Marriage Bonds
Marriage Bonds xplores themes of domestic confinement, and marriage as a form of imprisonment within the context of the eighteenth century rules of coverture. The four-poster bed, presented in Botanic Dreams as a site of intimacy, rest and privacy, is transformed into a cage where control and vulnerability are key. Stripped of flowers and the embroidered coverlet, the bed is now made up with clean white sheets and wrapped in heavy chains that bind and enclose it to create a cell-like enclosure. Employing chains creates a visceral representation of the legal doctrine of coverture that dominated eighteenth-century marital law, and visualise the weight of societal expectations and how the institution of marriage often functioned as a form of ‘gilded cage’ of either confinement or entrapment, and the specific constraints placed on elite women's freedoms.
