spectacle: The Anatomical and Surgical Theater 343
Evidence, Classification, and Identification 349
Bodily Interiors and Biomedical Personhood 357
The Genetic and Digital Body 364
Visualizing Pharmaceuticals and Science Activism 370

chapter 10 The Global Flow of Visual Culture 379

The History of Global Image Reproduction 38 1
Concepts of Globalization 386

CONTENTS I VII
 The World Image 39 1
Global Television 397
The Global Flow of Film 399
Social Movements. Indigenous Media, and Visua l Activism 402
The Global Museum and Contests of Culture 406
Refugees and Borders 4 15

glossary 425
credits 459
in~ 4~

VIII I CONTENTS
 acknowledgments

ur heartfelt thanks to the many artists and designers whose work

appears in this edition. The book is a tribute to you. We are grate-
ful as well to the many colleagues whose scholarly and critical input has deeply
informed this third edition of Practices of Looking. Major thanks to those who
offered frank advice and suggestions, and especially to the anonymous readers for
the press, listed below, who took the time to help us to improve this book based
on their experiences teaching with the previous edition. Thanks as well to our own
students, who have provided crucial feedback and steered us toward so many urgent
and compelling examples, issues, and theories along the way: this book is a tribute
to you as well.
We thank Lori Boatright for her continual support and for her sound counsel on
intellectual property rights. Dana Polan provided steady support to an extraordinary
degree; his intellectual guidance is vastly appreciated. We thank Rosalie Romero,
Nilo Goldfarb Cartwright, Ines Da Silva Beleza Barreiros, Daphne Magaro White,
Jake Stutz, Stephen Mandiberg, Kelli Moore, and Pawan Singh, all of whom con-
tributed in different ways and at different times to the ideas, choices, and writing
style adopted in this edition. Elizabeth Wolfson and Kavita Kulkarni provided very
important image research in early stages of this edition. We are very grateful to
Cathy Hannabach/ldeas on Fire for expertly editing our prose and helping to shape
the book's argument.
At Oxford University Press, we have benefited immensely from the steadfast
support of Toni Magyar, Patrick Lynch. Mark Haynes, and other members of the
Oxford staff who worked with us during this process. We are especially grateful
to Paul Longo, who guided the book and all its details so well. and to Sandy Cook,
permissions manager extraordinaire. for her extensive and expert detective work in
image research. We learned so much from Sandy. Thanks to Allegra Howard for
picking up the book's oversight late in the process. and to Cailen Swain for image
research early on. Thanks as well to Richard Johnson, Micheli ne Frederick. and the
copyediting and production team. Michele Laseau did excellent work on the layout
and cover design for this third edition. We are grateful to them and to Estudio Teddy
Cruz + Forman for granting us permission to use the dynam ic graphics that grace
this edition's cover.

I IX
 Jawad Ali Art Institute of California, Hollywood
Brian Carroll Berry College
Ross F. Collins North Dakota State University
Jacob Groshek Erasmus University. Rotterdam
Danny Hoffman University of Washington
Whitney Huber Columbia College. Chicago
Russell L. Kahn SUNY Institute of Technology
William H. Lawson University of Maryland, College Park
Kent N. Lowry Texas Tech University
Julianne Newmark New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology
Sheryl E. Reiss University of Southern California
Beth Rhodes Art Institute of California, Los Angeles
Shane Tilton Ohio University, Lancaster
Emily E. West University of Massachusetts Amherst
Richard Yates University of Minnesota

x I ACKNOWL EDCM EN TS
 Introduction

ow do you look? This question is loaded with possible meanings. How you
look is, in one sense, how you appear. This is in part about how you con-
struct yourself for others to see, through practices of the self that involve grooming,
fashion, and social media. The selfie is a powerful symbol of this era in which not only
images but also imaging practices are used as primary modes of expression and com-
munication in everyday life. These days, you may be as li kely to make images as you
are to view them. How you look to others, and whether and where you appear, has to
do with your access to such things as cameras, personal electronic devices and tech-
nologies, and social media. It is also contingent upon your place within larger struc-
tures of authority and in conventions of belief. Technical literacy as well as nationality,
class, religion, age, gender, and sexual identity may impact your right to appear, as
well as your ability to make and use images and imaging technologies. Nobody is
free to look as they please, not in any context. We all perform within (and against)
the conventions of cultural frameworks that incl ude nation, religion, politics, family,
school, work, and health. These frameworks inform our taste and self-fashioning, and
they give rise to the conventions that shape how we look and where and how we
appear. How you look, even when deeply personal, is also always political.
We can see the poli tics of looking, erasure, and the conventions of looking in
this image. The Bahraini protesters pictured in Figu re I. I hold symbolic coffins with
photographs of victims of the government's crackdown on the opposition. Some of
the photographs appear to be selfies, others family photographs, and still others of-
ficial portraits, perhaps workplace photographs. The faces of women are left blank
out of respect for religious and cultura l prohibitions against represent ing women
in images. We might say that they are erased, but we may also note that they do
appear in the form of a generic graph ic that signifies them through the presence of
the hijab.
How you look can also refer to the practices in which you engage to view, un-
derstand, appreciate, and ma ke meaning of the world. To look, in this sense, is to
use your visual apparatus, which incl udes your eyes and hands, and also technolo-
gies like your glasses, your camera, your computer, and your phone, to engage the
world through sight and image. To loo k in this sense might be to glance, to peer,
to stare, to look up, or to look away. You may give little thought to what you see,

I1
 FIG. I. I
or you may analyze it deeply. What you see is likely to appear
Bahraini protesters carry symbolic
coffins wit h pict ures o f victims differently to others. Whereas some may see the hijab graphic
of the government crackdown on in the Bahra ini protest photograph as a sign of women's erasure,
opposition protests in t he Shii te
others may see it as honoring women's presence as activists in
village of Barbar, May 4 , 2 012
this political context.
Practices of Looking is devoted to a critica l understanding
and interpretation of the codes, meanings, rights, and limits that make images and
looking practices matter in our encounters in the world. Visual theorist Nicholas
Mirzoeff tells us that the right to look is not simply about seeing. He emphasizes
that looki ng is an exchange that can establish solidarity or social dominance and
wh ich extends from the connection between self and other. Looki ng can be re-
stricted and controlled- it can be used to ma nipulate ideas and beliefs. but it can
also be used to affirm one's own subjectivity in the face of a political system that
controls and regulates looking. In all of these senses, looking is implicated in the
dynamics of power, though never in straightforward or simple ways. This book
aims to provide an understanding of the specificity of looking practices as social
practices and the place of images in systems of social power. We hope that readers
will use this book to approach making images and studying the ways in which the
visual is negotiated in art practice, in commun ication and information systems, in
journalism, in activism, and in making, doing, and living in nature and the built

2 I I N T RODUC T ION
environment. Practices of Looking supports the development of critical skills that
may inform your negotiation of life in a world where looking, images, and imaging
practices make a difference. Whether you are a maker of visual things and visual
tools, an interpreter and analyst of the visual world. or just someone who is curious
about the roles that looking plays in a world rife with screens. devices, images. and
displays, you engage with the visual. This book is designed to invite you to thi nk
in critical ways about how that engagement unfolds in a world that is increasingly
made. or constituted. th rough visual mediation. Looking is rega rded, throughout
th is book. as a set of practices informed by a range of social arenas beyond art and
media per se. We engage in practices of looking, as consumers and prod ucers, in
doma ins that ra nge from the highly personal to the professional and the public.
from advertisi ng, news media, television. movies. and video games to social med ia
and biogs. We negotiate the world through a multitude of ways of seeing. but
rarely do we stop and ask how we look.
We live in a world in which images proliferate in daily life. Consider pho-
tography. Whereas in the 1970s the home camera was taken out for something
special- those precious "Kodak moments" since the introduction of phone cam-
eras in 2000, taking photographs has become. for many, a da ily habit. Indeed. many
hundreds of billions of photographs are taken each year. Each minute. tens of thou-
sands are uploaded to lnstagra m. and over 200,000 are posted to Facebook. In one
hour. more images are shared than were produced in all of the nineteenth century.
Photographs may be personal, but they are also always potentially public.
Through art, news, and social media, photographs can be a crucial force in the
visual negotiation of politics. the struggle for social justice, and the creation of
celebrity. Increasingly, people are resisting oppression through the use of photo-
graphs and videos marshaled as a form of witnessing. commentary, and protest. as
we can see in the use of photographs on protest placards.
Consider paintings and drawi ngs. How is it different to see an origi nal work
in a museum from viewing it at home, in a print copy that hangs on you r wa ll. or
onli ne, in a digital reproduction on you r computer screen? How does it feel to be in
the presence of an original work you have long appreciated through reproductions
but never before seen in its origina l form? What does it mean to have your cultu re's
original works destroyed or looted in warfa re or as a political act of iconoclasm?
Meaning, whether in relationship to culture. politics, data. information, identity,
or emotion. is generated overwhelmingly through the circulation and exchange of
visual images and icons. The idea of the origina l still holds sway in an era of ram-
pant reproduction. Meaning is also generated through visuality, wh ich we perform
in the socially and historically shaped field of exchange in which we negotiate the
world through our senses.
That we live in a world in which seeing and visuality predominate is not a nat-
ural or random fact. Visuality defi nes not only the social conditions of the visible
but also the workings of power in modern societies. Thi nk about some of the ways

I NTRODUCTION I3
 FIG. 1.2
Ken Gonzales-Day, Nightfall I,
from Searching/or California Hang
Trees, 2007- 12 (LightJet print on
aluminum, 36 x 46")

in which seeing operates 1n

everyday dynam ics of power.
Take the classroom, a space in
which many people look at one
person, the instructor, who is
assumed to have knowledge
and power. Consider govern-
ment buildings and the ways
in which their design features
lead you to notice some fea-
tu res and restrict your access to others, maintaining national defense and gov-
ernment secrets wh ile promoting a sense of their iconic stature. As a pervasive
condition of being, visual ity engages us, and we engage it, through practices of
looking. These practices are lea rned and habitual, pervasive and fundamental. We
engage in them in ways that go well beyond our encounters with images.
We must understand not only what we see, but also what we cannot see,
what is made absent from sight. Take th is work, Nightfall I, by the artist Ken
Gonzales-Day. It is a large-scale print depicting the simple li nes of a leafless tree
framed aga inst a jet black sky. The work is from the series Searching for California
Hang Trees, in which Gonzales-Day documents trees throughout the state of Cali-
fornia on which individua ls, many of them Mexican, were hung by lynch mobs.
Gonzales-Day invokes absence on a series of levels: the body that was hu ng from
th is tree is no longer evident. Its absence gestures to the larger absence in history
books of the fact that over 350 lynchings of young Mexican men took place in Califor-
nia, a history Gonzales-Day chronicles in his book Lynching in the West: /850- /935
(Duke 2006) . The artist uses the "empty" icon of the extant lynching tree to repre-
sent the very conditions of making a fact invisible. Whereas in the fi rst image we
showed (the Bahraini protest march) those people erased in political killi ngs are
made present through images, in this series the empty trees stand in for the people
killed. Visuality is about the conditions of negotiation th rough wh ich something
becomes visible and under which it can be erased. How invisibility is "seen" and
made mea ningful is an important question for visua l studies.
Consider as well the visual dynam ics of built environments- the ways in which
design, whether by choice or through making do with what is at hand, impacts the
mea ning and use of a place. Consider the cultural conventions through which look-
ing creates connections and establishes power dynam ics among people in a given

4 I IN T RODUC T ION
place, such as a windowless government building surrounded by walls and pro-
tected by gua rds and surveillance cameras. We might ask who has the right to see
and who does not, and who is given the opportunity to exercise that right- when,
and under what conditions.
Of course, having the physical capacity to see is not a given. But whether
you are sighted, bli nd, or visually impaired, your social world is li kely to be orga-
nized around an abu ndance of visual med ia and looking practices. Its navigation
may requ ire adaptive optical devices, such as glasses, or navigational methods that
substitute for sight, such as echolocation. The practices we use to navigate and
communicate in this heavily visually constituted world are increasingly importa nt
components of the ways in which we know, feel, and live as political and cultural
beings. We might say that our world is constituted, or made, through forms of visu-
ality, even as it is co-constituted th rough sound, touch, and smell along with sight.
Visual media are ra rely only visual; they are usually engaged through sound, em-
bedded with text, and integrated with the physical experience of objects we touch.
Practices of Looking draws together a range of theories about vision and visu-
ality form ulated by scholars in visual culture studies, art history, film and med ia
studies, communication, design, and a range of other fields. These theories help
us to rethink the history of the visual and better understand its role after the digital
tu rn. These writers, most of them working in or on the cusp of the era of digital
media and the Internet, have prod uced theories devoted to interpreting and ana-
lyzing visual culture.

Defining Culture
The study of visual culture derives ma ny of its primary theoretical approaches from
cultural studies, an interdisciplinary field that first emerged in the mid-I960s in
Great Britain. One of the aims of cultural studies, at its foundation, was to provide
viewers, citizens, and consumers with the tools to gain a better understanding of
how we are produced as social subjects through the cultural practices that make up
our lives, incl uding those involving everyday visual media such as television and
film. A shared premise of cultural studies' focus on everyday culture was that the
media do not sim ply reflect opinion, taste, reality, and so on; rather, the media are
among the forms through wh ich we are "made" as human subjects- as citizens,
as sexual beings, as political beings, and so on.
Culture was famously characterized by the British scholar Raymond Williams
as one of the most complex words in the English language. It is an elaborate con-
cept, the meanings and uses of which have changed over time among the many
critical theorists who have used it.' Culture, Williams proposed in 1958, is fu nda-
mentally ordinary.2 To understand why this statement was so important , we must
recall that prior to the 1960s, the term culture was used to describe the "fine" arts

I NTRODUCTION I 5
 and learned cultures. A "cultured" person engaged in the contemplation of clas-
sic works of art. literature, music, and philosophy. In keeping with this view, the
nineteenth-century British poet and social critic Matthew Arnold defined culture as
the .. best which has been thought and said" in the world.l Culture, in Arnold's un-
derstandi ng, includes writing, art, and other forms of expression in instances that
conform to particular ideals of perfection. If one uses the term this way, a work by
Michelangelo or a composition by Mozart would represent the epitome of culture,
not because these are works of monetary value but because they would be believed
to embody a timeless ideal of aesthetic perfection that transcends class.
The apparent "perfection" of culture, according to the late twentieth-century
French sociological theory of Pierre Bourdieu, is in fact the product of trai ning in
what counts as (quality) cultu re. Taste for particular forms of culture is cultivated
in people through exposure to and education about aesthetics.4 Bourdieu's em-
phasis on culture as something acquired through training (enculturation) involved
making distinctions not only between works (masterworks and amateur paintings.
for example) but also between high and low forms (painting and television, for ex-
ample). As we explore in Chapter 2, "high versus low" was the traditional way of
framing discussions about aesthetic cultures through the first ha lf of the twentieth
century, with high cultu re widely regarded as quality culture and low culture as its
debased counterpart. This division has become obsolete with the complex circula-
tions of contemporary cultural flow.
Williams drew on anthropology to propose that we embrace a broader definition
of culture as a "whole way of life of a social group or whole society," meaning a broad
range of activities geared toward classifying and communicating symbolically within
a society. Popular music, print media, art, and literature are some of the classificatory
systems and symbolic means of expression through which humans organize their
lives. People make, view, and reuse these med ia in different ways and in different
places. The same can be said of sports, cooking, driving, relationships, and kinship.
Williams's broader, more anth ropological definition of culture leads us to notice ev-
eryday and pervasive activities. helping us to better understand mass and popular
forms of classification, expression, and communication as legitimate and meaningful
aspects of culture and not simply as debased or crude forms of expression.
Following from Williams, cultural studies scholars proposed that culture is not
so much a set of things (television shows or paintings, for example) as a set of pro-
cesses or practices through wh ich individuals and groups produce, consume, and
make sense of things, incl uding their own identities. Culture is produced through
complex networks of making. watching, talking, gesturing. looki ng, and acting-
networks th rough which meani ngs are negotiated among members of a society or
group. Objects such as images and media texts come into play in this network of
exchange as active agents. They draw us to look and to feel or speak in particular
ways. The British cultura l theorist Stuart Hall stated: "It is the participants in a cul-
tu re who give meaning to people, objects, and events . . . . It is by our use of things.

6 I I N T RODUC T I ON
and what we say, think and feel about them- how we represent them- that we
give them a meaning. "5 Following from Ha ll, we can say that just as we give mean-
ing to objects, so too do the objects we create, gaze on, and use for communication
or simply for pleasure give meaning to us. Thi ngs are active agents in the dynam ic
interaction of social networks.
Our use of the term culture throughout this book emphasizes this under-
standing of culture as a fl uid and interactive set of processes and practices. Cultu re
is complex and messy, and not a fixed set of ideals. tastes, practices, or aesthetics.
Meanings are prod uced not in the minds of individua ls so much as through a pro-
cess of negotiation among practices within a particular culture. Visual culture is
made between individua ls and the artifacts , images, technologies, and texts created
by themselves and others. Interpretations of the visual, which vie with one another,
shape a culture's worldview. But visual culture, we emphasize, is grounded in
multimodal and multisensory cultural practices, and not solely in images and visu-
ality. We study visual culture and visuali ty in order to grasp their place in broader,
multisensory networks of meaning and experience.

The Study of Visual Cultu re

Visual culture emerged as a field of study in the 1980s, just as images and visual
screens were becoming increasingly prevalent in the production of media and modes
of information, communication, enterta inment, and aesthetics. The study of visual
culture ta kes as one of its basic premises the idea that images from different social
realms are interconnected, with art, advertising, science, news med ia, and enter-
tainment interrelated and cross-infl uential. Many scholars no longer find viable the
traditional divisions in academia through which images in different realms (such as
art history, film studies, and communication) have been studied apart from other
categories of the visual. The cross-fertilization of categories is the result of historical
shifts, technological developments, and changing viewer practices. Through digital
techn ology, media are now merged in unprecedented ways. We may view art, read
news media, receive medical records, shop, and watch television and movies on
computers. The different industries and types of practice inherent in each form are
no longer as discrete as they once were.
Our title Practices of Looking gestures to this expanded social field of the
visual, emphasizing that to un derstand the images and imaging tech nologies with
wh ich we engage every day, we must analyze the ways in which practices of look-
ing inform our ways of being in the world. Practices of Looking, in its fi rst edition in
1999, took as its dista nt inspiration John Berger's 1972 classic Ways of Seeing. The
book was a model for the examination of images across such discipli nary bou ndar-
ies as media studies and art history and it was influential in disparate social realms
such as art and advertising. The terrain of images and their trajectories, and the
theories we use to interpret them, have become significantly more complex since

I NTRODU CTION I7
 Berger wrote his book and since our first edition was published. At that time, the in-
formation space known then as "World Wide Web" was a fairly recent innovation,
and it was difficult to transm it image fi les online. Digita l reproduction was not very
advanced, and tra nsmission speed and vol ume were prohibitive. Technological and
cultural changes in place by 2008, when the second edition of Practices of Looking
was produced, had introduced new modes of image production and circulation.
The mix of styles in postmodernism and the increased mixing of different kinds of
images across social doma ins prompted us to further en hance the interdisciplinary
approach at the center of this book. At the same time, the restructuring of the
media industry through the rise of digita l media had blurred many of the bou ndar-
ies that had previously existed between forms of media. Media convergence had
changed the nature of the movies and transformed television and the experience
of the audience. In the first edition we proposed that an interdisciplinary approach
encompassing art, fi lm, media, and the experience of looking was merited because
these doma ins did not exist in isolation from one another. By the second edition,
those social doma ins were even more interconnected, and digital technology had
created increased connections between academic fields of study.
By this third edition, in 2017, cultura l meanings and image practices had un-
dergone significant further transformation. Most significant was the rise of social
media as a platform for visual culture. The Internet, screen culture, mobile phones,
and digital technology dominate modes of communication, political engagement,
and cultural production. Even classical and historical works are impacted as digital
technologies are increasingly incorporated in preservation and display strategies. This
edition has been updated to address changes in the contemporary visual culture la nd-
scape in a host of ways. Images and media now circulate more freq uently and more
quickly than ever before. This is reflected in the proliferation of prosumer and remix
cultures, the ubiquitous presence of smartphones with cameras, the popularity of
the selfie, the use of social media images to advance social movements as well as to
promote brand culture, and the increased intermixing of categories such as science,
education, leisure, and consumerism. Consider this example of science "edutain-
ment": a Lego model of an MRI machine. Created by Ian Moore, a technical support
consultant for Lego in the United Kingdom, the toy was designed to help hospital
personnel better explain the procedure to children at Royal Berkshire Hospital in
Reading. Design innovation, biomedical imaging, popular consumer culture, and
science education converge, and the story is circulated globally on social media, pro-
moting the Lego brand's social contributions across all of these categories of culture.

Ways to Use This Book

Practices of Looking is organized into ten chapters divided into subsections that
can be used in a mod ular fash ion. While the first two chapters are the most in-
troductory, there is no "right" order in which to read this book. Each chapter is

8 I I N T RODUC T I ON
 FI G. 1. 3
designed so that it is com prehensible apart from the whole.
Lego MRI suite model built by Ian
Each accommodates different emphases and trajectories M oore for th e Royal Berkshire hos·
depending on the focus in a given area of interest or course pital in Reading, United Kingdom

focus. Practices of Looking was written to work in courses on

visual culture, design, communication, media studies, and art history. At the same
time, this is not a generalist book. We present mu ltiple theories drawn from critical
theory, visual studies, media studies, and other fields of study to offer here a range
of concepts th rough which to arrive at new ways of engaging with the visual in
the social worlds in which we interact. Practices of Looking does not offer a uni-
fied methodology for making art or for empiricall y studying engagement with the
visual. Rather, the book offers a varied set of tools for critical thinking, interpreta-
tion, and analysis- tools intended to be tried in different combinations to inform
how you think about art, design, and visual cultu re, how meaning is made, and
how you make art, media, and things. The book concludes with an extensive glos-
sary of terms used th roughout the book. Each chapter ends with a bibliography for
further readi ng.
Chapter I, "Images, Power, and Politics," introduces ma ny of the key themes
of the book, defin ing concepts such as representation, ideology, image icons,
and photographic truth. It provides an overall introduction to the basic principles
of visual semiotics. In this th ird edition, we have incorporated some important
updates to the discussion of photographic mea nings and strategies. We discuss
body cameras and their use as evidence in police work and law and, here and in
other chapters, we expand upon the use of photography in social media and the
rise of citizen journal ism.
Chapter 2, "Viewers Make Meani ng," focuses on the ways that viewers pro-
duce meaning from images and explores the complex dynamics of appropriation,

INTRODUCTION I9
 incorporation, taste, aesthetics, collecting, and display. Prior to the twenty-first cen-
tury, visual media was primarily something made in ind ustry stud ios and watched
by consumers on television sets and movie screens. Today, we experience most
forms of media on the screens of computers and mobile devices, and the consumer
is also a producer of images. In this chapter, we look in depth at the role of the con-
sumer who is also a maker and transmitter of visual images.
Chapter 3,"Modernity: Spectatorship, the Gaze, and Power," examines the
foundational aspects of modernity and theories of power and spectatorship. This
chapter explores the concepts of the modern subject and the gaze in both psycho-
analytic theory and theories of power and "the Other" with enhanced attention to
contemporary colonialism and postcolonial theory. We have incorporated in this
edition a discussion of modernity that emphasizes more pointedly the human sub-
ject's gaze relative to negotiations of politics and power globally and across catego-
ries of race, gender, and sexual ity. Our discussion of art practice add resses recent
works by queer and black women artists, and we have included popular med ia
examples such as the television show Homeland that help us to foreground public
and global contestation about visual mea nings and messages concerning Islam,
connecting these texts to nineteenth-century colonial painting, twentieth-century
journalism, and contemporary neocolonial themes in advertisi ng in order to demon-
strate the historical scope of European and America n colonial imaginings of Islam.
Chapter 4. "Realism and Perspective: From Renaissance Painting to Digital
Media," explores the history of rea lism in representation and maps out the his-
tory of technologies of seeing, emphasizi ng instru ments and tech niques used to
render perspective from the Renaissance to the present. In the third edition we
have updated our discussion of screen cultures and video games in particular, in-
troducing discussion about the confl icts over the politics of gender and sexuality
that have raged in the online gaming community.
Chapter 5, "Visual Technologies, Reproduction, and the Copy," considers the
history of reproduction practices and the status of the copy, as well as intellectual
property law, emphasizing art copyright and brand trademark. This chapter traces
reproduction from mechanical reprod uction to digita l reproduction and 30 mod-
eli ng. In th is edition we have expanded the discussion about computer screens
and perspective in relationship to the history of perspective in classical painting,
bringi ng it up to date with the vital expanding literature on computer game culture
and virtual worlds.
Chapter 6, "Media in Everyday Life," examines the history of mass media,
considering concepts ranging from media and everyday life. mass culture, and the
public sphere to media infrastructures, citizen journalism, and global med ia live-
ness. Since 2000, there has been much written about media convergence, a con-
cept that refers to the way computers have become the primary platforms for med ia
forms. The film and television industries now overlap with each other and with the
computer industry. Boundaries between independent and corporate media cultures

10 I I N T ROD UC T I ON
have become less distinct as access to platforms becomes more ubiqu itous and
social worlds are more readily visible online. In this edition we look at the strategies
used to introd uce margi nal voices across media industries and practices that are
increasingly digital and global in their orientation and scope. We also introduce a
discussion of social media as a source of news.
Chapter 7, "Brand Culture: The Images and Spaces of Consumption," focuses
on the integration of brand culture in the shifting terrain of social media marketing
and consumption. We explore the spaces of consumerism, from nineteenth-century
arcades to on li ne shopping, and note changes in marketing and consumer practices
ranging from the advent of print advertising to the rise of social media brand cul-
tu re and the integration of social cause awareness campaigns into marketing strat-
egies. In this edition we enhance our discussion of humanitarian cause marketing
alongside new discussions of such important phenomena as brand culture and the
share economy. When the first edition of this book was written, consumption and
advertising were targets of critique by cultural studies theorists. Since then, mar-
keting and retail have become sites of alternative practice as people with commit-
ments to environmental sustainabil ity, worker rights, local commerce, and green
business strategies have entered the fields of manufacture, retail, and marketing.
We have included discussion of th is important new direction in consumer and
brand cultures.
Chapter 8, "Postmodernism: Irony, Pa rody, and Pastiche," looks at the central
concepts of postmodern theory, the dominance of irony in popular cultu re, remix
culture, postmodern architecture and strategies of simulation, reflexivity, pastiche,
and parody. In this edition we have expanded our discussion of postmodern design
and architectu re as well as our account of simulation, a concept with enhanced
significance in a digital worl d in which representations (copies of the real) have
become less vital than the speculative models and prototypes on wh ich the real is
imagined and brought into existence.
In Chapter 9, "Scientific Looking, Looking at Science," we consider how the
visual and visuality have been deployed in science, and in medici ne and forensics
in particular. We have expanded our discussion of early representations of the body
in medicine to ground updated accounts of biomedical imaging and biometrics in
cultures of surveillance.
Chapter I0, "The Global Flow of Visual Cultu re," examines the global circu-
lation of all forms of media, concepts of globalization, diasporic and indigenous
media, and the globalization of the art world and the museum. As we approach
what might be called late postmodernity, this chapter considers theoretical engage-
ments in a postcritical tu rn that aims to address the economic downturn of 2008;
the rise of new global and regional social movements such as the Arab Spring,
Occupy, and Black Lives Matter; and the broadening recognition of anthropogen ic
environmental changes that have altered the face of the planet, global finance, and
the world context for art, architecture, television, fi lm, and media cultures.

I N TRODUCT ION I 11
 We encourage you to use this book interactively with other texts and other
media in your everyday lives. Go out in the world to museums, political events,
and consumer environments and consider the ways that visuali ty comes into play.
Look at how looking practices are enacted around you. Make art and media in ways
that are informed by your appropriations of the methods and ideas in this book.
Take these ideas and try them out, even in your everyday life. When you go to
a clinic for health care, notice how and when looking and visual representation
come into play in your treatment. Notice how and when looking is sanctioned,
and when it becomes off limits to you. Watch/read the news with full attention to
how it is composed, framed, and edited. Watch others watching the news. Try to
discern not only what news is shown but also what is not shown. Observe who
took the pictures posted on news sites, and look at credits to see who owns the
rights to them. Studying visual culture is not only about seeing what is put on dis-
play. It is also about seeing how things are displayed and seeing what we are not
shown, what we do not see- either because we do not have sight ability, because
something is restricted from view, or because we do not have the means for under-
standing and coming to terms with what is right before our eyes. Consider what
is not visible. Use your camera to look at and document the looki ng practices in
wh ich others engage. Use these theories to consider the dynamics of the gaze and
the politics of gender and identity, power and authority in the images you take and
use, from the selfie to the bystander video to your own artwork. Culture matters,
and images matter, in every aspect of our lives. We invite you to see how visual cul-
tu re and visuali ty work in relation to your own negotiations of feel ings and beliefs,
as well as those of others, as we make meanings together in the world today.

Notes
t. Raymond Willia ms, Keywords: A Vocabulary ofCulture and Sociely, rev. ed . (New York: Oxford Univer·
sity Press, 1983), 87; see also Raymond Williams, Culture and Society (New York Doubleday, 1958).
2. Raymond Williams, "Culture Is Ordinary," in Resources of Hope (London: Verso, 11958) 1989), 3-18.
3. Matthew Arnold, Culture and Anarchy: An Essay in Political and Social Crilicism (Oxfo rd: Project
Gu tenberg, 1869), viii, 7, 15-16, 41, 58, 67, 105, 108-110; see also h ttp://www.gutenberg.org/cache/
ep ub/ 4212/ PW 12-i mages.html.
4. Pierre Bourd ie u, Dislinction: A Social Critique ofthejudgemenl of Tasle, trans. Richa rd Nice (Ca m·
bridge, MA: Harvard Un iversity Press: 1984).
5. Stuart Hall, "Intro duction," in Represenlalion: Cullural Represtnlalions and Signifying Practices, ed .
Stuart Hall (Thousand Oa ks, CA: Sage, 1997), 1- 11 .

12 I I N T RODUC T I ON
 .. .

chapter one
.....f!F .,,,,.
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Images, Power,
and Politics

e very day, we engage in social practices of looking to experience the worl d.

Like other practices, looking involves relationships of power. To willfully
look at an image, or not to look, is sometimes a choice. More often, though, we
respond to the power of the image and its maker to get us to look, or to force us
to look away. To be made to look, to be refused the right to look, and to engage in
an exchange of looks all entail engagements with power. A person who is blind or
has low vision contends with visual experience and communication no less than
a sighted person. Looking can be sanctioned or off limits, easy or difficult, plea-
surable or unpleasant, harmless or risky. Conscious and unconscious aspects of
looking intersect. We don't always know why we look, or how we feel about what
we see. We engage in practices of looking to communicate, influence, ma neuver
through the worl d, and make sense of our lives. Even when we opt not to look-
when we look away, or when we rely on our other senses to feel and know- our
activities are invested with visual meanings. In so many ways, our world is orga-
nized around practices of looking.
We live in cultures that are increasingly permeated by visual images and tech-
nologies. In these contexts, we invest the visual artifacts and images we create and
encounter on a dai ly basis with significant power. For instance, personal photo-
graphs may be invested with the power to conjure feelings about an absent person;
poli tica l images may be invested with the power to incite belief and action. A single
image can serve many purposes, appear in an array of contexts, and mean different
th ings to different people. Images increasingly circulate digitally with great speed
across cultural and geographical distances. The power of images is derived both
from the shared meanings they generate across locations and the particula r mean-
ings they hold in a given place or culture.

I 13
 This image of women and children loo king dramatically draws our attention to
practices of looking. The photograph, which does not show us what the women
and children see, was taken in the early 1940s by Weegee, a self-taught photogra-
pher known for his documentation of urban street crime and everyday spectacle.
Weegee, whose real name was Ascher (Arthur) Fellig, tracked crimes reported to
the police, sometimes arriving on the scene before the authorities-hence his pen
name, a play on the occult board game "Ouija." In the twenty-fi rst century, we
are accustomed to seeing events broadcast live over news sites, Twitter, and other
social media. In the 1940s, fast-paced reporting was harder to ach ieve. In the next
photograph, we see Weegee composing a news story out of his car trun k, where
he has installed a mobile office with a typewriter and camera equ ipment. People on
the street could enjoy the spectacle of Weegee, the proto social-media journalist,
cutting corners on produ ction time to generate news stories and photographs as
quickly as possible in the predigital era of print media and photography.
.. A woman relative cried .. . but neighborhood dead-end kids enjoyed the show
when a small-time racketeer was shot and killed," states the caption for the photo-
graph The First Murder in the 1945 book Naked New York .' On the facing page of
that book is displayed a photograph presuma bly depicting what the children saw:
t he bullet-riddled body of a man in a suit sprawled face down
FIG . I. I
on a bloodstained sidewalk. It is the photograph of the women
Weegee (Arth ur Fellig), Tht First
Murdtr, 1941 (gelatin s ilver p rint) and children looking, however, and not the gruesome image of
the dead racketeer. that has become one of the most iconic of

14 I I MAGES, POWER, ANO POLITICS

Discovering Diverse Content Through
Random Scribd Documents
the hills to say farewell to the old people to whom her going was a
real grief, and before going went to give Jean orders to prepare
something against her return, and something for the following day.
Jean was looking full of importance, and her mistress, well
accustomed to her ways, knew that she had something to tell, had
something to reveal, and that she intended to be questioned. "What
are you going to do, my poor Jean, when we part to-morrow? You
have not yet told me."
"We are not going to part here," said Jean, a look of triumph on her
face.
"No," said Mrs. Dorriman, who felt this coming parting sorely. "I
supposed you would go to the station and see me off. I am glad of
that."
"Further than that," said Jean, emphatically.
Mrs. Dorriman looked up at her. What did she mean?
"I am going all the way to Renton itself," said Jean, in a tone of
determination.
"But my dear Jean—my brother...."
"Your brother's not mine, and I have nothing to do with him, nor he
with me. I'm going to the town of Renton, and I've got a situation
there; do you suppose I would let you go where I could never see
you—or you me? No! no! I settled it first in my own mind and then I
arranged it with other people, and the same train that takes you
takes me, and my kist's just away with your things, in the same
cart."
Mrs. Dorriman could not speak, but the forlorn woman kissed the
ruddy face before her—half her trouble seemed lightened—and Jean,
touched and awkward under so strange a demonstration, patted her
back with a hard and hearty hand and disappeared from her
mistress's eyes.
Mrs. Dorriman walked up the river-side with a happier heart than
she had had lately. With one friend near her in the shape of Jean
she felt as though nothing mattered quite so much; she needed
some comfort. With all the enthusiastic love for the beauty of the
home she was leaving for ever, she was also leaving the little self-
made duties that had become pleasant to her. She had to face the
sorrow of those who had become her friends; she could promise
them nothing from a distance—she had nothing of her own; she did
not suppose her brother would continue to give her an income; she
must guard against making promises she could not fulfil.
The same words met her all round, "What a pity you're going! It's
we that will miss you, my dear. Oh, what is it for? Is it for company's
sake?"
They could not get over it, her hands were shaken till they tingled
again. When she was going home one of the eldest of the old
women stood out from her doorway like an old prophetess. Her grey
hair was smoothed back under her mutch, her black eyes sparkled,
and her wrinkled face showed up white in the gloaming.
She was the daughter of a man famous in his day, a man who had
had the gift of second sight, and though she had not inherited his
gift she was looked up to, she had so many of her father's sayings at
her fingers' ends, and she had much of his manner.
"Come here," she said, "and set ye down." Mrs. Dorriman could not
do this, but she asked her to go towards home with her. It was
getting late, and the light was fading fast. Christie was attached to
Mrs. Dorriman especially because she and her forbears had lived
near the old home on old Mr. Sandford's property, and she had a
great deal to say about the way the sale of the place had been
predicted and foreseen long years before by her father.
This evening, not unnaturally, she was full of it all. "I mind weel,"
she began in the solemn tone appropriate to the subject, "hearing
my father tell what he saw, and he knew he had seen what meant
evil to the place and to the Laird, and he grieved about it, indeed he
did."
"Was that when he saw a light?" asked Mrs. Dorriman.
"It was a light and it was not a light, my dear, it was something of
fire."
"Tell me about it again, Christie. I get confused about it sometimes."
"You see, my dear, the common folks, some of them have ghosts
and see spirits, and so on, but the gentry, the real old gentry, they
have a different kind of ghost, there are things that happen—you'll
understand."
At all events, Mrs. Dorriman understood what Christie meant to
express, and even at that moment and time of unhappiness the idea
presented to her of the superior ghosts bestowed upon the gentry
made her smile.
"Well, Christie, it may be so," she said, "but the idea is new to me."
"It is not new to us, and it was not new to my father. I do not mean
that spirits are different, though we all know that spirits take
different shapes; but when the head of a house goes, or any
misfortune comes nigh him, there will be strange things seen. My
father saw these things—it has not been given to me to see them—
perhaps so is best. My father had many dark hours, those that have
these gifts must go through great anguish. I have seen him sitting
up at night and looking wild—wild. I have heard him say strange
things. It was awful...."
"And about this fire?" asked Mrs. Dorriman, a little anxious to get
home now the darkness was making the footpath difficult to see.
"Ah," said Christie, "many and many a time I have heard that story.
He was in his house, the house high up the hill under the wood, and
was restless; the hour was coming upon him, and he could not
breathe. He threw open the door and stepped out in the darkness.
You'll mind the steep hill that went up to the house, and how the old
house itself stood up away from everything?"
Mrs. Dorriman made a gesture of assent. The recollection of her old
home, and the way in which it had been sold to the first bidder, was
inexpressibly bitter to her. She was depressed and sad, and felt as
though she had small need of other and painful memories, on this,
her last evening here.
"From the east and the west, from the north and the south,
gathered darkness—so black was the night that not a thing was to
be seen—the hill where your father's house stood was but a shadow,
and the lights in the windows shone out with a wonderful power.
"The heavens were in gloom from a gathering storm, and the wind
was howling up and down, and up and down—none but my father,
who understood things, would have stood as he stood and faced it.
Then the clouds opened, and a great ball of fire came down; it broke
over the house, my dear, over the house, and divided itself into
three pieces—only three; and a piece went on the east corner, and
one flame touched the south and one the north, and only the one
corner, the one from the west, was left untouched, and that meant a
great deal, and then the fire met and fell on the house itself."
Christie's voice was so impressive, her manner so solemn, that Mrs.
Dorriman, though the story was one she had often heard before, felt
as though she was hearing it for the first time.
"What did it mean?" she asked breathlessly.
"It meant, my dear, what happened. Your father lost the lady (she
came from the south), and that was one misfortune, and a very
great one; then he lost his suit—the law-suit about some land in the
North. Then he died himself, poor man, and that was the third thing
—and the house was sold."
"So the misfortunes were complete?" and Mrs. Dorriman pressed
forward a little and shivered. It was impossible not to be
uncomfortably impressed by Christie—her tall figure and
commanding gestures looming large beside her in the ever-
increasing darkness.
"Not complete, my dear—not ended. No, that was what my father
always said, he talked often and often about it, that is why it is
written upon my brain. All he said came true, and why should this
not come true? He saw it all to the end and he read it, and he was
meant to read it." She dropped her voice in saying this, and once
more was silent.
The two came to the little gate and bridge that spanned the burn
and led to Mrs. Dorriman's place. She turned and took Christie's
hand: "I feel it is the end," she said, speaking with that sob in the
voice which is more pathetic than weeping; "you know this place is
gone from me, and that I shall never, never see it again!"
"Yes, you will," said Christie, firmly; "my father said what I will tell
you now—though I was not to speak of it to all. That night I told you
of—when the fire-ball divided and fell—there was one corner of the
house untouched; and when the fire and its great redness died
away, he saw a silvery light rise, and it came from that corner and
spread and spread like a flood of moonlight over everything, and the
light was just above where you lay, my dear, a baby not many weeks
old, and I shall live to see you do as you please, and live here or
there, or in the old house, at your pleasure."
She raised Mrs. Dorriman's hands to her lips, kissed them fervently,
and, uttering an impassioned prayer in Gaelic, she left her and
moved up the hill. Mrs. Dorriman went home; she blamed herself for
taking comfort from words which were the wild visions of a
superstitious woman, but she did take comfort. By nature easily
impressed, easily held up and as easily lowered by passing
influences—the conversation with Christie had filled her with a sort
of courage.
To live as she pleased and where she pleased, to go back to the old
home, every corner of which was so dear to her! Such a dream filled
her with unreasonable happiness; she threw out her hands as
though she was throwing off a burden, and she said softly, though
aloud: "I will believe it! I do believe it! it will help me!"
Jean announced the dinner, and was pleased to see her mistress
looking brighter and happier than she had looked since she knew
that she had to leave Inchbrae. Her satisfaction was extreme, for the
thought, not very unnaturally, came to her, that the fact of her going
with her mistress was sufficient to account for it, and she
scrupulously performed the small services required of her with an
increased attention. She always felt as though she had charge of her
mistress—now she felt as though in some way that charge was
increased.
The morning was unpromising. The wind was high, and the rain,
only for that reason, was not a downpour, but blew in fitful gusts
against "all corners of the house at once," Jean declared. She was
meditating the possibility of putting off the journey, and spoke to
Mrs. Dorriman about it.
Mrs. Dorriman was standing irresolutely at one of the windows when
a dogcart appeared in the short avenue, and in another moment two
men dismounted, rang the bell, and walked into the little hall.
Jean with all the air of outraged dignity appeared upon the scene,
and was greeted by these words,
"We have come to take possession for the new proprietor; send
some one to take the horse round and get some breakfast ready
immediately."
Jean would not trust herself to speak; she went past them straight
up to Mrs. Dorriman's room. She found her mistress pale but
composed, dressed for her journey with her bonnet on. She began
to speak but was hushed by an uplifted hand.
"Come, Jean, we will go," she said.
The noise of the two descending the wooden staircase brought the
men into the hall, and Mrs. Dorriman's pale composure awed them a
little.
Before they had time to speak she spoke to them.
"Sir," she said, turning to the elder of the two men, "you are here by
my brother's orders, not mine. I am leaving just now, but I protest
against the sale of this place, which is mine, and I intend one day
returning to it."
With a slight bend of her head she went out into the rain, and
before the two men could recover themselves she was seated in a
waggonette which had been ready for some time, and, accompanied
by Jean, was soon whirling along the road; her heart so hot with
indignation that the pain and sorrow of going away was merged in
that feeling.
At the station were the Macfarlanes with many a thoughtful gift for
poor Mrs. Dorriman, and it was not till the train steamed out of the
station, not till the last wave of the friendly hands grew dim in the
distance, that the poor woman's fortitude gave way, and that, seated
alone with no prying eye upon her, she wept, and the soreness of
her heart grew better as the tension gave way to this feminine
luxury.
The journey was troublesome more than long, there were two or
three changes, and at one station two travellers got in accompanied
by a bright-eyed middle-aged woman. At first Mrs. Dorriman was too
much wrapped up in her own sad thoughts to take heed of what was
passing, but she was at length roused by hearing her brother's name
mentioned.
"John Sandford is coming out in a new light," said the lady, laughing
and showing a row of pretty teeth. "Fancy his adopting two girls!"
"I am sorry for the girls. Who are they?" asked the elder of the two
men.
"I have not an idea—but I should think he had some strong reason
for going out of his usual way."
"I am very sorry for the girls too," laughed the lady, who looked as
though she had never had any acquaintance with sorrow herself.
"They are probably in some way a charge upon him. John Sandford's
not a man to do anything for nothing, it's not in him."
Mrs. Dorriman knew she ought to say something, but she literally
had not the courage to throw such discomfiture among them.
"He's had a nasty illness, and the doctor thinks he may have more
attacks of the kind. He does not think him the strong man he looks."
"Then perhaps he is doing some act of charity as a compromise with
Providence," said the lady; "just as some men who have never been
charitable or even just leave their wealth to some charity, as a sort
of make-up."
So her brother was ill! This, perhaps, was why he had sent for her.
But the two girls, who could they be? These two new ideas so
suddenly presented to her made Mrs. Dorriman oblivious to all that
was going on. She would have young girls with her and so she
would not be alone, and none but those who have tried it, know
how depressing long-continued loneliness is, especially to one who
(like Mrs. Dorriman) was by temperament, one of the women who
cling to others, and to whom acting and thinking for herself was
perpetual grief and pain.
From the bewilderment of this future, which looked so much brighter
to her with those figures in the foreground, she was once more
roused by hearing, this time, not her brother's but her own name
mentioned.
"About Mrs. Dorriman; no one really knows the rights of that story.
Dorriman was as good a man as ever lived, and he had heaps of
money when Sandford lost his. How it all changed hands is more
than any one knows, but Dorriman died poor, and Sandford lives
rich. One day the truth may get known."
"The widow lives, does she not? I think some one said so," and the
lady smiled as though there was something amusing in the fact of
Mrs. Dorriman's existence.
Poor Mrs. Dorriman, shrinking from it and yet impelled by a sense of
right to speak, feeling that she ought to have spoken before, now
leaned forward and said in her sweet, clear, timid voice, "I am sorry;
I should have told you before. I am Mrs. Dorriman. I am going to my
brother Mr. Sandford's house."
Then, with a heightened colour, she leaned back again.
The three talkers, who were a neighbouring manufacturer, his wife,
and a friend, were naturally taken aback and made profuse
apologies to her.
Then the lady, a Mrs. Wymans, said, with her usual smile,
"It was really your own fault; it was really very wrong of you to let
us talk, really wrong. I hope we have not said anything bad."
And Mrs. Dorriman made no answer. She gave a slight bow, feeling
too heart-sore and too unhappy to speak. Yes, how did all that
money change hands? How was it that she was left so poor and
allowed to drift wherever her brother chose to make her drift? For
the hundredth time this question, which she now heard asked in a
careless voice by a stranger, started up before her. Was it true that
one day she would know? This last conversation drove the words of
Christie into the background for a time, and when she arrived at the
station she was in a whole whirl of mingled feelings, in which doubt
and grief and indignation and hope all seemed struggling together.
Jean, helpful and alert, saw her into a cab and her luggage arranged
on it and then bravely said,
"Only for to-day. I will be down seeing you to-morrow."
Then the tie between her and her mistress seemed quite broken as
she lost sight of her, and, sitting down upon her kist, heedless of the
curious looks of the "fremd folk" she had come amongst, good-
hearted, brave Jean burst into bitter tears and would cry, she said,
to herself. Yes, now Mrs. Dorriman was not there to see it she would
cry, it would do her good.
She was sitting on her big box—the kist that contained all her
worldly wealth—the tears streaming down her face and her pocket-
handkerchief crammed into her mouth, when a porter came to her,
too busy to be fully sympathetic, and yet with a certain gruff
friendliness that was very comforting to her.
"And where are you bound for, my bonny woman?" he said, wisely
ignoring her tears; "are you going to bide in the toon or are you
going on by another train?"
Jean, called back to self-command, rose, and, fumbling in the bosom
of her gown, where she kept her birth certificate, her money, her
keys, and other valuables, drew out, after some false attempts, the
address of the place she was going to, and, in a short space of time,
her kist was put upon a hurly and she was following it thither.
 CHAPTER V.
In the meantime, had the four people who were now to meet known
anything about each other's thoughts they would have been spared
something upon the one hand, and on the other they would have
seen cause for much greater anxiety.
Mr. Sandford knew nothing—but he feared a great deal, and when
he saw the fly appearing he was surprised himself at the sensations
he was conscious of.
Afraid of nothing as a rule, it was quite incomprehensible to him that
he should feel uncomfortable; his sister had always been afraid of
him, what was changed?
Why did one momentary look in her face so disturb him? It must be
that his illness was still affecting him.
Grace and her sister saw it come with different feelings. Grace was
resolved to take her stand from the first, and Margaret was so much
occupied with her anxieties for her sister that she forgot to have any
anxieties for herself; and into this small group of people, intensely
interested, and full of suppressed excitement, came the slight pale
woman, herself conscious of so much conflicting emotion that she
had not much room for acute observation.
"So you are here," said John Sandford, as he gave her his hand.
Kissing between these two had never been in fashion; and then in a
manner that he meant to be imposing, but which only succeeded in
being pompous, he pushed the two girls towards her.
"There," he said, "go and welcome her; Mrs. Dorriman, my wards,
Grace and Margaret Rivers."
Grace held out her hand, with an air which was entirely lost upon
Mrs. Dorriman, who was conscious only of one overpowering wish,
to go to her room and cry without being observed.
She was composed because she had in years gone by learned self-
control—any exhibition of feeling seemed only to place her at her
brother's level of sarcasm.
Margaret, stirred to the depths of her kind and unselfish heart, gave
an appealing look at her sister, and then bending timidly she kissed
the pale cheek and said something in a kindly manner about resting
and a cup of tea.
Mrs. Dorriman was surprised and moved at the girl's action, and
allowed herself to be taken upstairs and looked after in her own
room with a feeling akin to gratitude.
The evidence of friendship offered just when she was feeling so
forlorn came to her as a ray of sunshine. The house, so bare and so
desolate-looking in its exterior, had struck her painfully as she went
up to it. Her last home, with its wooded knolls and a lovely
background of hills, was vividly present to her.
Why, if her brother did not want money, had he sold the place?
Surely he must have had some liking for a home where so many
generations had lived and died, and, as her eye took in the ugly
garden and the closely-built streets at a stone's throw only of his
gate, her wonder increased.
She was conscious of a perfect sinking of the heart when she
thought that here must probably all the rest of her days be spent.
Christie's words rushed into her mind, and then came the meeting at
the hall-door, and Margaret's sweetness.
Yes; that was a real comfort to her, and no caress ever was
bestowed with greater results; the drop of kindness just when she
so needed kindness sank into her heart. Whatever the days might
hold for her in the future, this would always be gratefully
remembered.
Poor Margaret, having left her, went to congratulate Grace, as she
did herself, upon so pleasant a surprise. Instead of the disagreeable
and authoritative woman they had pictured to themselves, here was
a gentle and timid lady, whom it would be easy to love. Full of this
relief, she found Grace in their own room.
She was leaning against the shutters, and her eyes were fixed upon
the town. Margaret knew by instinct that she was ruffled.
"Anything wrong?" she asked, brightly, going up to her, and laying
her hand affectionately upon her shoulder.
Grace made no reply, but she gave a little shrug, and dislodged her
sister's hand.
"What is wrong, Gracie?" asked Margaret anxiously; "what have I
done? Are you vexed with me, dear?"
"Vexed with you! oh, dear no! but you really are very dull, Margaret.
You make life here difficult for me."
"I make life more difficult for you!" And Margaret coloured, partly
from a just sense of Grace's unfairness, and partly because she was
indignant as well as hurt.
"How can I put that Mrs. Dorriman in her place, when my sister, my
own sister, makes such a fuss about her?"
"It never occurred to me that she was a person you would think of
putting in her place."
"That is just what I complain of."
"She seems to me so gentle and so timid. I think it will be more
difficult for her to take up a position than you think. I cannot fancy
her ever saying anything to you you may not like."
"If she does, I will soon let her know my opinion about her; but you
heard what Mr. Sandford said, and I mistrust these quiet women. I
feel as though she might be as obstinate as possible. Did you notice,
her upper lip?"
"You are so much cleverer than I am, darling, and so much quicker.
No; I only saw that she felt coming here very much, she looked
ready to cry."
"Well, Margaret, if you think yourself wiser than I am, I give it up. As
I said before—making a fuss about her at the very outset makes my
part very much more difficult; and after all your violent professions it
seems hard that on the very first opportunity you fail me, and take
up a line of your own."
Poor Margaret! Though it was not the first time that Grace had
accused her of swerving in her allegiance to her, it was the first time
such an accusation had been made on such serious grounds.
Very real tears stood in her soft eyes as she held out her hand to her
sister and said—
"What do you wish me to do? What can I do to please you?"
"To please me! Nothing; only for your own sake, Margaret, for the
sake of being a little consistent, you need not gush over her, and
pretend to like her, before you know whether she is for us or against
us."
She turned away, and began to change her dress, her head held
high, not yet forgiving. Margaret felt as though the luxury of tears
would be a relief, but she thought she would make one more effort
to win back her sister's cordiality.
"I am sure," she began, while her lip quivered nervously, "I mean
nothing. I was sorry for her, and showed I felt sorry, but I think I
shall hate her if her coming is to make differences between us."
"It need not make any difference if you are only true to me," said
Grace, firmly. "Leave her alone and watch me, and you can do what
I do."
"I never can," pleaded Margaret. "And oh! Grace, sometimes, when
you are disdainful, I feel as if I must go and console. You don't know
how hard it is for people when you draw yourself up and say
something cutting. I always feel so sorry for whoever it is."
"You are a little goose," said Grace melting a little at this tribute to
her power, "you exaggerate everything about me."
But she did not think so.
She threw her arms round her sister now with a protecting gesture
she herself was unconscious of, and hurried to get ready for dinner,
in a way that Grace Rivers hardly would have done some days
before. At any rate, she had learnt one lesson—not to be late for
anything Mr. Sandford was connected with.
The two girls went into the drawing-room only as dinner was
announced by an insignificant little bell, and Mr. Sandford marched
off with his sister.
Placing her at the head of the table, he said in his most pompous
manner, "It is my wish that you act as mistress of my house, and
that all should consider you in that light," and he glared round as
though many were there to hear this, and not only two girls who
already understood this.
Mrs. Dorriman, conscious of an action antagonistic to his wishes, sat
silent, feeling as though she were a traitor; never was there any one
more acutely self-tormenting, more sensitive about anything she did,
than this poor lady. She was perpetually worrying herself about
trifles she might, or should, have done or left undone, and this was
no trifle; though she little thought that her presence in her brother's
house, and her being uprooted from her little home, was due to the
colour and agitation that had betrayed to her brother that she had
knowledge of the papers he wished to possess.
She roused herself after a time and was then for the first time
conscious of Margaret's changed manner.
All the sweetness and kindness which had so cheered her advent,
and lessened the pain of her arrival, had gone, and was replaced by
a cold indifference—which was Margaret's only possible way of being
unlike herself.
Poor Mrs. Dorriman imagined that she was in some way in fault, and
blamed herself for her abstraction, but her efforts were quite
unavailing—the girl's one anxiety was to prove her loyalty and
allegiance to her sister. She was conscious of a dawning feeling of
affection for the little woman who sat looking pale and sweet
opposite Mr. Sandford's massive figure. She had felt her clinging
arms round her, and the feeling had been of comfort and sympathy,
but Grace decreed otherwise, and Grace's word was her law.
Never, perhaps, sat four people together whose thoughts were of so
different a nature; when four people live together, generally, there is,
at any rate a bond of union, some interest, in which, however much
they diverge in their thoughts towards it, forms, at last, something in
common—here there was nothing!
Mr. Sandford, at other times an acute observer, noticed nothing to-
night. The face of his sister opposite to him affected him strangely.
No one had so faced him since his wife had died, and he was so
busy looking through the long vista of years, and seeing the one
creature he had ever loved, looking back at him from the past, that
he ate mechanically and did not speak.
At length he roused himself and addressed Mrs. Dorriman, "I hope
you will bring things into better order," he said abruptly; "if the cook
cannot do better than this, you must change her. I look to you. I'm
not a dainty man, but I pay for the best and I intend having the
best."
"And I will do my best," said Mrs. Dorriman, gently.
"You should know about things. I do not know how it was done, but
there was some comfort in the old place, and I suppose you had
something to do with that."
"Of course I did see about things. I do not know if they were very
comfortable."
"They were," he said, emphatically, "and you will find they want
stirring up in this house. The morning I was taken ill there was not
one soul out of bed. I rang and rang and only a wretched girl
answered. You must alter all that. I expect you to keep everyone
and everything in order, and in good order too; and," he added—
looking round, not at the girls but well above their heads—"if any
one gives trouble, they go!"
Mrs. Dorriman felt her heart sink. The old manner, the old hard-
handed way of laying down the law, brought to her mind times when
in almost these very words she had read changes distasteful and
unfortunate for her; something of that helpless feeling of her
childhood came to her, when she had been left to struggle on
without care or affection, when her nurse had been banished, and
she had to put on her clothes, and perform for herself all that, till
then, had been done by kindly hands. For, though we live to forgive
many wrongs, and time mercifully softens our regrets, and blunts
the edge of our sensibilities, there are two things we may learn to
forgive, but we never learn to forget—a wrong done to us in
childhood, when we were too helpless and too young to protect
ourselves, and a wound to our self-love in later life.
There was a prolonged silence, which became at length a noticeable
one. Then Grace, feeling that it lay with her to show how little the
purport of Mr. Sandford's words affected her, said in a light tone,
"Do you ever see people here, Mr. Sandford?"
"See people!" he echoed; "you can see plenty of people whenever
you look out of the window. See people! why it would be a
pleasanter place if there were not so many to see."
"Of course I do not mean in that sense," said Grace, with dignity; "I
mean, do people call here?"
"I have no doubt plenty of people will call now," he said, with mock
solemnity, which for the moment took her in, as he gave an old-
fashioned bow in her direction.
Grace bridled a little; her influence was beginning to make itself felt
even on this rough man, she thought.
"I am not sure that the callers are just in your line," he said, after a
momentary pause. "Some are I doubt beneath your level, and some
I fancy a good bit above it."
"No one can be above Grace's level," exclaimed Margaret, "she is so
clever, and——"
"Tut, tut," he said, "I wish every one had so good a trumpeter, but
Grace is nothing very wonderful—I have not seen any proof of her
cleverness. Come now, Margaret, what can she do? Can she sew a
seam, knit a stocking, turn her hand to any useful thing, eh?"
"Grace could do everything of the kind if she chose."
"Then she had better try; it's worse to have talents and let them lie
idle than to be born with none."
"If it is necessary," said Grace, still speaking in a measured tone. "I
think I could do these things. I do not think knitting a stocking
requires a great deal of intellect I must say."
"But it requires industry, and I think you are not industrious;
however, my sister, Mrs. Dorriman there, will arrange what you are
to do," and, rising in his usual abrupt fashion, he left the room,
leaving Grace in a state of mind which is difficult to describe.
Next day, breakfast over, Mrs. Dorriman went to see the cook,
outwardly calm but inwardly with very great trepidation.
She herself was one of those quiet people who have a genius for
household management, and she was blessed with that happy
absence of irritability and anxiety to domineer, which wins its own
way without any violent commotion.
Mrs. Chalmers, for some years so completely her own mistress, was
as ready to go off into a blaze as a well-laid fire. She had quite made
up her mind to one thing, that if she was interfered with she would
go. She valued her place or rather had valued it because she was
entirely her own mistress, free to get up and go out and come in
without any let or hindrance from any one. She did not mind having
these people, for the extra work fell more upon her underling than
upon herself, but interference she would not have.
She had put on her best cap and apron, ready to be summoned, and
she would then and there give out her mind—perhaps resign her
place; but, instead of being summoned, Mrs. Dorriman came down,
looking so quiet and yet so evidently resolved to do what she felt to
be right and with such a friendly air and so much politeness, that
Mrs. Chalmers's unaccustomed knees bent, and before she had time
to take her stand she was talking respectfully to Mrs. Dorriman and
evidently anxious to please her.
Mrs. Dorriman was shown all the lower part of the house. What a
contrast she thought it to the wide passages and large rooms of the
old home. She gave her meed of praise, made Mrs. Chalmers
propose the dinner, made a few suggestions, and went upstairs,
leaving Mrs. Chalmers comfortably satisfied that she need not give
up her place—indeed, anxious to surpass herself and please the new
mistress.
Such is the charm of manner, even down to those who do not in the
least understand why they are charmed or in what way it affects
them.
Mrs. Dorriman's next step was one which required much more
courage. She felt that Margaret at sixteen could not have completed
her education, to use the stereotyped phrase—for when is our
education complete? She called the girl to her and began, in the low
voice which, to a close observer, would have betrayed effort and a
great shyness, to speak to her about her work and her idle hours.
"You are young to have left school; too young to give up steady
work," she said gently; "shall we talk it over together?"
"Grace knows so much. Grace can help me," said Margaret, terribly
inclining to this kindly woman and held back by her sister's words.
"Has Grace any plan? Suppose you call her," said Mrs. Dorriman
gently.
"Grace," she began, "about Margaret; are you going to read with
her, have you made any plan? Because she is too young, and,
indeed, you are too young, to leave off all work."
"I think, as I was at the top of my class always," said Grace, bristling
up, "that you may safely leave this question to me. I think it so
much better, Mrs. Dorriman, to make you understand at once that
neither Margaret or I will stand any interference."
"I am afraid, without what you call interference, I cannot do my
duty," said Mrs. Dorriman, quietly, but with a flush of colour in her
pale face that rose and died away again immediately. "What do you
do in the mornings? We do not know each other, my dear Grace; we
are to live together; will it not be for our mutual comfort and
happiness if we agree to try and like each other?"
Grace was a little moved by this appeal, but she was unused to be
put in the wrong and could not accept the situation gracefully.
"There is nothing but that horrid old piano with jingling keys. I
cannot play upon it, or I should play to you."
Mrs. Dorriman went towards it, opened it, and struck a few chords;
they responded with harsh discords. She let the lid down with a little
sigh, music was to her a second nature.
"No, you cannot play upon that," she said, "but books. What books
have you both read? Do you like reading?"
Grace and Margaret looked at each other. A few pages of history
each, read as a task; a few biographies of excellent people as
Sunday reading; a few poetical extracts learned by heart: this was
the sum total of their knowledge—all else in their empty minds a
barren waste.
"If you will help me to unpack my books, we may perhaps find
something we might like to read together," said Mrs. Dorriman; "and
if you would like to prove to my brother that you are industrious,"
she added, laughing a little, "we can easily get some wool and
produce a stocking."
Margaret looked a little eagerly at her sister; she was just at the age
when she missed the regularity of the school life, and when time
hung heavily upon her hands. The new feeling of interest and
occupation held out by Mrs. Dorriman was very pleasant and gave
her the first home-feeling she had in that house.
But a glance at Grace again threw her back, and she said with some
hesitation that it would be nice to unpack the books, and appealed
to Grace for some sign of consent.
Grace, however, was in no mood to be pleased with any suggestion
of poor Mrs. Dorriman's, and, muttering something about having
something to do in her own room, she went off alone there, in
stately silence and a very bad temper.
Mrs. Dorriman led the way to her room upstairs; where, by her wish,
her heavy luggage had been placed, and the lids were unscrewed,
and they set to work doing their spiriting gently but very slowly, as
the girl opened many volumes, and desired to know the history of
each. But she knew too little to be interested, really interested, in
anything. Grace would have concealed her ignorance and merely
passed everything over, but Margaret was more natural, and Mrs.
Dorriman was by turns amazed and amused. The girl seemed to
have heard of no one, and to know so little on every conceivable
subject that, every now and again, her questions were absolutely
ridiculous.
A rare edition of Spenser, exquisitely bound, was handled reverently
by Mrs. Dorriman. It had been a favourite book of her father's, and
Mr. Dorriman had had it rebound for her.
"What is that?" asked Margaret, very innocently; "oh, I see, the man
who wrote in what is called black-letter writing."
"My dear," said the amazed Mrs. Dorriman, "surely you cannot have
been taught that."
"Well, there is something funny about his writing, so that trying to
read it was no use."
"I hope to convince you of the contrary," said Mrs. Dorriman with
suppressed merriment; not for worlds would she have hurt the girl's
feelings by laughing at her, and Margaret went away.
Then she seemed to see herself with certainly more education, but
very ignorant still at the age of seventeen, thrown so much upon
herself and her own resources for all amusements and happiness—
turning to these books, and losing herself in silent delight as one
treasure after another opened to her enraptured eyes.
Her husband, himself fond of reading and anxious to win her love in
any way, had spent a great deal in filling her library with books. She
had editions which were priceless of various old authors, and the
most perfect possible collection of poetical works, including many of
those tender French poets from whom in these days it is so easy to
borrow without detection, so completely are they out of date and
forgotten; and, who living lives apart from their fellows, seem to
have kept their old words and chivalrous sentiments pure and free
from the worldliness and the grossness of their time.
But she was recalled to the present by Grace's voice, and then she
looked round to see where she could put her books. There was but
one little bookshelf in her room. She filled that and then went into
the drawing-room to see what could be done there.
She found Margaret in tears, and Grace looking flushed and defiant.
But she had resolved to take no notice of anything not immediately
directed to herself, and Grace left the room.
Relieved by not being asked for any explanation, Margaret threw
herself now again into the matter. The bookshelves, standing almost
empty, were soon comfortably filled, and then Mrs. Dorriman, who
had a happy gift of arrangement, moved the tables and chairs
about, made a comfortable corner for her brother, and gave a look
of home to the room which it had sorely needed, by which time the
morning had passed away.
In the afternoon Mrs. Dorriman wished to go and see how Jean
fared; but she did not want to be out of the way if the girls wanted
to go out with her.
Before she rose to find them, however, she heard the hall-door shut,
and she saw them walking down the avenue.
"They might have said something to me," she thought, but she
understood immediately that this was another protest made by
Grace against any "interference."
She went off herself, not sorry to be alone, feeling the squalor of the
narrow streets through which she passed—like all people who are
easily impressed by the absence of any beauty in life. She felt for the
poor human beings who toiled so hard for such a bare and unlovely
existence. The grey houses with their dirty, ill-kept doors, and the
"common stairs," upon which went so many weary feet. In front, a
bit of trodden-down mud and a black stream, in which dirty ducks
and dirtier children paddled. Her spirits sank lower and lower. At
length she arrived at the address she had got from Jean, and was
asked to "walk up the stair" by a shock-headed girl, without any
attempt at tidiness, "busy," and evidently imagining that in that fact
lay excuse enough for all disregard of appearance.
Jean, clean, trim, but with eyes that told their own tale of weeping,
was scrubbing a floor; unaccustomed to such treatment, the shutters
and woodwork all glistened, and the floor was nearly finished. It was
one of the rooms, part kitchen, part bedroom, which you obtain in
towns where overcrowding is the rule. The window was small and
high up—worse than this, it could not open.
"And is this your situation? This the place you were coming to, my
poor dear Jean?" asked Mrs. Dorriman, in faltering tones.
"'Deed, my dear, I may just say, without vanity, I could get mony a
situation; but I am here working housekeeper to two lads—kin to
myself, my dear. No one to hurry me or hinder me, and little to do.
So little, I'll be often down bothering you."
She spoke lightly, afraid of giving way. The sight of Mrs. Dorriman
brought back all her own misgivings of the day before; when she
had found herself in an airless room, with nothing but filth and dirt
around her, and not a "kent face" near her.
But Mrs. Dorriman must never know that she had made a sacrifice to
be near her; and with a fair attempt at a laugh she said—
"You know, my dear, I was always ill to command. Better this than
be under a mistress who might be a harder mistress than ever you
were to do with."
Mrs. Dorriman could not speak. She looked round the room to see in
what way she could help to make things comfortable. She resolved
that something should be done to the windows, and she noted other
things. But the feeling uppermost in her mind was, that it would not
be for long. Jean and herself—they would at no distant day wend
their way back to the hill-side together.
"And are you happy? Are you comfortable, my dear?" asked Jean,
"How is it with you?"
"I am comfortable, Jean, and have all to make me comfortable; but,
like you, I miss the great purple hills, the life and light of the sea,
the freedom and brightness of Inchbrae."
"And yet you speak cheerfully, my dear;" and the poor woman
looked wistfully at her former mistress.
"I speak cheerfully, Jean," and Mrs. Dorriman rose and laid her hand
caressingly upon the old woman's shoulder, "because, Jean, the
darkest and longest day comes to an end; you and I will go back to
the light and the sunshine. We shall go back, Jean, there again."
"But the place is sold; it has passed into the hands of a stranger,"
said the old woman, wondering.
"We shall go back," said Mrs. Dorriman, firmly. "Yes, Jean, that hope
keeps me from despair; that conviction comforts me. We shall go
back to Inchbrae once more," and so saying she left her.
 CHAPTER VI.
In spite of a good deal of open opposition on the part of Grace,
Margaret, full of the enthusiasm of a girl whose intelligence after
being long cramped suddenly finds an outlet, threw herself heartily
into a systematic course of real study, and the mornings flew on
pleasantly. Mrs. Dorriman, who had read a great deal during the
lonely hours she had spent, had theorized after the fashion of
solitary readers. Her views of life were not unnaturally entirely
pessimist, she rejected many high and great ideas from a dislike to
what she conceived to be exaggeration. Her character was very far
from firm, and she was conscious of this and other shortcomings,
but her sweetness of temper saved her from being soured. She had
a craving for happiness, without believing in its being possible for
her. Her spirits were always low, and the effect of the harshness of
her brother, and of the neglect she had suffered from in her youth,
would probably pursue her all her life, and affected her now.
She carried this negation of hope even into her religious exercises,
finding comfort chiefly in passages about resignation; and, though
she had a vague belief that in the future she might have some share
of bliss, she never expected it on this side of the grave.
Then another and a most terrible question troubled her greatly. She
did not look forward with any profound rejoicing, to the prospect of
once more meeting with her husband whom she had forgiven, but
whom she had never loved.
That hope that spans the chasm between us and the future, is not
always the comfort it is supposed to be, and indeed much may be
said about her want of wisdom in dwelling upon problems which
must remain unsolved.
She was too timid to take her fears and show her anxieties to any
one capable of helping her at all. She was conscious of feeling
disloyal to her husband in this matter, which was often a trial to her,
and she indulged sometimes in speculations which unsettled her and
did not tend to comfort her.
Poor woman! When Margaret put those pointed questions to her
common to girls who have begun to think out things and want help,
she read and re-read various authors only to come to the
unsatisfactory previous conclusions. In this respect the association
was not productive of much good on either side, but, excepting in
this, the results were to make both happier.
Mrs. Dorriman, married so young as to be barely out of childhood,
had the tenacity of opinion and the strong bias in favour of her own
conclusions always to be found where the mind has dwelt upon
itself, and has not been enlarged by friction with other minds, a bias
which no amount of reading tends to modify, since each book is read
and digested, almost one might say distorted, by the views brought
to bear upon it, a mode of reading which may be compared to
looking at a bright and a rainy day through the same smoky glass
which gives everything its own hue. But the very exception she took
at times, served to arouse Margaret's own powers of thought, and to
make her reflect upon her reasons for liking and disliking opinions,
and the language in which those opinions were put before her. Many
fine sounding phrases fell to pieces when treated this way, and many
lovely poems became to her so much more when she followed out a
thought therein shadowed forth.
Grace could in reality do nothing to stop this reading, and, though at
first she made many bitter observations, she had not the heart to
destroy her sister's comfort in these mornings; and indeed, at
certain times, when her own idleness became oppressive, she went
and sat with them, preserving her independence by making no
remarks, standing, as it were, aside and taking no part in any
discussion, as though her own mind had been long made up and
that these questions had been grappled with and settled by her long
ago.
Mrs. Dorriman, who was always more timid when Grace was
present, was always relieved when she did not appear, and then
took herself to task for the relief. There was no doubt that Mrs.
Dorriman brought a great increase of comfort to the place,
everything was well looked after, and Mr. Sandford recognised that it
was so, without exactly knowing in which way a change had been
made.
The one restless and dissatisfied person was always Grace. The
monotony of the days became to her absolutely terrible. She had all
the discomfort of having put herself upon a pinnacle without any
admiring crowd to make up for the isolation. It was difficult for her
to come down. Advances of friendliness and proffered affection had
been made in vain by Mrs. Dorriman and now no effort was made.
Perhaps the hardest trial of all was the perceptible loss of her sister's
blind admiration for all she said. To Margaret, Grace was still
beautiful, graceful, and full of talents, which only needed recognition
to dazzle the world; but she began to think it just possible that
Grace did not quite understand things affecting herself and Mrs.
Dorriman; and instead of accepting her conclusions, as she had done
all her life, without question, she began now to endeavour to argue
with her, and though Grace bore her down by a flow of language
and silenced her she remained unconvinced and Grace herself knew
it. This change, this falling-off in her allegiance, was laid to the
charge of Mrs. Dorriman, and when occasions arose that poor lady
was told much, which wounded her sorely, about setting the sisters
against each other.
There were times when Grace paced her room in a perfect frenzy of
impatience. Her life was slipping away, she thought, and there was
no break, nothing in sight. What was the use of being what she was
—fitted to reign—when there was no kingdom? Were her gifts—for
she believed in her gifts—all to be useless to her?
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