Beaumarchais and Young on eighteenth-century French nobility and countryside

Marriage of Figaro

18th Century Noble Life

The objective of this work is to read "Marriage of Figaro: written by Beaumarchais and place the play within the historical context of noble life in the late 18th Century through making a comparison to the play with "Travels in France." Compared will be Young's account of French city and country life and Beaumarchias' characterization of the nobility and the countryside.

The play entitled: "Marriage of Figaro" was written by Pierre de Beaumarchais (1732-1799) a French playwright. this play is in the time period setting of the 18th Century, specifically the Count Almaviva's castle in Seville. The work of Arthur Young: "Travels in France" also gives a glimpse into the 18th century politics and social aspects and interactions between the nobility and the poor. In each of the works the self-absorbed nature of the nobility are described as well as the conditions of those unfortunate enough to be poor.

Young: Travels in France and the City and Country Life Described

Young states that while London is portrayed as clean that Paris is dirty and crowded. Young states: "This great city [Paris] appears to be in many respects the most ineligible and inconvenient for the residence of a person of small fortune of any that I have seen, and vastly inferior to London. The streets are very narrow, and many of them crowded, nine tenths dirty, and all without foot pavements. Walking, which in London is so pleasant and so clean that ladies do it every day, is here a toil and a fatigue to a man, and an impossibility to a well-dressed woman." (Young, 1792; as cited in Readings of European History, 1906)

Young states that he has even see a 'poor' child run over and killed by the young rich nobility who ride at fast speeds and carelessly in the streets of Paris. Young however, speaks of the countryside as an ordered and lovely place as he states: "A succession of many well-built, tight, and comfortable farming cottages, built of stone and covered with tiles; each having its little garden, enclosed by clipped thorn hedges, with plenty of peach and other fruit trees, some fine oaks scattered in the hedges, and young trees nursed up with so much care that nothing but the fostering attention of the owner could effect anything like it. To every house belongs a farm, perfectly well enclosed, with grass borders mown and neatly kept around the cornfields, with gates to pass from one enclosure." (Young, 1792; as cited in Readings of European History, 1906)

Young speaks of how the towns have within them the residences of the rich, the kings with poor ragged people all in the city and to the injustice of this he states: "What have kings, and ministers, and parliaments, and states to answer for their prejudices, seeing millions of hands that would be industrious idle and starving through the execrable maxims of despotism, or the equally detestable prejudices of a feudal nobility. Sleep at the Lion d'or, at Montauban, an abominable hole." (Young, 1792; as cited in Readings of European History, 1906) This is the focus as well of Beaumarchias as his play parodies the negligent and self-consumed life of the nobility who play with the lives of others as though they were not really human beings.

Summary and Conclusion

Each of these authors recognize and relate the complete lack of caring of the nobility for the poor peasant class while the nobility content and amuse themselves at the expense of those who are considered to be 'beneath' them economically, socially and politically. While the cities of London and Paris are playgrounds for the rich nobility, the cities are dreary, without visual appeal and dirty while the countryside bespeaks of clean and ordered living.