2-999-970 - Heritage Art/Heritage Images

Here is the Pleasure, Sirs, Here is the Pleasure, c1860. Beaumont reveals the antagonism among women of different social classes and generations. The harping old hag shrieks at the young woman, while her words are directed to unseen male patrons. She exposes the demure and properly dressed woman as a "demi-mondaine," hawking her to passersby. The repetition of details makes clear that the jealous crone is a herald of the inevitable fall from grace that awaits the "jolie femme." The knot in the old woman's kerchief mimics the feather that adorns her counterpart's cap. The hag's open collar echoes the other's shawl. The graceful slope of the young woman's shoulders and delicate position of the hands at the waist will eventually give way to the hunched back and defiant gesture of her elder. Beaumont's visual dialogue between the two figures and the crude caption beneath tell a grim story in which the beholder is morally implicated.