Husbands, Wives, and Lovers : Marriage and Its Discontents in Nineteenth-Century France

by Patricia Mainardi

• ISBN13: 9780300101041
• ISBN10: 030010104X
• Format: Trade Book
• Copyright: 2003-10-11
• Publisher: Yale University Press

Summary

In this lively, interdisciplinary exploration of the cultural and social history of early nineteenth-century France, art historian Patricia Mainardi focuses on what was considered a major social problem of the time--adultery. In a period when expectations about marriage were changing, the problems of husbands, wives, and lovers became a major theme in theater, literature, and the visual arts. The author demonstrates that this intense interest was historically grounded in the post-Revolutionary collision between the new concept of the individual's right to happiness and the traditional prerogatives of family and state. The book examines the questions that permeated French culture and society: Is duty or happiness more important? Are arranged marriages doomed to be empty of love and poisoned by adultery? Should adulterous wives and their lovers be punished while husbands may commit adultery with impunity? Out of such legal, social, and cultural debates ultimately emerged modern bourgeois family values, Mainardi argues. And she illuminates how art, in all its vari

Author Biography

Patricia Mainardi is Professor of Art History and Executive Officer (Chair) of the doctoral program in art history at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.

Table of Contents

Preface	vii
Introduction: To Laugh or To Weep	1	(20)
Unhappy Families: Courtroom Dramas	21	(26)
The Art of Keeping Wives Faithful: (Mis)Conduct Manuals	47	(26)
When Seeing Is Believing: The Graphic Image	73	(46)
For Money or For Love: Theatrical Alternatives	119	(30)
Happily Ever After . . . Or Not: Novels and Their Readers	149	(30)
Many Ways to Ride a Horse: Mazeppa	179	(34)
The Marriage of Contradiction: Some Conclusions	213	(12)
Notes	225	(52)
Select Bibliography	277	(20)
Index	297