Two more wedding dresses….

Two more wedding dresses….

 

the artist Gustave Courbet, 1819-1877

The Vicar of Wakefield by Oliver Goldsmith

published 1766

 

We all had tremendous fun on the blog recently talking about Harriet Vane’s wedding dress, in Dorothy L Sayers’ Busman’s Honeymoon, and Jane Eyre’s wedding dress in the book by Charlotte Bronte.

These brought to mind two more, very different, wedding dresses to discuss…

The first one, above, is extremely creepy (and not actually related to books): I was tempted to include it when I did so many posts on mourning last year, but it didn’t quite fit. I saw this picture in an exhibition once, and just stood in front of it filled with horror but unable to take my eyes off it. It is by Gustave Courbet, and I can’t better this description I found on a website devoted to the artist:

“When this large unfinished canvas first came to public attention in the 1920s, it bore the title La Toilette de la Mariee, Dressing the Bride. Later studies, based on documents and on the painting itself, have persuasively demonstrated that the scene is not one of preparation for a marriage but for a wake. Crucial to this radical change in interpretation was the radiographic examination of the central figure, the young woman seated in the chair being tended by her companions. This revealed a nude figure, both arms hanging down, her head leaning against her left shoulder. The awkwardness of the overpainting makes it highly probable that this change was made not by the artist but by another hand at a later date, to permit the painting to be given a more cheerful theme for the sake of the market. That the painting should be concerned with the rituals of death rather than of marriage is also borne out by some of the activities portrayed, such as washing the young woman's feet and the concentration of the group in the background on their prayerbooks.”

I have not been able to get this image out of my mind in the years since I saw it – what a strange story and really quite horrible.

So now to the second one,  somewhat more cheery.

We had been discussing the way the idea of wedding clothes changed – starting out with ust wearing your best dress, or having something made that would be useful afterwards. This turned slowly into the idea of having a special, one-day dress, in white.

Chrissie Poulson (who else?) directed me to this picture, by William Mulready, called Choosing the Wedding Gown. Isn’t it lovely?

The picture is owned by the V&A Museum in London, and again I am going to quote from their most helpful description:

Oil paintings such as this with subjects taken from popular literature steadily replaced commissions for history paintings in the early 19th century. The public and most collectors of modern works started to prefer lighter and sometimes more sentimental themes.

The subject is taken from the first page of Oliver Goldsmith's novel 'The Vicar of Wakefield': 'I had scarce taken orders a year before I began to think seriously of matrimony, and chose my wife, as she did her wedding gown, not for a fine glossy surface, but for such qualities as would wear well.'

Mulready had already provided a frontispiece for an 1843 edition of the novel - the composition on which this painting is based. It was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1846 and was an immense success.

The vicar’s wife, Mrs Primrose, is going to need those qualities for the events that will unfold in her husband’s story. The Vicar of Wakefield was an immensely popular, best-selling book in its time - and it’s like the Book of Job, though not as poetical.

It’s an entertaining read, telling a strange story which is both melodramatic and satirical, and often very funny. A summary might read: Everything goes nicely for the vicar for a while, and then that changes dramatically and everything goes badly wrong.

The final chapters, in which an absolute farrago of events are explained and switched round, seems to prefigure the current era of soap operas – the UK stalwart East Enders is just celebrating its 40-year anniversary, and the lists of events in the cheery accompanying articles are similar to this book. Abduction, fake marriage, bankruptcy, attacks, injuries, deaths, fake deaths, burning down the house, prison…

In the final pages, covering an hour or so, everyone assembles and fortunes are recovered, moved round, lost again, dead people come to life, betrothals are switched, prisoners freed, marriages established. It’s like the end of days, and is quite hilarious and hard to keep track off. 

I wonder  does anyone read The Vicar of Wakefield anymore? – it’s one of the books Jo March likes in Little Women, and is also mentioned in Jane Austen's Emma.

So - two very contrasting views of wedding preparations. One poor  woman has no future, and the other has no idea what she has let herself in for.