Husbands, Wives and Lovers: Marriage and Its Discontents in
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.
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.
Author: Patricia Mainardi
Format: Hardback, 256 pages, 181mm x 254mm, 1102 g
Published: 2003, Yale University Press, United States
Genre: History: Specific Subjects
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.
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.