Without Consulting Anyone I Dropped the Stone I Think it my Duty to Interfere
Like the “Love it Like the Toad” print, this lithograph print is also derived from imagery in Agnes Grey. In Chapter V a child named Tom, under Agnes’s supervision, is encouraged by his Uncle Robson to, “persecute the lower creation,” which in this particular instance happens to be torturing helpless baby birds still in a nest, although he is encouraged in general to think of himself as superior to his sisters, “mother, granny, governess and all!”
When deciding on a title, I selected phrases from the following passages I was inspired by to create this print. For instance, Agnes decides to stand up for the helpless birds and stand against Tom and likely his parents who employ her, saying, “I shall do what I think right in a case of this sort, without consulting anyone.” Then, when Tom is distracted listing all of the ways he was planning to torture the birds, Agnes states, “I dropped the stone upon his intended victims and crushed them flat beneath it.” She does not want to do this but sees it as the only available alternative in the situation where she has little power. Later, when Mrs. Bloomfield, Tom’s mother, confronted her about it after he tattled on her actions she responded, “When Master Bloomfield’s amusements consist in injuring sentient creatures… I think it my duty to interfere.”
Therefore, while the image seems to be depicting a horrible action, the hands are actually Agnes’s while she makes the difficult decision to save the birds from a more terrible fate. This is about an individual having the courage to stand up for what they believe is right, even when faced with opposition and negative perceptions. In these prints I wanted to put the moment on display right before the birds are killed to highlight the most intense moment of action, such as Artemisia Gentileschi did in some of her paintings during the Baroque period.