What The Happiest Woman In The World Looks Like

by Mallory Ortberg · February 11, 2015

I spend no small amount of time looking at paintings unhappy women in Western art. Women pursued by undesirable men, women forced to listen to lute-players in an enclosed space, women trapped in a web of inescapable male conversation, women desperate for the release only death can bring them. So it brought me no end of joy to discover a portrait of what I believe to be perfect female happiness during a routine reconnaissance through Wikimedia Commons.

It’s “The Merchant’s Wife At Tea” by Boris Kustodiev, and it represents the highest form of contentment available to women in this imperfect world.

perfect happiness

Let us pause and set aside a moment to take stock of just what makes this painting so supremely satisfying.

The woman is alone. Do you know how rare finding a moment’s peace has been for women throughout human history? If you spent the rest of your days alone in a cottage on a solitary Alp, it would not begin to make up for the years your foremothers spent having to listen to men as a profession. (You can tell that this woman is happy because there are no men in this picture.) A woman alone is a beautiful thing.

There is a small beast making itself pleasant to her. You may prefer dogs to cats but surely you can appreciate the pleasure of a small, contented animal leaning slightly against you as it perches on a red balcony.

Her bare shoulders slope elegantly downwards, much like a glacier does when it reaches the sea.

This woman is surrounded by food and fine linens. She is drinking her tea out of a saucer, which is the height of fanciness. She has set before her fruits, charmingly arranged, and panettone, with little pots of jam and cream and an assortment of hard rolls, to be selected and eaten at her leisure. This is a woman whose eyes nor stomach will go hungry today.

The woman is wearing an elaborate headwrap and a gown the color of self-satisfaction. She has dressed up for her own appreciation. She has the greatest dining companion in the world – herself.

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128 Comments

  1. lauralyzer +149

    I love this. I need a room of my own in which to hang this beauty on the wall as inspiration.

  2. ArsenioB_Ham +56

    Can we all work to bring such headgear back into style? It looks classy and comfortable and I sure would like to save the time I currently devote to making my hair look a fraction as good on its own.

    1. Lily_Rowan +2

      I feel like the fashion turban was trying to make a comeback recently? Or maybe that was just Jane Marie or someone?

  4. Alina +61

    Was very amused when I was looking at Mallory’s tweet about this picture and the replies to it. A few people latched onto the saucer, which I didn’t realize would be a weird thing to non-Russians. I’m not saying we all go around having our tea out of saucers, but it’s not *weird*, you know? You see it a lot in… old art and costume dramas, I guess.

    I think I need Mallory to do the Boyarynya Morozova painting some time. I both dread and delight in the possibility.

    1. badmuthahydra +37

      We North Americans used to be saucer-drinkers, too, actually. It was the height of fashion in the 1770s-1780s but for some inexplicable reason, it was considered outmoded, even ‘bumpkinish’ by the mid-1800s.

      For example, in Laura Ingall’s book ‘Farmer Boy’ (set in 1866–1867 America), we have one character express her mortification over her father cooling his tea in a saucer. She quickly receives a swift, verbal smack upside the head from her mother for her snobbishness.

      1. Mrs_Peel +12

        In the UK, too. I vaguely remember some novels where people are similarly embarrassed by their older/ more rural relatives drinking tea from their saucers. There was also an episode of “Upstairs, Downstairs” (set right before WWI) where one of the maids talks about her father drinking out of a saucer.

    2. coryyc +21

      My great-grandmother, in addition to telling us all what it was like to be a farmer’s wife during harvest season and “having to cook for the threshers” (prodigious amounts), drank her coffee out of a saucer. She was a 7th generation Irish farmer in Ohio.

    3. Loony_Lovegood +4

      YESSSSSS. My (Russian) grandma taught me to drink tea out of a saucer, and my (American) friends all thought it was weird, and it’s totally not weird. *high five*

    5. MarinaCooks +3

      I spent the first 6 years of my life drinking tea almost exclusively out of saucers — it was too hot to drink straight out of the tea cup! I was, in fact, raised by Soviet immigrants.

  5. sednarea51 +69

    I am chronically stressed recently due to a work project, but when I looked at this I could feel all the tension I was carrying evaporate from my body. Ah. Oh yes.

    1. sednarea51 +208

      UPDATE: I printed out a copy and hung it on my office wall.
      yessss
      Best decision I’ve made all week.

      3. gentlehangovers +14

        Genius. I’m going to print out a few copies for other women in my heavily male-skewing office.

    1. blushingflower +12

      underneath the picture on wikicommons is a link to a place that does custom printing and will print and frame it for you. But looking at their prices, one large enought to take up an entire wall might be a bit on the pricy side.

  7. Lowkey +78

    Look! In the reflective surface of the tea kettle! Get out of here, dude, do not approach this woman!

    1. RoseCamelia +20

      We can hope he is only a servant, silently bringing marmalade, to retreat again immediately.

    1. deleted1508189 +19

      As someone who has an impulsive need to buy every tiny dish I come across, I wholeheartedly agree with you.

  9. catweazlol +131

    Assuming the cup in front of her is full of wine, the only thing I would change is to replace the fruit with Doritos.

    1. eleventysix +35

      This was my main takeaway as well. In part because we all know the degree to which you are content is directly correlated with how agreeable a cat is willing to make itself.

  11. beagee +103

    I like the horse in the background stopping in it’s tracks to gaze in…awe? Jealousy? Like “damn, she is living the LIFE.”

  14. jirelofjoiry +169

    *And* she is herself, large, beautiful, not worrying about ‘do I look fat in this?’ or ‘I shouldn’t eat that.’ And someone is leading a horse to her so that she may mount up and ride off when she pleases. Or not; perhaps this is a day for sitting and eating and enjoying the company of a cat. The sun is shining and she has marvelous eyebrows. There is little else that compares.

  15. devilsgateway +53

    Two small points: 1) There are men in the picture (with the horse and on a balcony), but they *are* FAR AWAY. 2) As a fabulous single friend of mine pointed out, she really needs a small stack of books next to her. But those things notwithstanding, pretty fucking close to perfection.

  16. katiemcgillicuddy +180

    All she needs is a pile of books, and the skull of a man who once tried to sing at her, so she has a place for her fabulous headwrap, in case she gets an even more fabulous headwrap, but still wants to put that one on display.

    1. leslieellenjones +69

      Actually, I think one of the nicest things about this picture is the complete un-necessity of bringing a man into it in any way shape or form–men are completely irrelevant. She may love men in general (or a specific man), but at this moment, it really doesn’t matter.

  17. brookshelley +32

    I really want to recreate this photo, but with a huge pile of bacon instead of everything else. also, bourbon.

    1. irishbreakfasttime +72

      I like the idea that this printout is how Toasties will recognize one another in the wild.

      1. SmrtCookie +18

        I would go prowl around my office but there are really only 2 or 3 of us in The Toast’s demographic and I’ve already asked them if they read it. Sadface. Any toasties want to come work in an ecology lab with me?

          1. brookshelley +1

            It’s a short zine i did with poems, prose and recipes. If you want a copy i can probably send one – hit me up on twitter @brookshelley

  19. Mira +41

    A small beast making itself pleasant is indeed the best thing in the world. And I bet that tea is delicious!

  20. meganknighthackademic +77

    I think we should start a trend of photographing ourselves in this painting as inspiration. I have the cat, but may need to marinate my left arm in tuna in order to get him to do that. The headwrap and dress I can manage, all I need is a sunny landscape with a castle in it.

    2. paddlepickle +7

      YES. I will totally participate. Let’s make it happen in the next several open threads, since I will not have time to grocery shop before this week’s and do not have anything remotely this marvelous in my home right now.

      1. Megan Knight +10

        I live in Northern England. I suspect there are no watermelons within several hundred miles of me right now.

        1. paddlepickle +22

          Oh, well I think we should all substitute in our own private joys anyways. I will be replacing all the fruit with cheese because IMHO fruit is pointless.

  21. Bonnie +46

    Sure, there are men and horses in the street and a whole city out there that is probably bustling but she has turned her back on it all and she’s not even going to pet the cat unless she wants to because this is her me time and cats can be attention hungry little assholes sometimes, just like her children, who she has sent to play down by the river with their governess.

  22. Vee +152

    You know what I just had a really fucking irritating conversation with my most irritating coworker and then I read this and felt so much better and decided why shouldn’t I be as happy as the woman in the painting and now I’m going to take myself out to lunch instead of sitting near the irritating corworker and eating my sad leftovers.

    1. Mrs_Peel +68

      YESSSSS

      Also, I couldn’t help thinking of a recent Onion article (“Man Brings Lunch From Home To Cut Down On Small Joys”).

      1. Megan Knight +20

        If you work where I work, and the local food is as dire as it is, bringing home made leftovers IS one of the small joys. But to each their own.

        1. paddlepickle +12

          Ditto, making myself lunch instead of spending $12 on Sad Stale salads has dramatically improved my life.

  24. Social +33

    Smart move. I’ve been a human cloud of irritation this morning, and would like to report that I just did the same exact thing. It was lovely. How many acts of self-care will this woman inspire today, I wonder?

    1. paddlepickle +16

      Granted, it is the most emotional time of year for me (PMSing in February, ie in the midst of SAD) but reading how this has improved everyone’s day is making me legitimately weepy.

  26. evieskye +56

    She now lurks behind my scanner. (my student workers are very confused by all of this. “Is she someone famous?”)

  27. gripyfish +14

    I am adding this painting to my imaginary gallery of Portrait Dopplegangers (the only other entry so far is Anne Shippen Willing, who is equally solitary and also colonial), because I can and it pleases me. Which is the only criteria that should matter, anyway.

  28. Household_Opera +30

    All that, plus it’s a beautiful day with picturesque clouds in the sky, she’s hanging out on a balcony with a view, and she’s rocking a lovely brooch. Which even matches her tea set, now that I look closely! (Also: KITTY.)

    1. Elizabeth

      I just realized: that brooch? I own it! Almost exactly the same. Now I just need a balcony and a samovar, and I can recreate this picture in its entire perfection.

  29. bohorabble +23

    Man, I shopped a class once on the Russian avant-garde and the professor showed this as an example of decadent pre-Revolutionary kitsch. But oh, what marvelous kitsch!

    1. Mrs_Peel +26

      Everything that revolutionaries complained about in regard to the bourgeoisie sounds pretty good to me. Middle class comforts! Nice food (besides borscht)! Going to the opera occasionally!

      1. bohorabble +10

        I read this marvelous memoir–cum–gastronomic history of the Soviet Union called Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking which devotes a chapter to how horrifyingly austere the 1920s were in the USSR. After that, it got a little better, but not much.

        1. Mrs_Peel +15

          I’ll take a look for that, sounds interesting! I was brought up by former Communist Jewish grandparents who were pretty disillusioned about the whole thing by the late ’50s.

          I can imagine it was pretty austere by then. I mean, I do love borscht, but not for every meal…

          On a kind of related note, I was listening to a program about grains on the BBC’s “Food Programme” the other day, and they were talking about scientists in Leningrad who maintained a seed bank throughout the war and the siege (where millions of people died of starvation). They were trying desperately to protect what they saw as precious cultural resources, and lot of them starved to death even though they had bags of grains, rice, etc., in their offices. It was quite powerful and moving.

  30. Unreadaethel +45

    I enjoy taking myself out to dinner sometimes, just to make sure I remember that I can have nice things, even without a companion (romantic or otherwise). I shall take this merchant’s wife as my inspiration as I laugh alone with pastries.

  31. Goomaly +30

    My picnics never reach this level of supreme contentment. Maybe I need more pannetone? Better headdresses? Fewer men? please advise.

    1. fishesinthetwee +23

      All of them. All of those things. Do you have a small, agreeable animal? Bring that too.

  33. redheadedwolf +4

    LOVELY. So lovely. Thank you for sharing.

    She is drinking her tea out of a saucer, which is the height of fanciness.
    Lol, thank you for drawing that to my attention.

  34. Dav +55

    This is my favorite painting in the world, for exactly these reasons. The chance to eat whatever I want without comment or shaming, without anyone around, wearing a headdress and a cloud of self-satisfaction, near my cat, is my idea of heaven. (The book is dangling from her left hand, because she is left-handed.)

    Notice that she is eating a watermelon, a food that is traditionally shared. Instead of inviting people, she just went ahead, and ate watermelon. By herself. Maybe she’ll have several slices. Maybe she will have some roast chicken, or just a fuckton of fruit.

    1. Unreadaethel +29

      Maybe she will spit the watermelon seeds at passersby. Who knows? Life is what she makes of it.

  35. Chase +43

    Mallory, I thought you were being glib when you described her gown as ‘the color of self-satisfaction’. But then I actually looked at the gown. That color is INCANDESCENTLY FULFILLED.

  36. atiyaa10 +17

    She has the greatest dining companion in the world – herself
    No longer sorry for myself when I had dinner at all these fancy restaurants alone and the waiters looked at me with something bordering on pity and sadness….

    1. drashizu +7

      Seriously, I regard people who regard people who are alone with pity and sadness with pity and sadness. Being by one’s self is GREAT.

  37. Sonora Webster +17

    I just took a break to check out the Toast and eat some strawberries, and was greeted by Emily Gould, Laurie Colwin, and this delightful lady. I think I am currently the Happiest Woman in the World!

  38. seshat2014 +4

    I would print this picture out but my color printer is dead so I’ll just look at it on my computer as I aspire to be this content some day.

  40. mkpatter +22

    Who painted this portrait of me when I wasn’t looking!?

    (No really, I kind of look like this, have a similar hat, and am always happily eating alone. It’s uncanny.)

  42. systemed7 +34

    Also, NO BRA STRAPS digging into her shoulders.
    She is supremely fortunate, and satisfied.

    Oh, and I forgot to mention that I have a new fragrance by Masque Milano called Russian Tea. It has notes of black tea, mint, and raspberry, because evidently it was customary in Russia to sweeten one’s tea with raspberry preserves.

    Anyway, it’s an incredible fragrance and it enables me to imagine the scents surrounding this wonderful woman.

    Here’s a marvelous and mouthwatering description of Russian Tea if you’re interested: http://www.luckyscent.com/product/64004/russian-t…

    2. MarinaCooks +3

      Every summer, my mother macerates fresh raspberries in sugar to stow away in the refrigerator. We put it in tea, especially when we’re sick.

    3. Chris +2

      I was going to comment on the lack of bra also… A large woman with no strap dents in her shoulders indicates supreme disregard for society’s norm. (I realize the damn thing hadn’t been invented yet…hope she has also tossed her corset!)

    1. pretty_monster +12

      i’m sure she looked transcendentally happy just prior to having her reading interrupted so that some dude could paint her picture.

  45. knittingBAMF +4

    All she’s missing (if she were me) is a pile of books. That would be true, beautiful happiness.

  46. beachlass +8

    I love that this seems to spontaneously morph into the Toastie secret handshake equivalent – showing up in cubicles, phone lock screens, screen savers and living rooms; you know you’ve found a kindred spirit.

    Happiness is contagious.

  49. Yarnybarny +14

    “If you spent the rest of your days alone in a cottage on a solitary Alp, it would not begin to make up for the years your foremothers spent having to listen to men as a profession.”

    An excellent point! I have always been grateful to the women that came before me for surviving the terror that was being a woman and thereby giving me a chance to go to the prom without a date or support myself and live on my own. While my grands and great grands might be watching over me and worried about my being lonely I also know they are a lot proud of my independence and, now, this sentence makes me think, maybe a little bit envious of my life. It is nice to think about.

    1. MarinaCooks +4

      The teapot is on top of a samovar, which is an urn. The samovar is filled with hot water, and the teapot is filled with concentrated tea, and is kept warm by the urn. The traditional way to serve Russian tea is to pour a bit of the concentrate in your tea cup and then dilute it to your liking with the hot water from the samovar.

  51. voltairineballis +2

    I work at home without a printer, and just sent this message to my partner at work: ” Hi beautiful mans, could you get away with printing a copy of the painting which is the subject of this toast article [link ]? if that would be weird or you don’t have access to a color printer or something I’ll find some other way of jumping on the toast bandwagon and putting it up on my desk at home, I wouldn’t want you to get in trouble, but if it wouldn’t cause trouble I would be awfully excited if you could bring this home for me. Thank you, I love you. ” I loved the idea of having the picture to look at while working.

  53. MarinaCooks +3

    A friend of mine sent me this link with the following subject line: this is pm how i imagine your life every day

    I can’t say she’s wrong.

  54. Nicole J. LeBoeuf +6

    so much happiness depends
    upon

    a red balcony
    rail

    beside the merchant’s
    wife

    beneath the white-
    bellied cat

  56. mightykaytor +5

    Dear Mallory, thank you for sharing this wonderful picture. You have allowed me and my dogs a taste of the good life.

    1. Elfsinger +1

      Fab pic! How did you get it to display in this comment box please? Thanks

  57. Cupcake Queen +1

    <iThe woman is wearing an elaborate headwrap and a gown the color of self-satisfaction. She has dressed up for her own appreciation. She has the greatest dining companion in the world – herself.

    YES.

  58. Elfsinger +3

    @katiemcgillicuddy Couldn’t resist faffing about and making this picture of Happiest Woman WITH BOOKS for you (and the other 100’s of people who like it.)
    I have NO Idea how to make this picture appear here like all the other clever forum users so until someone can tell me, here is an instagram link 🙂 https://instagram.com/p/2JxZT-S8Vo/