Perley's words critique Margaret's willingness to accept a passive role, to continue as a
lay figure in contrast to the businessman who would be her husband.
Courbet made no bones about the use of
lay figures.
Lay figures rarely take center stage in the history of religion--much more common are studies of the theologians or revivalists, movements or churches.
They are
lay figures mounted in the museum where all may take them in at a glance" (170).
Here among the overgrown, broken down, carved stone
lay figures of saints who once decorated the long forgotten buildings on this site, for here once stood the chapels of Mary Magdalen and St Leonard.
The first three chapters present the reader with a critique of the clergy and the major
lay figures.
Using an empirical methodology that ranges widely in medical and literary sources, Oppenheim demonstrates how the metaphor of nervous exhaustion was understood by both medical and
lay figures and how the connotations of "shattered nerves" changed between the early nineteenth century and World War I due to the combined impact of evangelicalism, industrialization, and psychiatric and physiological ideas.
