Female Lucubration: Étude Nocturne

Philip Dawe worked for the great British satirist William Hogarth (1697–1764), and his mezzotints have a similar flair. This candlelight subject does not immediately appear subversive: a young woman holding a candlestick reaches over the flame toward a bookshelf above. Yet the woman is likely not the mistress of the house, judging from her maidservant attire, though she selects a book rather than dusting the shelf. At the time it was considered improper for women to do reading, serious or otherwise, and so the title juxtaposes lucubration—meaning serious, nocturnal study by artificial light—with an unexpected modifier, female. Indeed, she seems to be anticipating reading something illicit, perhaps the 18th-century erotic novel Fanny Hill, or Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure.