William Holman Hunt's 'The Awakening Conscience'

Hunt's representation of a domestic sphere is one that again supports the male construct. We have a male voice speaking to what would have most likely been a predominately male audience which in itself helps to perpetuate a the male moral construct. In terms of portraiture, we see the female sitter distinctly connected to her lover, and although she is attempting to break physically from him , she remains within his realm. Diana Holman Hunt, writing in 1969 says that her grandfather had added faint lines to the girl's dress in an attempt to hint that underneath her dress the model was not ‘naked; this camisole...would only stop at the waist'.27 Hunt had apparently added a shawl not only to keep the model warm but to keep the girl from having too much physical contact with the male model.28

In Jungian terms, the girl in the The Awakening Conscience becomes associated with the Terrible Mother figure; whilst her lover may be seen to echo the negative archetype of the Wise Old Man, the Traitor.29 The archetypal Terrible Mother conotates the negative aspects of the Good Mother, such as the sorceress, and becomes synonymous with the whore figure which again underlines the moral of the text.30 The lover becomes symbolic of the archetypal Trickster figure who is seen to fooling the misguided girl out of her virtue.31The dual nature, or the half-man, half-beast-like qualities of the lover become apparent in his cat-like appearance; his eyes are intriguingly cat-shaped whilst his beard is seemingly representative of cat's whiskers.32 The garden beyond the villa then becomes a metaphor for both innocence and paradise to highlight the model's contemplation of a virtuous life, however unattainable it may seem. Hunt is also seemingly creating a sense of symbolic balance; he unifies the composition with the symbol of darkness that the girl represents with that of the innocent and virginal nature of the garden. Just as the biblical figures of Adam and Eve are removed from the Garden of Eden through temptation, so are Hunt’s subjects. The mirror's function then becomes that of both a barrier and a source of reflection, physical and spiritual. The inclusion of the mirror also serves to further objectify the girl and to highlight her social exclusion thus helping to create a sense of otherness. It associates the viewers with the external metaphor of virtue; we become connected with the unspoiled

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