I started with a bit of research on William Hogarth and found an interesting website with a page dedicated to this artist: https://www.lambiek.net/artists/h/hogarth_william.htm. This helped me to understand the satirical view he took on the society he lived in.
I then focused on the two images and tried to understand how William Hogarth used denotation and connotation to convey his message about the evil of gin compared to the benefits of beer.
Denotation
In Gin Lane, obvious dangers of drinking are present everywhere such as the baby falling because the mother is too drunk to look after him or the man in the foreground with his ribs exposed who is still holding a bottle and a glass. On the other hand, in Beer Street, people all look happy and healthy. A smiling couple indicates marital happiness.
In both images, the signs of drinking are everywhere, and the containers tell us explicitly if the characters are drinking gin or beer. There are also shop signs, a distillery and numerous other references to alcohol.
There is a strong contrast regarding the behaviour and body language of people between both images. In Gin Lane, several people are unconscious or fighting whereas in Beer Street everyone is either busy with their job or relaxing and socialising.
Death is everywhere in Gin lane from a dead body being put in a coffin and a man hanging in the background to a baby falling to his death in the foreground or a coffin hanging to indicate a funeral parlour. There are signs of illnesses with the man and woman in the foreground visibly very ill.
Connotation
The concept of balance is omnipresent in Beer Street: the tray of fish balanced on a lady’s head as well as people on ladders in the foreground and background. The idea would be that sobriety equals balance.
There are many indications of social status in both images. A lot of characters depicted in Gin Lane wear rags in contrast to Beer Street, where everyone is well dressed and multiple signs of wealth can be seen including the abundant fish in the baskets and the rich man in a sedan chair in the background. The man in the foreground in Gin Lane is so slim that we can see his ribs whereas the two men sitting in Beer Street sit in a position attracting the attention to their bellies. The idea is that gin drinking brings poverty as well as death and illness, which is a message that involves a judgement that was probably quite common in these days. It implies that poverty is the fault of the poor. In a sense, poverty is associated with misconduct and sin while wealth is associated with virtue.
In fact, we get that sense of sin with the woman in the foreground in Gin Lane. I read in the website mentioned earlier (https://www.lambiek.net/artists/h/hogarth_william.htm) that she would represent a prostitute suffering from Syphilis, which in those days would not have been curable and would have been perceived as a deserved punishment.
It is very interesting to observe the pawnbroker in both images. They tend to contrast with the rest of the image: The richer the population, the poorer the pawnbroker and vice versa. In Beer Street, the pawnbroker building is in disrepair with cracks in the wall and a board on the window. The side is pointing down to indicate the dire financial situation of the pawnbroker. In Gin Lane, this is the most affluent building with ornaments over the door and the owner is dressed in rich clothing.
The buildings are in good condition in Beer Street while they are crumbling in Gin Lane, with one wall missing revealing a man hanging and part of a house at the back about to fall.
In Gin Lane, the presence of animals and the fact that one of the characters go as far as sharing his food with a dog might be a way of saying that the people turn into animals with drinking gin.
Both illustrations are rich in details and every detail is intentional. It is possible to look at them for a while and discover something new. They are very interesting and looking at them, we can learn a lot about the values of that time.
Catherine Roux Degree in Illustration 