Lost (marital) illusions: the exhibition on marriage at the Maison de Balzac

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In his time, marriage was most often an arranged union, a convention determined by social and financial considerations, which generally had an austere impact on women. In La Comédie Humaine, women fall into four categories: wives or young girls to be married off, young women whose precarious status forces them to seek a protector, prostitutes or women too old/work-worn.

Like other cartoonists of the period, including Victor Adam, Honoré Daumier and Émile-Charles Wattier, he criticizes marriage with irony, evoking the imbalance of this union, couples with often significant age differences, marriages that resemble contracts more than a love affair, but also adultery and the inequality between men and women before the law. A wide range of subjects that give authors and cartoonists plenty of grist for their mill!

While the tone adopted is humorous, it unambiguously denounces patriarchal authority and the suffering of marriage for women through domestic conflicts.