In 1851, the English Pre-Raphaelite painter John Everett Millais painted the picture “Marianne”, which became truly innovative and provocative for its time, daring to challenge the rather sanctimonious morality of the Victorian period. At that time, the attitude towards women was quite peculiar, even serious doctors sincerely wrote in their scientific works that ladies, by their female nature, could not experience any sexual desire.
Martyr Solway (portrait of Margaret Wilson)
A woman wants only to take care of her children and be a good housewife, and at night she yields to her husband's wishes purely out of necessity, as it is the only way he can be happy and she will succeed in keeping him. This idea was first expressed by Dr. William Ecton, and in Victorian England he was considered a true liberal and freethinker for having spoken on this taboo subject at all. At that time it was generally avoided as if in England, as well as in the USSR, sex did not exist. It is true that 100,000 London “ladies of love” could hardly agree with this statement, but they were outlaws, people from the lowest social circles, with whom it was better for well-bred gentlemen to have nothing to do.
Say “Yes.”
But the Pre-Raphaelites thought otherwise and reflected this opinion in their paintings. The women in them could feel not only fatigue, fear, sadness, rare joy, but also unconcealed desire, expressed in the seductiveness of their gestures. However, they became at the same time prisoners of their desires, because they could feel them, but not yet dare to realize them.
Black Brunswick Hussar (Black uniform). Excerpt
The picture “Marianne” is dedicated to the desires expressed but unrealized due to the prejudices of society. It is based on the plot of Shakespeare's play “Measure for Measure”, which tells about the unhappy fate of a girl whose fiancé broke off all relations with her because she had lost her dowry.
Marianne
Marianne is left alone in an empty house, and leads an extremely boring and sad existence - what is it like for a young girl instead of a legitimate marriage and a happy family life to sit day in and day out in a room behind a tedious embroidery or a book and accumulate unspent desire. Day is replaced by night, the house gradually comes to desolation, there is no one around, only heard in the dead silence, as chirping sparrows and rustling mice, and Marianne has already lost count of the empty monotonous meaningless days.
Mille portrayed her when she decided to stretch her back after another embroidery, and in this simple gesture feels so much unspent passion and desire that become a real pity for this girl. Her fiancé is gone, but her passion for him, and for normal life in general, has not gone away, but due to sanctimonious morality Marianne, as a noble girl, must “conform” to the expectations of society.
Bridesmaid
Millais through literary subjects in his paintings touched on pressing issues of the day. Pre-Raphaelites thoroughly shook up English society, for the first time forced to think about whether all these strict rules and propriety, preventing just normal life. By the way, the Pre-Raphaelites in general dared to paint noble women without corsets and with loose hair - that is, in the form in which they could be seen only in their own home and that when you do not need to receive guests.
The traveling knight
The Pre-Raphaelites were the first to depict women who could feel and experience passion, who wanted to take control of their own destinies, to take charge of their own lives and bodies, to be individuals, not just wives and mistresses. Millais knew what he was writing about, his wife Effie Ruskin had divorced her first husband to marry the very artist who painted women without corsets.
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