The Addams Family  

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"In the beginning of the story, “Happiness in Crime,” the narrator is strolling through the Jardin des Plantes with his elderly friend, Dr. Torty. They see a couple - tall, austere, dressed in black, the woman extremely beautiful, the man, a bit of a dandy - looking at a black panther. The woman stares at the beast so intently that it cringes and closes its eyes. She unbuttons her glove and pushes her hand through the bars of the cage, then she gives the animal a slap! The panther snaps its jaws at her, but succeeds only in swallowing her glove. The man grabs the woman’s hand, kisses it passionately, and exclaims in a tone of awestruck love, “Fool!” Remind you of anyone..? (“Darling, when you speak French, you drive me wild!!!)" [1]

"The two of them have a crime in their past that allowed them to come together. The doctor knows their secret, but is sworn not to reveal it. He’s happy to keep mum: He loves to observe them, to try and figure out how they manage to be so happy in crime, so untroubled by their evil deed, and he wonders if there is a kernel of discord at the center of their all-consuming passion. (There isn’t!) The world does not exist for them, only each other. "[2]

"The author invokes the sculpture Psyche Revived by Cupid's Kiss by Canova to describe the nature of the their total absorption in their love and their secret embraces." [3]

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The Addams Family is a creation of American cartoonist Charles Addams that appears in print cartoons, television shows, movies and video games. A satirical inversion of the ideal American nuclear family, the Addamses are an eccentric, wealthy family who delight in everything grotesque and macabre and are unaware that people find them bizarre or frightening.

Addams's cartoons in The New Yorker magazine originally gained popularity in the 1930s. He was noted for his morbid sense of humor, and over the years various bizarre people and creatures who lived in a huge decaying Second Empire house became recurring characters.



Unless indicated otherwise, the text in this article is either based on Wikipedia article "The Addams Family" or another language Wikipedia page thereof used under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License; or on research by Jahsonic and friends. See Art and Popular Culture's copyright notice.

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