Is there no one to untie us?

A man and a woman are tied at the waist to the trunk of a dry tree in the middle of a scrubby field. Both struggle to free themselves; the man makes violent efforts by leaning his torso forward and she, with her legs tied at the ankles, moves to the opposite side with her arms raised. Above them flies an enormous owl with a curved beak and eyes with its wings outstretched, resting one of its talons on the woman's face with an anguished gesture.

The artist has used a single aquatint that contrasts with the reserves of varnish with which he has created the whites that illuminate the couple. This contrast will gradually fade with each print run as the aquatint wears away, but the lines drawn with the etching remain intact. The burnisher is also used on the feathers of the owl and on the female figure to achieve half-tones.

The manuscript in the Prado Museum explains this engraving as follows: "A man and a woman tied with ropes and struggling to get free and shouting to be untied in haste? Either I am mistaken or they are two forcibly married".

In this print Goya has created an allegorical image of marriages of convenience, which were very common at the time, depicting the difficulty of breaking the bonds that united the spouses. The owl, a common figure in Goyaesque iconography, alludes to all those forces that hindered the dissolution of marital errors. In Spain at the time, divorce, which had been legalised in France after the French Revolution in 1792, began to be debated. In France, divorce could be granted under seven conditions and was considered a universal right for both men and women.

The theme of arranged and unhappy marriages was also dealt with in Caprice No. 14, What a Sacrifice! and in Folly No. 7, Disorderly Folly.