The Awakening Conscience (1853) is an oil-on-canvas painting by the English artist William Holman Hunt, one of the founders of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, which depicts a woman rising from her position in a man's lap and gazing transfixed out the room's window.

Around the room are dotted reminders of her "kept" status and her wasted life: the cat beneath the table toying with a bird; the clock concealed under glass; a tapestry that hangs unfinished on the piano; the threads which lie unravelled on the floor; the print of Frank Stone's Cross Purposes on the wall; Edward Lear's musical arrangement of Alfred, Lord Tennyson's 1847 poem "Tears, Idle Tears" which lies discarded on the floor, and the music on the piano, Thomas Moore's "Oft in the Stilly Night", the words of which speak of missed opportunities and sad memories of a happier past.

Art historian Elizabeth Prettejohn notes that although the interior is now viewed as "Victorian" it still exudes the "'nouveau-riche' vulgarity" that would have made the setting distasteful to contemporary viewers.

[1] The painting's frame is decorated with further symbols: bells (for warning), marigolds (for sorrow), and a star above the girl's head (a sign of spiritual revelation).

He did not plan to recreate any particular scene from David Copperfield, and initially wanted to capture something more general: "the loving seeker of the fallen girl coming upon the object of his search".

The painting was commissioned by Thomas Fairbairn, a Manchester industrialist and patron of the Pre-Raphaelites, after Egg discussed Hunt's ideas and possibly showed him some of the initial sketches.

Hunt started work but fell ill and allowed the painting to be returned to Fairbairn for display at the Birmingham Society of Artists exhibition in 1856 before he was completely happy with the result.

[10] The idea of a visual morality tale, based on a single moment, influenced Augustus Egg's 1858 series of three paintings, Past and Present.

In Evelyn Waugh's 1945 novel Brideshead Revisited an allusion to the painting reflects the unraveling of the affair between Julia Flyte and artist Charles Ryder.