Victorian Easter Greeting Card Girl Flowers Chicks

The relationship between girl and basket—where she is decidedly the basket's subordinate—sets an unsettling tone from the start. This Dutch-costumed figure, complete with wooden clogs, red stockings, a yellow-green kerchief, and a white bonnet, hauls a wicker basket roughly the size of her own torso absolutely stuffed with pink and white daisies, her rosy cheeks and upward-gazing eyes radiating the vacant contentment of someone who has fully dissociated. Three fluffy yellow chicks mill around her feet, presumably unaware they are moments from being crushed under those wooden clogs. The blue diamond-tiled background, the artificially flushed complexion, and the gold-script 'A Bright and Happy Easter' at the bottom all scream 'Victorian lithographer who absolutely did not care about your personal wellbeing' — and yet, somehow, this card was considered the appropriate way to celebrate the resurrection of Christ.