ABSTRACT
The association of blue with sadness could be combined with the iconography of the devil, who was often represented as blue in medieval stained glass, as in the term "blue-devilled." The description of Lucilla's first glimpse of the natural world is highly symbolic of her visual awakening; Collins writes that "the clouds were parting; the sun coming out; the bright gaps of blue in the sky were widening every moment." Lucilla, who has been blind since childhood, has a "horror of dark shades of color, whether seen in men, women, or things", which she must learn to overcome in order to marry the man she loves. Collins takes advantage of the rising fortunes of color in the second half of the nineteenth century to indulge in the multiplicity of color through the inclusion of characters of all colors and complexions, natural and fantastic, in order to question the literary conflation of inner morality with surface color.
