Narrating Modernity: The British Problem Picture, 1895-1914 by Pamela M. Fletcher

Author:Pamela M. Fletcher [Fletcher, Pamela M.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Art, European
ISBN: 9780754635680
Google: xTDbwAEACAAJ
Publisher: Ashgate
Published: 2003-01-15T04:40:52+00:00

The article goes on to discuss the issue as well as other moral dilemmas faced by medical men (such as confidentiality and public safety) and concludes with the advice that ‘it is undoubtedly best for patients to leave themselves in the doctor’s hands’. The writer thus achieves two important reorientations. First he affirms the doctor’s gaze as belonging only to the medically trained doctor; the viewer cannot possibly diagnose the patient. Second, he casts the ethical responsibilities of the doctor as one of the difficulties of the profession, and thus a sign of the doctor’s moral stature. With these two strategies, he re-affirms the authority of the professional man in control and the model of professional masculinity.

As the illness of the male patient disrupts the norms of ideal masculinity, the re-assertion of the professional authority of the doctor works to confirm it, suggesting that one possible response to the unease generated by the picture was to reposition the middle-class male self as doctor, not patient. However, this argument was primarily textual and could not truly shut off the possibility for oppositional readings of the picture, as it relied on the assumption that the viewer’s access to the picture as ‘doctor’ was impossible and that the doctor’s behavior was irreproachable, while the picture seems to insist on allowing other readings.

What are we to make of these responses? They all circle around the nature of (classed) masculinity, but they cannot fully make sense of the picture or the problems it might pose. Unlike earlier problem pictures which sparked relatively coherent discussions of changing expectations of femininity, the discussion of masculinity the picture raises cannot be contained by its narrative structure. The sheer volume of attention the painting received attests to the fact that these issues were of widespread interest, but ultimately the picture cannot be judged a complete success in Collier’s terms. It cannot really lead to moral or social re-evaluation, as the terms of the discussion cannot be agreed upon. Masculinity was not already constructed as a problem in the way that femininity had been, and so the indeterminacy overflows its narrative bounds, becoming the dominant experience of viewing the picture.

I believe that this reading experience was a good part of the reason for the violently negative reaction the picture incited in various critics. While there had always been an undercurrent of dismissal in the critical coverage of the problem picture, there was a noticeable difference in the response generated by The Sentence of Death. Periodicals aimed at all social classes and professions ripped the painting apart and dismissed it as non-art, often using it as a starting point for a discussion of moribund subject painting.

The year 1908 thus marked a turning point in the history of the genre. This was the year that the term ‘problem picture’ came into widespread use in the press, appearing in journals and newspapers aimed at all audiences. The Strand published an article called ‘“Problem” Pictures’ in August of that year, a cartoon in Punch

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