“Close Reading” of Poverty in Gustave Dore’s Art

B3: “Close Reading” of Poverty in Gustave Dore’s Art

For a bit of practice doing “close readings” on images, I decided to analyze a photo from Gustave Dore’s London: A Pilgrimage collection for this blog post. The image I selected is titled ‘A City Thoroughfare.’ For reference, I attached a link to the image.  The first thing I noticed when looking at the image is that a lot is happening; it is a chaotic scene. People are in carriages side-by-side, the street is filled with other people on foot, and the two rows of buildings on either side frame all that is happening. Everyone is trapped on this one street. The style is very shadowed; the lines between individuals are not distinct. Shading is heavily used. It appears to be blended and blurred on purpose. No individual looks like the center of the piece. Rather, it appears that the chaos is spotlighted over the individual. Only lower-class citizens are presented. Identifiable people in the image are all working class. Identifiable individuals include policemen, men moving large boxes, carriage drivers, and children crammed into the top of a carriage. The rest of the people seem to just be a mass, stretching the whole way to the end of the view.

The image is very dark in physical composition and tone. The sketch has no ray of light or any type of hope presented. It is only dark. For the most part, the individual is unidentifiable; it is just the mass of people presented. This represents the lower-class as a group rather than as individual people, showing the dehumanization of this social class. On the right side of the image, the faces that can be seen are crammed into small areas, and although their expressions are not entirely present, the ones that are presented appear to be in disgust or pain. The hustling street does not look like somewhere glorified, rather it appears stifling and painful. No one looks like they want to be there, and nothing about it is comfortable. This is the dark side of London that tourists and the upper-classes avoid.

The depiction serves as a raw look at lower-class lives, and it shows these people as an indistinguishable group on a busy street. The chaos shows how the lower-class was forced to live uncomfortably, in pain, and was valued less than the upper-class citizens who would never dare to be trapped in such a congested street. The image evokes feelings of disorientation as there are not very many people who stand out in the image, nor are there very many ways to determine the location of this street in relation to the rest of London. It looks at London in a very realistic and unglorified manner. If anything, it shows the extreme side of poverty in London. The dark nature demonstrations how the social hierarchy erased the individual in mid-Victorian London, and it places the viewer in an uncomfortable position of viewing the lower-class’ suffering.

Dore, Gustave. London: A Pilgrimage: ‘A City Thoroughfare’. British Library, London. Web. <https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/london-illustrations-by-gustave-dor>.