Edwin Long's The Babylonian Marriage Market

Edwin Long was born in 1829 in the city of Bath, which is in the South West of England, and died at the age of 62 in Hampstead, London. His famous painting, The Babylonian Marriage Market (1875) is another piece that not only demonstrates Western superiority, but also reflects women’s oppression within the Victorian society. As the title of the work suggests, the painting shows the Babylonian marriage system, which is based on a process of auctions. Long’s composition demonstrates, a “distribution of beauty and ugliness among the marriageable women.” William Rossetti observed that the picture showed a combination of “antique fact” and “modern innuendo,” this last term might derived from the fact that London was known as the “modern Babylon”
of the 19th century (Hart, 89-95). Likewise, John Ruskin, compared the Long’s painting with Victorian England in more detail: “As the most beautiful and marvelous maidens were announced for literal sale by action in Assyria, are not also the souls of our most beautiful and marvelous maidens announced annually for sale by action in Paris and London?” (Hart, 95). The parallel between Long’s picture and the Victorian marriage is also shown through the changes of financial property.
Once a woman was married, all of her property was transfer to her husband. Likewise, in the Babylonian culture a woman does not lose her property, but her person. Still, Victorian women not only lost their financial property and legal status, but their bodies became a possession of their new husband. This was clearly shown in 1889, when a judge during a case about marital rape declared, “ a wife submits to her husband’s embraces, because she gave him an irrevocable right to her person […] consent is immaterial.” Hence, Victorian women not only lost their property and legal status, but also became sexual slaves for their husbands (Hart, 96). So, what was the difference between the Western (ours) civilized culture and the exotic Orient (others)? Long’s work as well as Gérôme’s slave markets, intended (or unintended), both worked as metaphors for wifehood in London. The significance and meaning of the paintings shift from being a window to the Oriental “exotic” culture, to Victorian’s own demons and social issues. The paintings started to question the status of women and their role in society; hence, how does this change once they were
married?