Matrimony in perfection. Or, The grey mare the better horse""

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The title draws on the old English proverb "the gray mare is the better horse," a saying about a wife who holds the reins at home, and this engraving turns that joke into a full satirical scene of marital role reversal. It belongs to the British Cartoon Prints Collection, a body of caricatures that circulated widely and used domestic life, politics and manners as material for pointed humor. The caption card gives no date, so the exact year is uncertain, but the style fits the British satirical engravings that flourished from the eighteenth century onward. In these prints the written caption often carries as much of the joke as the drawing does.

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