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

0.0

In this interdisciplinary exploration of the cultural and social history of early 19th-century France, 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 theatre, 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 varieties, both influences and is influenced by social change.

0.0

Patricia Mainardi is professor of art history and executive officer (chair) of the doctoral programme in art history at the Graduate Center, The City University of New York. She is also the author of Art and Politics of the Second Empire: The Universal Expositions of 1855 and 1867 (ISBN 0 300 04747 9 pb., [pound]18.95), published by Yale University Press.