Summary Of Hogarth's Marriage A La Mode

Hogarth 's plotting of Marriage à la Mode by James Lawson is an academic journal about the meaning and symbolism represented in the Marriage à la Mode series. He addresses all of the paintings that are in this series individually and in great detail. In the first painting, The Marriage Settlement, he pays great attention to the detailed representations that are commonly overlooked. One example would be his observations would be the lack of likeness between the two children and their respective fathers. Lawson notes that the calves on the young man do not match the calves of his father, which could be explained by multiple reasons in the real world, but in this particular situation it means that the father and son might not be related.
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He looks more at the architecture and the interior of the paintings, which give just as much commentary and symbolism. He also looks at the movements and the poses of Hogarth’s characters which mimic each other throughout the series, suggesting association between the characters, Example: He relates the maid’s pose in the sixth panel to Silvertongue’s pose from the first panel. Both are leaning over the same figure (the wife) in an almost identical manner. Bertelsen uses his journal analysis to look at the underlying message and how Hogarth chooses to present that message through the background and smaller symbols throughout the series of plates.
Both of these two articles accurately interpret the symbolism and meaning behind the series of paintings equally well, although each focus on slightly different materials. The article, The Interior Structures of Hogarth’s marriage a la Mode by Lance Bertelsen tends to focus on the poses and intentional placement of objects throughout the series of paintings. He sees more of the relationships between the separate paintings and the meaning of that relationship rather than in one of the six