Pictorial Narratives: Hogarth’s Marriage à la Mode
One of Hogarth’s bitterest satires, Marriage à la Mode, showed the disastrous results of a marriage of convenience concluded between the son of a poverty-stricken nobleman and the daughter of an aspiring merchant (Jarrett 88). Yet this background information is not necessary to appreciate each painting independently. From the first painting, in which the ambitious fathers of the couple exchange money and titles, to the final two prints that show the husband and wife’s melodramatic deaths, each of the six prints tells both a episode in the story of this doomed arranged marriage and a story in and of itself. The first two Marriage à la Mode prints, The Marriage Settlement and Shortly After the Marriage, both contain numerous works of art, architecture, period dress and other carefully placed props that allow each work to tell a story without being dependent on the context of the series.
Because of its immense detail, The Marriage Contract is perhaps one of the easiest prints to appreciate. Even without any prior knowledge of this work, an inexperienced art critic can still ascertain that the scene takes place in an aristocratic home. Copies of paintings after the old masters hang in gilt frames, the ceiling is painted and the walls hung with green damask. Two men sit at a table in some sort of business transaction, as evidenced by the presence of three lawyers, numerous documents and money. The gentleman on the right’s portrait hangs on the wall above the table, indicating that the deal is being brokered in his home. He is correspondingly dressed in fine clothes, whereas the other gentleman is more modestly attired. The skill with which Hogarth has represented the swelling aristocratic pride of the Earl and the lower-bred, commercial demeanor of the Sheriff was regarded by eighteenth-century critics, best acquainted with the social manners of their age, as masterly (Webster 103).
A document that reads “Marriage Settlement of the Rt. Honble Lord Viscount Squanderfield” rests in the hand of the non-artistocratic gentleman, his careful perusal of the document indicating that he is the bride’s father. In turn, he has handed over a sum of money to the Viscount’s father (who the inexperienced viewer can assume holds the title earl). In turn, the Earl points to his contribution to the marriag...
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...m each other. The Roman bust with a broken nose on the mantle and the painting above it, featuring Cupid playing a song on the bagpipes ironically titled “O Happy Groves” amidst falling ruins, suggest the similarly ruined and collapsing state of the couple’s marriage.
Hogarth's remarkably exuberant satire of marriage for money, his pungent details of upper-class life, and his mastery of complex scenes find perhaps their highest expression in this series, generally considered his finest work. (Encarta). Although critics have commented that the series progresses somewhat abruptly, with little idea of what occurs in between the six scenes, rarely is any one painting referred to independent of the others. But because of the complexity of each scene, the paintings, The Marriage Contract and The Téte-à-Téte in particular, can easily stand by themselves as brilliant satires of arranged marriage in the 18th century. Such is the genius of Hogarth.
Works Cited
Hallett, Mark. Hogarth. London: Phaidon Press, 2000.
Jarrett, Derek. England in the Age of Hogarth. London: Hart-Davis, MacGibbon Ltd, 1974.
Webster, Mary. Hogarth. Danbury, CT: MasterWorks Press, 1984.
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Astell, Mary. "A Reflections Upon Marriage." The Broadview Anthology of British Literature: The Restoration And The Eighteen Century. Joseph Black [et all]. Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview Press, 2006. Print. Pages 297-301.
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