Abstract

This thesis investigates some of the specific local articulations of the international Women’s Liberation Movement created by artists in Montreal at the beginning of the 1970s. I highlight the prevalence of the commodification of women through marriage as a main focal point for this investigation. My case studies are Mauve’s performances, manifesto and installation, entitled La femme et la ville (1972), and Francine Larivée’s environment-event La chambre nuptiale (1976). The first section of the thesis explores Mireille Dansereau’s documentary J’me marie, j’me marie pas (1973) as an introduction to the social and political contexts in which Mauve’s and Larivée’s works were created. In the second section, I discuss the development of feminism in Montreal, and the history of the institution of the family. The third section examines Mauve’s and Larivée’s works, and their exploration of the bride in relation to commodities, in the context of an increasingly consumerist society. I focus my discussion on commercial mannequins and the white wedding dress, two elements that are at the centre of both La femme et la ville and La chambre nuptiale. Additionally, the thesis casts a critical glance at the ambivalence that characterizes sexually empowered women in the media as both objects of male desire and independent, emancipated individuals. The fourth section deals with the impact of pop art, its Quebec counterpart, ti-pop, and with the cultural democracy model. I conclude my thesis by showing that the commodification of the bride and marriage is a topic that is still relevant today, perhaps even more than it was in the 1970s.