User:Yomangani/Marriage à-la-mode
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- This article is about the series of pictures by William Hogarth; Marriage A-la-Mode is also the name of a play by John Dryden.Marriage à la Mode is also a short story by Katherine Mansfield.
In 1743–1745 William Hogarth painted the six pictures of Marriage à-la-mode (National Gallery, London), a pointed skewering of upper class 18th century society. This moralistic warning shows the miserable tragedy of an ill-considered marriage for money. This is regarded by many as his finest project, certainly the best example of his serially-planned story cycles.
In Marriage à-la-mode, Hogarth challenges the ideal view that the rich live virtuous lives & gives heavy satire to the notion of arranged marriages. In each piece, he shows the young couple and their acquaintances and family at their worst: having affairs, drinking, gambling, fornicating and engaging in numerous other vices and sins. In the first of the series, he shows an arranged marriage between the son of bankrupt Earl Squanderfield and the daughter of a wealthy but miserly city merchant. In the second, there are signs that the marriage has already begun to break down. The husband and wife appear exhausted and uninterested in one another, amidst evidence of overindulgence the night before. An accountant leaves with a stack of unpaid bills, nimbly sidestepping an overturned chair (a recurring motif in the series).
The personalities and interests of the newlyweds, as well as their status in society, are revealed by the personal effects embellishing the scene, such as playing cards, a book of music and the likely sexually suggestive artwork hidden underneath the curtain in the other room. The third in the series, The Quack Doctor, shows the Count visiting an avaricious and seedy doctor with two women, to ascertain which of them gave him a sexual disease. Later, the Count catches his wife with her lover, and is fatally wounded by the scoundrel. As she comforts the stricken man, the murderer in his nightshirt makes a hasty exit through her bedroom window.
Finally the Countess poisons herself in her grief and poverty-stricken widowhood, after her lover is hanged at Tyburn for murdering her husband. The loss of their wealth and potential happiness is a clear moral lesson, exemplified by the sparse quarters of this final image (a stark contrast to the luxurious environs of the first one when the marriage was arranged). In these grimly reduced circumstances, her father removes her wedding ring as she swoons, appearing to think only of the monetary value. Hogarth thus gives a gloomy view of what he perceives to be the life of the upper classes, as well as the ultimate costs of a loveless arranged marriage.
These admirable pictures were at first poorly received by the public, to the great disappointment of the artist. He sold them to a Mr. Lane of Hillington for one hundred and twenty guineas. The frames alone had cost Hogarth four guineas each. So his initial remuneration for painting this valuable series was but a few shillings more than one hundred pounds. From Mr. Lane's estate, they became the property of his nephew, Colonel Cawthorn, who very highly valued them. In the year 1797 they were sold by auction at Christie's, Pall Mall, for the sum of one thousand guineas; the liberal purchaser was the late Mr. Angerstein. They now belong to the government, and are among the most attractive objects in the National Gallery in London.
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[edit] The Marriage Contract
In The Marriage Contract Hogarth introduces the cast that are to feature in the series. Earl Squanderfield, seated to the left, is arranging the marriage of his son, seated to the far right to the daughter of the merchant, who is seated opposite the Earl in the centre of the picture. Around the Earl hover beneficeries of the marriage contract. The lawyer Silvertongue, who is to become the daughter's lover and eventually the murderer of her husband is already whipering in her ear, the suggestion being that he is making up to her, rather than explaining the terms of the contract.
The Earl pointedly indicates his family tree which can be traced back to William, Duke of Normandy. A broken branch lying at the foot of the tree indicates the only marriage outside the nobility. However, the marriage is as beneficial to the Earl as it to the merchant: the Earl has squandered his family's wealth on rich living (witnessed by his gouty foot) and the opulent decoration and paintings displayed around the room. Through the window a half-finished Palladian folly can be glimpsed, a further indication of the financial straits of the family. While the Earl offers the prestige of his family name to the union, the merchant brings riches to the table. A userer has already taken a portion of the dowry which he grasps in his hand as he returns a paper marked "Mortgage" to the Earl. The Earl's architect looks out of the window at the incomplete building, the plans clutched in his hand in excited anticipation of renewed funding.
Both the betrothed parties look bored, the son is more interested in the reflection of himself than his future wife, but in another nod to the lawyer's usurpation of his position, it is Silvertongue's reflection that Hogarth shows in the mirror. The two dogs shackled together in the foreground mirror the bored expressions of the betrothed couple.
The paintings on the walls are scenes of disaster and violence, a none too subtle message as to the fate of the marriage. The head of Medusa looks out in horror at the scene, while around her Cain slays Abel, and other pictures feature Judith and Holofernes, St. Sebastian, David and Goliath, the Slaughter of the Innocents, Prometheus bound to the rock and St. Lawrence. On the ceiling the Red Sea closes over the Pharoah's armies. Hogarth despised this style of painting for its "dismal dark subjects, neither entertaining nor ornamental". Paulson suggests that the scenes of impulse, dominance and violence echo the Earl's own character, and the overblown portrait of the Earl as Jupiter which dominates the wall above the table certainly suggests that he is in control in this scene, but Uglow offers the alternative view that the paintings indicate the Earl's feelings about his creditors.
[edit] Shortly After the Marriage
The second picture in the series has been the subject of much analysis, chiefly over the role of the wife. While she has obviously been playing cards all night, as indicated by the card table and book on whist, there is speculation as to whether her nocturnal activities have gone further. The overturned chair and abandoned violins suggest a hasty exit by another party not shown in the scene, with Silvertongue being the obvious candidate. Parallels have also been drawn between the wife's posture and that of Moll, the Harlot in A Harlot's Progress, as she covers for her escaping lover. While appearing modestly dressed to modern viewers, it has been noted that her attire and attitude would have appeared indecent to Hogarth's contemporaries: her legs are apart, her lacing uncovered and she is stretching laciviously. It has been suggested that she is trying to tempt her her tired husband back to the martial bed: her outstreched foot and sideways glance at him could be flirtatious. Whatever her intentions, he takes no notice.
The husband is hardly a picture of health. He has returned exhausted from a night on the town – possibly including a trip to a brothel, but more likely a visit to his mistress. The dog, often used by Hogarth as symbol of sexual excitement (as witnessed by the bored dogs in the first scene) has sniffed out a lady’s cap in his master’s jacket pocket. The clock shows it is past noon, but the house is still chaos from the night before. A yawning servant leans on a chair, wig askew, he is oblivious to the guttering candle which threatens to set a chair alight.
The butler has reached the end of his tether. He leaves the room despairingly gesturing towards the heavens with the household ledger under his arm. A single receipt has been impaled on the spike he carries, but in his hand is a clutch of unpaid bills. On the wall, religious pictures are hung. However, there is a probably an erotic painting behind the green curtains. A naked foot is revealed.
Both the characters and the interior testify to the deteriorating marriage: the painting above the mantelpiece shows Cupid surrounded by ruins, his bow snapped in two beside him. The nose has been snapped off the bust, and the Viscount's sword lies broken on the floor, both symbols of impotence. Although this is a Classical interior, complete with columns and Italian paintings, the clock could hardly be more Rococo – a style that, to a painter like Hogarth, stood for all that was abominable, affected and false.
[edit] The Visit to the Quack Doctor
This picture has also caused problems for those dissecting its parts. The Viscount is visiting the Quack on account of syphyilis, but the role of the larger woman is not certain. Some suggest that the Viscount has brought along his two mistresses to ascertain which has infected him. The smaller girl, little more than a child and ensconced between his legs, is undoubtedly his mistress; the seduction of a young girl points to his deepening depravity. The older woman has also been seen as the mother of the younger girl, her procuress, or the doctor's wife. She looks disapprovingly at the Viscount as he laughs with the doctor, but the reasons for this are unclear: he could be relaying a bawdy story about her or her child, or could be disparaging the doctor. The pock marks on her face and the Viscount's offer of his pills suggest she is involved in prostitution in some way.
The doctor has been identified as John Misaubin who had featured as one of the physicians attending Moll in the penultimate plate of A Harlots Progress, although the figure here is much more portly than Misaubin who was strikingly tall and thin as depicted in Harlot. He was famed for his pill, said to cure the pox, and the opulent surrounding of his offices suggest he is doing well for himself. His museum at 96 St Martin's Lane may be the setting for this picture.
[edit] The Countess's Morning Levee
The Countess's Morning Levee shows the Countess living a separate life to the newly created Earl (the coronets over her bed indict her husband's new status without any overt mention of his father's death), but one that is equally dissolute. She surrounds herself with fops and foreign influences. The levee was a much mocked affectation imported from France. Draped over the couch next to the countess, Silvertongue unashamedly makes up to her, the assumption is that he is or soon will be her lover. In his hand he grasps tickets to the masquerade, perhaps echoing the masquerade mask the Countess held in the earlier scene
[edit] The Death of the Earl
[edit] The Suicide of the Countess
[edit] See also
- A Harlot's Progress (1732)
- A Rake's Progress (1735)
[edit] External links
