Effie Deans

Effie Deans, painted in 1877, draws on Walter Scott's novel The Heart of Midlothian (1818), in which Effie Deans is unjustly condemned to death for child murder and only saved by her sister Jeanie's extraordinary journey to London to plead for a pardon. Effie Deans was one of Scott's most powerful female characters — passive and victimised but redeemed by her sister's love — and her representation allowed Millais to paint a subject combining Scottish literary heritage with the Victorian interest in female vulnerability and family loyalty. Scott's Scottish novels remained central to British culture throughout the Victorian period, and Millais returned to them repeatedly for narrative subjects. The painting, like Millais's other Scott subjects, benefited from his intimate knowledge of Scottish landscape and character acquired through decades of residence in Perthshire.

The figure of Effie Deans in prison — the most dramatically charged moment of her story — provided Millais with a subject combining confined space, dramatic lighting, and intense emotion. The prison cell setting creates an austere backdrop that focuses all attention on the figure's expression and posture. Millais renders the contrast between Effie's youth and beauty and the brutality of her situation with characteristic narrative directness.