Art

Voltaire and Hogarth were contemporaries in an age of optimism. Philosophers and thinkers of the Age of Enlightenment believed that human beings could make progress by solving the problems of the world. It was an age of reason that influenced over two hundred years of literature, art and philosophical thought. The works of Voltaire and Hogarth examine a society at odds with the concept of Enlightenment. They express frustration with their fellow human beings through satire, but their approach is completely different. Voltaires Candide is a pointed attack on organized religion, the New World, foreigners and the constancy of women in eighteenth century France. On the other hand, Hogarths Gin Lane and Marriage a la Mode employ caricature and dark humor to highlight social evils in Georgian London.

Enlightened Wit Satire in the Age of Voltaire and Hogarth
Satire was a popular device in the eighteenth century, employed by artists, writers and poets to criticize the social institutions of the time. It was a time of change and political tension, and intellectuals expressed their frustration with the government through satirical literature and art without fear of reprisal. They created fictional worlds with exaggerated characters and circumstances inspired by the society around them.
This paper examines the different approaches to satire in the works of the French author, Voltaire, and the English artist, William Hogarth. This paper will show that Voltaire used satire to express his disdain, but Hogarth used satire for moral reasons.

Franois Marie Arouet, who used the pen name Voltaire, was a leading French intellectual that rose to popularity in the aristocratic French salons despite his middle class background. His most famous work is Candide, a satire that describes the misadventures of a nave youth named Candide. In his early years, Candide lives in an almost paradise, learning from his mentor Pangloss, who adheres to a Leibnizian optimism, everything is for the best in this world (Voltaire, 1759, p.230). When Candide is exiled for kissing the Barons daughter, Cunegonde, his beliefs are tested by religious fanaticism, the horrors of war, unrequited love and natural disaster. By the end of the book, Candide eschews all optimism to adopt a more ambivalent approach to lifes trials.

According to William F. Bottiglia, an authority on Candide, a key element of the satire is Voltaires attack on the sentimental foibles of the age (1951, p.89). His characters are two-dimensional and mechanical and their actions unreasonable in light of their circumstances. All except Candide stay firm to their philosophical beliefs and sense of self-importance despite having gone through horrific situations and fall from grace.

In Candide, Voltaire exposes his animosity towards science, the New World and society in general. When describing a common eighteenth century cure for Syphilis, we are told that the patient is very fortunate to lose only an eye and an ear (Lamm, 1996, p.178). When Pangloss tells Candide that he acquired Syphilis from Paquetta who acquired it from a series of people leading back to Christopher Columbus and his discovery of the New World, Candide questions whether the devil was behind this. Pangloss counters that by saying for if Columbus had not caught in an island of America, this disease, we would have had neither chocolate nor cochineal. (Voltaire, 1759, p.300) In other words, the material benefits of the exploration are far greater than the deadly spread of the disease.

Voltaire also employs his sharp wit to mock the hypocrisy of the Catholic Church. After the earthquake in Lisbon, Candide is interviewed by an Inquisitor in Lisbon who questions Candides philosophical views and his faith. When Candide fails to answer satisfactorily, he is arrested for heresy, tortured and almost hanged. Voltaire exposes the duplicity of the Inquisitor by showing us how he is in league with a heretic, a Jew to share the favors of Cunegonde. The Inquisitors job was to arrest Jews and other heretics, but instead he arrests only those that he perceives to be heretic and those that cannot afford to pay the Church for a pardon.

Voltaire does not appear to have much faith in the constancy of women and uses satire to show his scorn for their disposition. Throughout the book, we come across female characters that are prostitutes, disease-spreaders, women that marry for money or who have a high opinion of their noble status, and victims. Paquetta, who gave Syphilis to Pangloss, ends up a prostitute Cunegonde, who prided herself on her virtue, is passed around from one man to another and ends up a slave the Barons sister refused to marry her bastards father as he could not completely trace his noble ancestry an old woman loses a buttock after she helps some starving men. The women in Voltaires books are a reflection of the immorality that existed in the salons of Paris.

William Hogarths purpose for using satire was different from that of Voltaires. Hogarth was an English painter and engraver born to a poor Latin school teacher in Londons tenements. As was the custom of the time, Hogarth was apprenticed at an early age to an engraver where he learnt his art. Hogarth used satire in his art to poke fun at the social conventions of the time. His subjects included the aristocracy and the poor, doctors and lawyers, drunks and gamblers, and politicians as well as preachers. According to Martin Rowson (2007)

Hogarth was in many ways a contradictory figure a satirist who wanted to be part of the Establishment a popular engraver who wished to be recognized as a serious artist. He succeeded in being all these things (although, in the first instance, at great personal cost). But first and foremost he was a polemicist. (www.tate.org.uk)

Gin Lane and Marriage a la Mode are two works that use moral satire to highlight the discrepancy between social classes.  Gin Lane was a timely piece done in support of the Gin Law of 1751 which increased the tax on gin sales, thereby decreasing its availability to the poor. In the engraving, we see an exaggerated depiction of the effects of alcohol, from a baby being flung off the stairs by a diseased woman to people selling their belongings in order to buy gin and drunken men and women uncaring of their depraved actions. The work focuses on the combined cause and effect of urban poverty, disease and alcohol on social evils like thievery, prostitution and debt. In one scene of moral satire, a mother compels her child to drink gin and two unaccompanied girls take liquor, suggesting that Hogarth saw gin addiction as growing out of social as well as individual causes (Shesgreen, 1973, p.76).

Despite its grim subject matter, Gin Lane is actually quite funny, albeit in a dark comedic way. It has come to define our perception of eighteenth century London, but we know that all the scenes depicted in the work cannot realistically occur at the same time. This is where the satire comes in the disjunction between the horror and laughter in the visual injects the horrendous with humor, making it easier to understand the moral message (Rowson, 2007,  HYPERLINK httpwww.tate.org.uk www.tate.org.uk).

Marriage a la Mode is a series of six paintings and engravings that makes fun of the aristocracys habit of arranging marriage purely of economic convenience. Such marriages often led to disastrous results including social evils such as adultery, gambling and spread of disease. In The Marriage Transaction, we see a theatrical depiction of a marriage contract being negotiated between the son of poverty-stricken earl, Lord Squanderfield, and the daughter of a wealthy and ambitious merchant. Squanderfield points proudly to his family tree the merchant carefully scrutinizes the contract while the young couple sits facing away from each other, absorbed in their own amusements, an ominous sign of things to come.

Unlike Gin Lane which features a crowd of people, The Marriage Transaction scrutinizes five main characters, concentrating the use of satire in the way the characters respond to each other. Despite Lord Squanderfields lofty ancestry, his lack of fortune makes him dependent on the merchant who cares only about the financial aspects of the contract and ignores the family tree the earl is so proud of. Another element of humor is the depiction of the son, an effeminate and narcissistic young man dressed in fashionable attire in contrast to his unsophisticated bride. He takes snuff with an exaggerated pinch of his fingers while admiring himself in the mirror and fails to notice the conduct of Lawyer Silvertongue who is seducing his bride with honeyed words (Shesgreen, 1973, p.51).

On first glance The Marriage Transaction appears to be a humorous cartoon that ridicules the opportunism of the both the middle class and the aristocracy. However, it is a harsher criticism of the aristocracy than the middle class (Ibid). There is another element of satire here that focuses on the interior setting rather than the persons. Hogarth mocks the overtly grand interior of the house of an aristocratic family of no fortune. On the walls hang paintings depicting various scenes of disaster, death, torture, martyrdom and sacrifice, commenting on the disastrous marriage. His attention to detail, particularly the exaggerated sense of self worth, through the artworks and the characters, heightens the comedic effect of this engraving. (de la Croix  Tansey, 1980, p.701)

In conclusion, satire is a common element in the works of Voltaire and Hogarth used to highlight the transgression in eighteenth century society. However, while Voltaire uses satire to exhibit his contempt, Hogarth employs humor to impart a moral message in an equally effective manner.