IMAGES OF ENGLAND, by Laurie, Sarah and Diane

Brassart Laurie, Durand Sarah & Fauquenot Diane

 

Images of England

We wanted to join all these characters in a famous public place of England. We first thought about places of London like London Eye or Tower Bridge which are quite symbolic places of London. Yet, we remembered that the most important thing we wanted to show through this drawing was that the characters were timeless. That is to say that all the characters have marked their generation and have still an influence nowadays. After having searched for hours, we finally made our choice on the red double Decker. This public transport aims to drive the characters toward the right side, standing for the future.

ü Saint George’s Cross

St George’s Cross remains the national flag of England since the 13th century. We wanted to represent it because, for each country, the flag is a part of identity. It allows the country to be different from the others. During international sport competitions, sportsmen and women march past behind their national flag. In the past, during wars like the Crusades, a person of the army had to hold the flag, symbol of power, and the soldiers walked behind. Nowadays, it isn’t a symbol of power anymore but it’s above all a symbol of unity which must be respected.
We have also drawn the Union Jack because it symbolizes the union of the countries of the United Kingdom (England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland). However, we used to assimilate this flag to England because London is the place where all the economic and political decisions of the UK are taken.

ü The Queen’s Guards

They are charged with guarding the official royal residences in London (Buckingham Palace and St James’ Palace) and also Windsor Castle and the Tower of London. They are more symbolic than important. Nowadays, guards haven’t a real military fonction but millions of visitors want to see and to photography them. The changing of the Queen’s Guard is something amazing that all the tourists want to see, like they come to France to see the Eiffel tower.

ü The Queen

Since the 6th of February 1952, Elizabeth 2nd is the Queen of England and the head of state of the Commonwealth realm, including the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, Papua New Guinea, New Zealand and Jamaica. She’s the head of the executive and the judiciary, the commander in chief of the army and temporal governor of the Church of England. She has a diplomatic role. To us, she personifies old English traditions: she is wearing “old fashioned” clothes and typical hats, she likes hunting, she’s often seen drinking tea in “old fashioned” cups. In spite of the fact that she symbolizes former traditions, she’s respected by all the people, as well the oldest as the youngest. We decided to represent her driving the “former culture” in an imperial bus, toward the right, in order to show that monarchy hadn’t paralyzed the country which has always progressed to become more modern. England is still a country open to the world.

ü John Bull

As Uncle Sam for the United States of America, John Bull is a very popular icon in his country. He first appeared in 1712, depicted as an animal (most of the time a bulldog which is the typical English dog). Then, in 1784, he finally took a human form, usually portrayed like the English citizen of the XVIII century, as a portly man in a tail coat with light coloured breeches and a top hat which indicates its middle class identity. John Bull’s appearance has been evolving just like England has been evolving.   According to us, John Bull embodies this fact.

ü The Mad Hatter and the March Hare

They have been invented by Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (1832-1898), a British novelist, essay writer, photographer and mathematician. Dodgson is well-known all over the world under the name of Lewis Carroll. His masterpiece Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and its sequel, Through the Looking Glass, revealed the two fictional characters. Here, they stand for the British realm of fancy and craziness.

The idiom “as mad as a March hare” has been used by the author. The most widespread explanation for it is that hares have long been thought to behave excitedly in March, which is also their mating season.

He also used the expression “as mad as a hatter”. It arises out of the use of mercury in the making of hats during the 19^th century. In this day and age, we know it had affected hatters’ nervous systems, making them shake and appear insane. It is known under the name of “Mad Hatter’s disease/syndrome”. It seems Carroll had also drawn his inspiration from Theophilus Carter, an Oxford cabinet maker and furniture dealer, with a reputation for eccentric behaviour. He was kind of a “mad inventor”, having created the alarm-clock bed which woke people up by tipping the bed over.

Mister Hatter and Mister Hare are also an implied reference to this cliché of English people, having tea at the end of every afternoon. Indeed, both were sentenced to death by the Queen of Hearts for “murdering the time”. As a result, in respect to the Hatter, Time stopped itself,

keeping the two characters in a never-ending, freaky tea party, stuck at 6 p.m. forever.

ü Hermione Granger

Hermione is one of the main characters of Harry Potter, a best-seller written by J. K. Rowling, an English novel writer. We decided to include her in our work because, to us, she embodies the typical English student, wearing the uniform. We put her in the bus of the former culture even if the novel is recent since, in this day and age, not as many students as in the past still wear the uniform.

ü The full breakfast

The toasts are being thrown out of the bus, as if the bus was a toaster. They symbolize the typical English full breakfast. Everyone knows this substantial meal made of toasts with jam or marmalade, poached, scrambled, in a basket or fried “sunny side up” eggs, fried bacon, grilled sausages, cooked tomatoes. On a plate, there are also roasted mushrooms, beans, potato waffles or cakes, everything served with some orange juice, tea or coffee.

ü Dorian Gray

This lad, reading what seems to be a riveting book, is the main character of The Picture Of Dorian Gray (1891), the one and only novel written by Irish author Oscar Fingal O’Flahertie Wills Wilde (1854-1900), who just used to be called Oscar Wilde. The masterpiece, which gradually won Wilde a reputation as a modern, originally talented writer, denounces openly English society of the time, with a philosophic tone. Indeed, Wilde regarded the British high society as a shallow, narrow-minded social class, who actually didn’t deign to face reality, preferring looking down on everything with a satisfied look. As P. Ackroyd wrote in the introduction of the novel in 1985,

“Wilde, an Irishman, was putting a mirror up to his oppressors.”

During Wilde's era, what was seen as immoral was immediately abolished by reviewers.

Dorian Gray, who made the wish of remaining young forever and his portrait to grow older, also symbolizes the British Dandy. Refined, elegant, placing particular importance upon physical appearance, a dandy makes up his own mind about every single thing.

On the collage, it is the English actor, Benjamin Barnes, who plays the paper lad. The movie was released in 2004 and has been directed by Oliver Parker.

ü Peter Doherty

Peter Doherty is an English poet, artist, musician and singer, born in 1979 in Hexham, Northumberland. He is part of two bands: The Libertines and Babyshambles. On the collage, he is welcoming symbols of the English past culture in modern times. His works contain many references to the past of England, like the images of Albion, which is the old name of England, and Arcady, an idyllic place such as Utopia, referring mainly to a vision of harmony with nature. Doherty published in 2007 his Books Of Albion, the diary he wrote when he was in his adolescence, which holds poems, songs lyrics and drawings. He is standing here to show that poetry still exists. The fact is he is famous mostly because of the problems he coped with, concerning drugs, which reflect on his often unhealthy physical aspect. Therefore, he shows the uselessness, triviality of going by appearances. Here, the artist is trying to catch Dorian Gray’s attention: this novel was an eye-opener to him and he is very fond of Wilde’s work.

ü William Shakespeare

Nowadays, William Shakespeare is still considered as one of the most important writers and poets England has ever known. We have represented him on the collage since even though his death goes back to hundreds of years, his influence on the English culture is quite important.

Indeed, we notice it by observing all the references he has been done through songs or quotations, through all the countless adaptations of his works. He was such a powerful man that English language has been nicknamed “Shakespeare’s language”.

ü The Rose

The rose is a really meaningful icon of England. First of all, it is recognised as the national symbol of England. Then, the rose reminds us of an historical event called the war of roses : indeed, the York’s House (the white rose) and the Lancaster‘s House ( the red rose) have faced each other in order to obtain the crown of England.

On the collage, the rose is drawn in Shakespeare’s mouth since it was the name of London’s most memorable theatre and the first Elizabethan Theatre on Bankside and home to many of Shakespeare’s first productions. Yet, for English youth, the red rose embodies the English Rugby Union team.

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