User:Yomangani/Marriage à-la-mode


 * 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.

Marriage à-la-mode is a series of paintings created between 1743–1745 by William Hogarth. A biting satire on a marriage made for profit rather than love, the series was a natural sequel to A Rake's Progress and A Harlot's Progress. In each piece, he shows the young couple, their family and acquaintances at their worst: drinking, gambling, engaging in affairs and 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 rich 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. The third and forth pictures in the series, show the couple's separate lives and vices: while the Earl visits the doctor with his child mistress, the Countess has become bewitched by foreign customs and excesses and has taken the family lawyer as her lover. Later, the Count catches his wife with her lover, and is fatally wounded by the scoundrel. 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 contrast between the first and last pictures of the series. 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.

Background
Hogarth as usual prepared the paintings with prints in mind, and announced at an auction of his other works in 1745, that the six painting would be available for sale as soon as the plates had been prepared. For the engraving he employed the services of three French engravers, Bernard Baron, Louis Gérard Scotin and Simon François Ravenet. While the three men were fine engravers, this may have been a joke itself: Hogarth's advertisement boasting of "the best Masters in Paris" contrasts with his mocking the adoption of foreign customs throughout the series and particularly in plate IV.

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.

Plate I


In The Marriage Contract Hogarth introduces the cast that are to feature in the series. Earl Squanderfield, seated to the left of the table, is arranging the marriage of his son to the daughter of the merchant, who is seated opposite the Earl in the centre of the picture. The fathers are important characters in the tragedy that unfolds: although the Earl does not appear again and the merchant appears only in the final plate, it is the unravelling of their selfish plans that Hogarth illustrates in the series.

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 daughter of the merchant is already receiving the attentions of the lawyer Silvertongue, who is soon to become her lover and eventually the murderer of her husband. The son, a young dandy, is more interested in the reflection of himself in his finery than his future wife. In another hint at 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.

Plate II
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 lasciviously. It has been suggested that she is trying to tempt her her tired husband back to the martial bed: her outstretched 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.

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 surgery has been identified as John Misaubin's museum at 96 St Martin's Lane. The doctor attending the Viscount is unlikely to be Misaubin though: the figure here is much more portly than Misaubin who was strikingly tall and thin, and Hogarth had already accurately caricatured him as one of the physicians attending Moll in the penultimate plate of A Harlots Progress. The doctor here has not been identified, but is probably an archetype - Hogarth is attacking the "Quack" in general.

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