Imperial Faces: Britannia’s “Daughters” in Victorian Visual Culture

Catherine E. Anderson

My paper addresses the themes of politics and propaganda by examining the representation of Britannia—that familiar icon of empire, and a figure often associated with Queen Victoria herself—and her “daughters,” female embodiments of the colonies. Within the realm of allegorical imagery, a long tradition exists wherein nations or continents have been depicted as female figures. In the late nineteenth century, this tradition was amplified by the recurring illustration of a maternal Britannia (as “mother country”) and her youthful charges in periodicals such as Punch, where complex allegorical images served as imperial propaganda. These figures also appeared, though very rarely, in academic painting, thus bridging the divide between “high” and “low” art. Audiences in both realms were invited to judge the relative attractiveness of each figure, thereby bringing into play contemporary ideas about beauty as an expression of virtue and morality, and applying these ideas to an interpretation of colonial relations.

Utilizing current scholarship on beauty pageants and national identity, and Victorian texts on the role of young women in a family setting, my paper analyzes the multilayered complexity of these allegorical representations of Britain and its colonial possessions in the late nineteenth century. I look specifically at how the naturalization of a filially dependent role for girls translates, in the realm of visual allegory, into a politically dependent function for colonies depicted as daughters. Portrayed as beautiful young women, according to Eurocentric codes, these figures also mask the ugly realities of colonial life (particularly for women) and offer instead an image of the empire as a contented family, headed by a monarch who enjoyed her portrayal as a domestic and benevolent matriarch and whose image in contemporary print culture frequently merged with that of the allegorical Britannia.