Tony Johannot

A woman is depicted in profile with an elaborate coiffure, a sloping forehead, and large irregular teeth. The artist and illustrator Tony Johannot deployed the harsh strategies of caricature to make this cruel joke at the expense of Mélanie Waldor, a woman of letters and a member of the artist’s social circle. The verses added below the image are from a poem that also ridiculed Waldor. While privately circulated, this caricature may be evidence of a broader backlash against women writers in France in the 1830s.