Hogarth’s Marriage a la Mode

The famous set of pictures called “Marriage a la Mode” contains the most important and highly wrought of the Hogarth comedies. The care and method with which the moral grounds of these pictures are laid is as remarkable as the wit and skill of the observing and dexterous artist. He has to describe the negotiations for a marriage pending between the daughter of a rich citizen Alderman and young Lord Viscount Squanderfield, the dissipated son of a gouty old Earl. Pride and pomposity appear in every accessory surrounding the Earl. He sits in gold lace and velvet – as how should such an Earl wear anything but velvet and gold lace? His coronet is everywhere: on his footstool on which reposes one gouty toe turned out; on the sconces and looking-glasses; on the dogs, on his lordship’s very crutches; on his great chair of state and the great baldaquin behind him; under which he sits pointing majestically to his pedigree, which shows that his race is sprung from the loins of William the Conqueror, and confronting the old Alderman from the City, who has mounted his sword for the occasion, and wears his Alderman’s chain, and has brought a bag full of money, mortgage-deeds, and thousand pound notes, for the arrangement of the transaction pending between them. Whilst the steward is negotiating between the old couple, their children are together, united but apart. My lord is admiring his countenance in the glass, while the bride is twiddling her marriage ring on her pocket handkerchief and listening with rueful countenance to Counsellor Silvertongue. The girl is pretty, but the painter with a curious watchfulness, has taken care to give her a likeness to her father, as in the young Viscount’s face you see a resemblance to the Earl, his noble sire. The sense of the coronet pervades the picture, as it is supposed to do the mind of its wearer. The pictures round the room are sly hints indicating the situation of the parties about to marry. A martyr is led to the fire; Andromeda is offered to sacrifice; Judith is going to slay Holofernes. There is the ancestor of the house (in the picture it is the Earl himself as a young man), with a comet over his head, indicating that the career of the family is to be brilliant and brief. In the second picture, Madam has now the Countess’s coronet over her bed and toilet-glass, and sits listening to that dangerous Counsellor Silvertongue, whose portrait now actually hangs up in her room, while the counsellor takes his ease on the sofa by her side, evidently the familiar of the house, and the confidant of the mistress. My lord takes his pleasure elsewhere than at home, whither he returns jaded and tipsy to find his wife yawning in her drawing-room, her whist-party over, and the daylight streaming in; or he amuses himself with the very worst company abroad, whilst his wife sits at home listening to foreign singers, or wastes her money at auctions, or, worse still, seeks amusement at masquerades. The dismal end is known. My lord draws upon the counsellor, who kills him, and is apprehended whilst endeavouring to escape. My lady goes back perforce to the Alderman of the City, and faints upon reading Counsellor Silvertongue’s dying speech at Tyburn, where the counsellor has been executed for sending his lordship out of the world. Moral: don’t listen to evil silver-tongued counsellors: don’t marry a man for his rank, or a woman for her money: don’t frequent foolish auctions and masquerade balls unknown to your husband: don’t have wicked companions abroad and neglect your wife, otherwise you will be run through the body, and ruin will ensue, and disgrace, and Tyburn.

William Makepeace Thackeray

The English Humourists of the Eighteenth Century

2.Answer the questions:

1)What does Marriage a la Mode describe?

2)What do you think about the names of Hogarth’s characters? What qualities of their owners do they suggest?

3)The author says that the pictures around the room are sly hints indicating the situation. Explain why.

3.What do the following quotations from the text mean?

1)Whilst the steward is negotiating between the old couple, their children are together, united but apart.

2)The sense of the coronet pervades the picture, as it is supposed to do the mind of its wearer.

3)Madam has now the Countess’s coronet over her bed and toilet-glass...

III 1.Use additional sources of information to find a biography of a painter. Make a short presentation.

2.Choose a painting and try to analyze the means which the artist applied to make the message of the picture clear.

3.Additional tasks.

a)Read the following joke about an artist and explain why the old man was hesitating.

One day a painter, looking out of the window, saw an old countryman going by and thought the man would make a good subject for a picture. So he sent out his servant to tell the old man that his master would like to paint him. The old man hesitated and asked what the painter would pay him.

The painter said he would give him a pound. The man still hesitated.

“Come on”, said the painter, “it’s an easy way to earn a pound”.

“Oh, I know that”, he answered. “I was only wondering how I should get the paint off afterwards.”

b)Read the joke and say if the men were really eager to do what the sergeant asked them to.

Sergeant: Who likes moving pictures? (Most of men eagerly step forward.) All right, you fellows carry the pictures from the basement to the attic.