Excerpt from Renoir's Dancer by Catherine Hewitt, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Aside from the emotional distress, Mathieu-Alexandre's death had sobering practical implications for Madeleine, her mother and her brother Clément, who at fifteen was still a minor. That Valadon owned several parcels of land gave a deceptive impression of affluence. He was proprietor of some ten plots besides the family's house and garden, which included heathland, grazing and even a small chestnut wood. Yet with some fields located several miles away from the family home, Valadon's property betrayed a patchwork estate of land acquired and reapportioned through inheritance. Such plots were often financially inconsequential; the Valadons were not a wealthy family.

Madeleine had already been put out to work as a linen maid by the time her father died. It was a low-paid, physically gruelling profession, liable to attract sniggers and disdainful looks from the daughters of better-off families. Every channel of income available to the Valadon family was already being exploited, and Madeleine was still unmarried. The loss of the household's head and main breadwinner would have terrifying repercussions.

Even for Limousin girls who had not lost a father, finding a husband was a primary goal from adolescence. Whereas a single man could work and make a living, a woman, with her sphere accepted as the domestic environment and wages meagre even when they were earned, was dependent on male income. Women enjoyed little status outside marriage. The daughters of artisans and peasants alike felt the same sense of urgency when it came to the question of matrimony. Much was at stake, and for many more people than the young couple directly concerned. The family remained the basic social unit in the 19th century, and the marriages of its younger members was its principal means of shaping its identity. The fortunes and future of the entire family rested on the kind of marriage made by its teenagers. This was because marriage determined the distribution of that scarce resource: land. In selecting (or, as was increasingly common in the 19th century, approving) a partner for their offspring, parents needed to feel confident that the match ensured that their own needs in old age would be met. Then there was the question of status; opportunities for social advancement were limited, so it was vital that a youngster did not marry below his or her station. A mésalliance could shatter reputations and squander resources where they could never be reciprocated. The burden of duty and expectation weighed heavily on young shoulders. Personal pride naturally came into the equation, too. And living in small, isolated communities, the range of marital options was painfully restricted.

For all these reasons, life for the typical Limousin girl became a veritable man hunt once she reached marriageable age. With such limited pickings, competition between village girls could be fierce. And no means were considered too outlandish when it came to ensnaring a husband. Mystical legends, magic and ancient traditions were still a very real part of everyday life in the Limousin. Many villages and towns had their own ritual practices which young girls were advised to adopt if they wanted to be sure of finding a husband. In the village of La Villeneuve near Eymoutiers, gaggles of single girls were to be found dancing wildly in the mud at the January fair, and the more soiled their skirts became, the better; they would undoubtedly secure a husband within twelve months. Meanwhile, seamstresses in the town of Ambazac, a short distance from where Madeleine lived, swore by a different technique. Whenever they were commissioned to make a wedding dress, they would stitch a lock of their own hair into the hem of the garment to guarantee that they too would become a wife before the year was out. Every community defended the unparalleled efficiency of its own method. But the girls of Bessines had the advantage of a very special tool for performing their ritual, an object few other villages could rival. It took the form of a vast monolithic stone basin, which locals had baptised Pierre Belle.

Renoir's DancerRenoir's Dancer by Catherine Hewitt. Copyright © 2018 by the author and reprinted by permission of St Martin's Press.