1

Lauren Ashley Miller

Rocky Mountain Interdisciplinary History Conference (RMIHC)
University of Colorado Boulder

Sexualizing Marie Antoinette:

Revolutionary France and the Threat of Women in the Public Sphere

Il n'est pas ncessaire de vivre. Il est ncessaire de naviguer.

Jean-Baptiste Clry, witness to the execution of Marie Antoinette

The French Revolution was a time of unprecedented massive upheaval in government

and of class based society. Public opinion swayed swiftly against the monarchy once the press

gained freedom in 1789, and attacks on the royal couple were vicious. The press sexualized

Queen Marie Antoinette completely, accused her of extreme sexual deviancy and lascivious

behavior, and laid much of the blame for Frances woes on her feet. Marie Antoinette

represented the ultimate female in the public sphere, and by stripping her down to a purely

sexual, lust-filled monster, all women participating in revolutionary and counterrevolutionary

activities were harmed. A pronounced fear of gender differentiation colored revolutionary

France, with women operating salons, participating in protests, and acting outside their

traditional domestic role. This fear contributed to the significance of the vilification of the queen,

and ultimately the importance of her trial and execution.

The Queen as a Symbol of Public Women

After the execution of King Louis XVI, the brotherhood of the Revolution concerned

themselves with two main questions: how to govern with each other, and most importantly, what
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role liberated women would play in the future. The societal norms of women belonging in the

private sphere were thrown aside as women ran salons, expressed political beliefs, and took

action on those beliefs during the Revolution. Queen Marie Antoinette symbolized the antithesis

of a woman living in the private sphere, and this contributed to her vilification by revolutionary

men in part to bring women back into the domestic life.1 Edmund Burke, a British political

theorist and philosopher, lamented the regicide of the King. Burke complained it stripped the

King to just a man, but bemoaned the execution of the Queen especially because a queen is but

a woman; a woman is but an animal, and animal not of the highest order.2 Burkes attitude

towards women reflects the Western European view well, and it unintentionally shows the role

Marie Antoinette played as a symbolic figure for women in politics and the public sphere. When

people denounced the queen, they were denouncing the excessive publicity of aristocratic

women and their entrance into political debates. In the Age of Reason, an extended discourse

condemned the effeminization of culture by noblewomen, their intellectual presence in salons,

and especially their involvement in political debates.3

Rousseau, a highly vocal critic against women in the public sphere at the time, argued

vehemently that womens influence in the public sphere harmed the men around them by

feminizing them. The issue was not just a concern of womens role in politics and public life, but

of gender differentiation. Underground pamphlets such as Les Fastes de Louis VX (1782)

attacked this issue by railing against the influence of women at court before Marie Antoinette

1
Lynn Hunt, The Family Romance of the French Revolution (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 89.

2
James A. W. Heffernan, ed., Representing the French Revolution: Literature, Historiography, and Art (Hanover,
NH: Dartmouth, 1992), 13.

3
Pierre Saint-Amand; Jennifer Curtiss Gage, Terrorizing Marie Antoinette in Critical Inquiry, Vol. 20, No. 3.
(Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, Spring, 1994), pp. 379-400.
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especially Madame du Barry, Louis XVs courtesan mistress, and the marquise du Pompadour.4

Clearly, the concern of women influencing and feminizing men in power and politics was

nothing new, and remained a major theme during Marie Antoinettes fall. Ren Girard argues in

a study of ritual violence that a sacrificial crisis is a certain feminization of men, accompanied

by a masculinization of the women, and the community chooses a scapegoat Marie Antoinette

- to reaffirm gender boundaries in the community. The accusations against her had to be extreme

enough to satisfactorily blame her completely for dedifferentiation in France, Girard argues, felt

as the collective threat. 5This fear of gender lines blurring during the revolution shows in many

artistic forms, such as the poem published in the satirical royalist newspaper Journal general de

la cour et de la ville on May 5, 1790:

Nous sommes transports aux temps miraculuex.

Tandis que dAiguil en femme se dguise,

Antoinette deviant un home courageux,

Et digne dhonorer le noble sang de Guise.6/7

Not only does this poem underscore the general fear of sexual role reversal during the

Revolution, it proves that this fear was shared all across France, by Royalists as well as

Revolutionaries.

On the eve of the Revolution, a popular newspaper reprinted the views in the preface to

Restif de la Bretonnes novel The Unfaithful Wife, which argued vehemently against the

4
Lynn Hunt, The Family Romance of the French Revolution (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 89-
91.
5 Goodman, Dena. Marie-Antoinette: Writings on the Body of a Queen (New York: Routledge, 2003)
6 William James Murray, The Right-Wing Press in the French Revolution, 1789-92 (Woodbridge, Suffolk.: Royal
Historical Society, 1986), 95.
7
Translation: We are taken back to the time of miracles/Whilst dAiguldisguises himself as a woman/Antoinette
becomes a worthy man/And honourable upholder of the noble name of Guise
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education of women and emphasizing that the two sexes were unequal in nature. The author

argued that a woman-Voltaire would only produce deformed children; I consider it a fact that a

woman-Rousseau will never be able to breastfeed.8 The idea that the ignorance of women was

advantageous, preserved the social order, and kept women in the home proliferated, as did the

notion of an educated woman being monstrous. While some historians, such as Olivier Bernier,

argue that Marie Antoinette had an undisguised involvement in the Revolution and immense

influence over adviser appointment and her husbands decisions,9 many believe that the

Revolution was inevitable, and Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette bear little to no responsibility

for the unraveling of affairs. 10 While Marie Antoinette had faults as a monarch, including

improper behavior and spending arguably due to her ignorance and youth she was a victim of

circumstances and the dominos had started falling economically, politically, and socially before

her reign. Without doubt, however, the Queen was in the spotlight of the public political sphere,

and the masses blamed many of their ills on her perceived debauchery and lasciviousness. On

October 5, 1789, market women marched to Versailles making demands for bread and the

removal of the King and National Assembly to Paris. These women were seen by many to be

near beasts, despite the shared revolutionary cause, due to their active, collective political

participation en masse so openly.11 To Rousseau and many other revolutionary thinkers, an

educated woman thought about politics, influenced her husband and the men around her, and had

a presence in the public sphere. All of these were dangerous, and as a queen, Marie Antoinette

8
Lynn Hunt, The Family Romance of the French Revolution (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 89-
91.

9
Olivier Bernier, Secrets of Marie Antoinette (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1985), 309.

10
James B. Collins, The Ancient Regime and the French Revolution (Fort Worth, TX: Wadsworth Publishing,
2002), 27

11
ibid 104.
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stood as the most public hence most monstrous woman in France. By condemning her, the

revolutionaries were condemning the public behaviors of all women and acts of emancipation

during the revolution behaviors the queen displayed to the utmost degree. Womens presence

in the public sphere, entrance into political thought, and intellectual promiscuity were

epitomized in Marie Antoinette, and she was targeted ruthlessly by the press.12

Images of King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette turned comical, insulting, and

pornographic as the tide of the French Revolution swelled. The dissatisfaction with the King and

the perception of the Queen as lascivious showed frequently in engravings, showing the growing

animosity towards the royal couple. Public opinions denigration of the royal family is clear in

the image of the royal family as pigs13 circa 1791, a theme that repeated with regularity

throughout the revolution. The denigration of the king and queen turned pornographic as well,

with the engraving of Louis XIV impotent in bed with Marie Antoinette printed in Vie privee,

libertine, et scandaleuse de Marie Antoinette dAutriche in 179314. Both engravings show a

highly negative image of the royal couple as incompetent and vile, using vastly different

methods. The role of the family as a microcosm of society took the forefront in French literature

and art, according to historian Lynn Hunt, and Marie Antoinette was a bad mother to France in

the narrative.15

French revolutionaries vilified Marie Antoinette in an intense campaign against her,

accusing her of nearly every conceivable vice. The obsession and vilification of Marie Antoinette

12
Pierre Saint-Amand, Jennifer Curtiss Gage, Terrorizing Marie Antoinette, Critical Inquiry, Vol. 20, No. 3
(Spring, 1994), pp. 381.

13
Lynn Hunt, The Family Romance of the French Revolution (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992). pp 49-
50
14
ibid
15
ibid
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sprung from fear of a woman in power, and the womans influence on her husband the king is

judged as nefarious and dangerous.16 By denouncing the queen, people were denouncing the

public behaviors of aristocratic women and acts of emancipation during the revolution

behaviors the queen displayed to the utmost degree. Noblewomens presence in salons, entrance

into political thought, and intellectual promiscuity were symbolized in Marie Antoinette, and

she was targeted ruthlessly.17 If King Louis XVIs tyrannical father figure was the prevalent

symbol of his reign, it was matched in the image of the Queen as the ultimate reveler in

debauchery.

The royal couples respective symbolic images in the French revolutionary collective

mind are displayed in both the engraving of them as pigs and in pornographic imagery. The

picture of the king impotent in bed with Marie Antoinette attacks them both, not solely the kings

incompetence in securing a succession as a good father/patriarch would. Below the print there is

text that blames the king for his lack of vigor but also accuses Marie Antoinette of being too

lustful.18 By displaying this pornographic scene, it demeans royalty into something to be gawked

at in a sexual way in addition to being mocked for their perceived sexual faults. The engraving of

the royal family as pigs is one of over fifteen similar extant images, all relating them to the vilest

of animals and below their human subjects. Pigs are associated with greed, lust, and filth. In this

particular image, the pigs (the royal family) are walking away from the flock of sheep (the

French citizens). This insinuates that the king and queen are going in the opposite direction of

their revolutionary flock - the people in the country they rule over. That the association between

16
Pierre Saint-Amand, Jennifer Curtiss Gage, Terrorizing Marie Antoinette, Critical Inquiry, Vol. 20, No. 3 (Spring,
1994), pp. 381.
17
Ibid pp. 384-385
18
Lynn Hunt, The Family Romance of the French Revolution (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992)
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them and swine was so prevalent during this period further illustrates how sharply both the king

and queen had fallen from grace in the public eye.

The patriarchal imagery and novels in French pre-revolutionary society and during it lend

special significance to the royal familys failure to live up to the ideals of this family narrative.

As the king fails to become the good father, another narrative is created, and the imagery of

the king and the queen follows suit to fit it. King Louis XVI and Queen Marie Antoinette are

debased in different ways but both types of images show a vilification for them and a distancing

from their untouchability as royal, patriarchal figures in power.

Sexualization of the Queen

The press played a crucial role in spreading political thought throughout all classes in

France during the revolution, and a central theme in serious papers through satirical caricature

and imagery was the sexually deviant nature of Marie Antoinette. Censorship of the press

relaxed after the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen passed on August 26, 1789,

and as a consequence, the amount of newspapers and radical printings grew exponentially. Most

were anonymously printed, though Hebrts Pre Duschesne and Marats Ami du people were

the clear masters of the satirical arts of the Leftist press, and the former was particularly harsh

towards Marie Antoinette.19 180 periodicals emerged in 1789 alone, and circulation of some

papers in France exceeded 80,000. However, the audience was much larger than these numbers

convey, for cafs and reading societies subscribed to periodicals and they were read aloud

19
William James Murray, The Right-Wing Press in the French Revolution, 1789-92 (Woodbridge, Suffolk.: Royal
Historical Society, 1986), 20-25.
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frequently in public settings.20 This, along with the satirical political imagery in periodicals,

spread the revolutionary message and hatred towards Marie Antoinette to the masses and the

uneducated without the ability to read.

The pamphlets attacking the queen used a variety of methods cartoons, songs, alleged

biographies, confessions, and plays but her sexuality was the dominant theme in the assaults

against her in all of them, with explicit political implications. The press and the people of France

viewed sexual degeneration and political corruption as closely associated, and explicit

pornographic attacks on the queen were extremely beneficial to spreading the revolutionary

ideology of a corrupt monarchy and nobility. A series of revolutionary pamphlets listed political

enemies that deserved punishment, and the appendices listed those claimed to have had sexual

relationships with the queen. In these pamphlets, she is consistently described as mauvaise fille,

mauvaise pouse, mauvaise mere, mauvaise reine, monstre en tout [bad daughter, bad wife, bad

mother, bad queen, monster in everything].According to Royalist commentator Boyer-Brun,

who was particularly incensed by the blasphemy of this series of pamphlets, by 1792 the

people believed anything written about the queen even without any proof.21 Some writings had

little political content and were solely pornographic, such as Le Godmich royal (The Royal

Dildo) in 1789. It tells the story of Juno, representing the queen, complaining to Hebe assumed

to be either the duchesse de Ploignac or the princesse de Lamballe about her inability to be

satisfied sexually, and removes a dildo from her bag, thanking the monastery for the invention.

20
James B. Collins, The Ancient Regime and the French Revolution (Fort Worth, TX: Wadsworth Publishing,
2002), 140-143

21
Lynn Hunt, The Family Romance of the French Revolution (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 110-
111.
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Hebe then promises Juno penises of almost unimaginably delicious size.22 This story depicts

Marie Antoinette as completely insatiable, not only by her husband, but by an average sized

replacement object, thereby emphasizing her lasciviousness.

Obscene engravings were the most visible and prolific form of the sexualization of Marie

Antoinette, and the most accessible and understandable to the non-reading public. After 1789,

these pamphlets abounded, and the queen was by far the most attacked political figure. The

public opinion against her was bolstered dramatically by the innumerable vicious pamphlets

because they were no longer hearing rumors about the debauchery of the court, but seeing this

alleged debauchery in action through engravings. The queen was depicted in sexual acts with

almost every man imaginable: her impotent husband, the elderly King Louis XV, a German

officer she allegedly had an affair with, the Comte dArtois, Lafayette, Barnave, Cardinal de

Rohan of the Diamond Necklace Affair, foreign dignitaries, and others. She was also depicted

with various women, in threesomes, and incestuous liaisons. The extremity of these explicit

drawings and writings had the crucial effect of making the public viewer into a voyeur and

moral judge simultaneously, and political engravings depicting a sexualized Queen in acts of

conspiracy against France achieved the connection between sexual deviancy and aristocratic

conspiracy.23

The Queen on Trial

The merge of sexual misconduct and politics was the crux of Marie Antoinettes trial,

held in October 1793. Her trial itself was somewhat unprecedented, as in England the King was

22
Lynn Hunt, The Family Romance of the French Revolution (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993, 105.

23
Ibid 104-109
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tried but not his wife, and Marie Antoinettes trial was ten months after King Louis XVIs,

distancing their relation. In addition, the Convention which tried her husband did not hold the

queens trial she was judged by the Revolutionary Tribunal Council like all other Parisian

suspects, by nine male judges and male jury members. The core accusation against her sprung

from her gender and her sexual reputation, alleging that she used her sexual body to corrupt the

government through the king, criminal politicians, ministers, and soldiers. This emphasizes not

only the effectiveness of the propaganda against her but the fear of the influence women could

have in the public sphere.

Marie Antoinette was the emblem of a counterrevolutionary woman acting in the

political, public world, and her trial reflects how unacceptable this was. The charges against her

were squandering public money on personal pleasures and secret contributions to the Austrian

emperor (her brother) before the Revolution, and after the Revolution creating

counterrevolutionary conspiracies at court through the agency of the men she influenced using

sex. Public prosecutor Antoine-Quentin Fouquier-Tinville accused her with extraordinarily harsh

language, even for the times, calling her the scourge and bloodsucker of the French. He

compared her to Agrippina, an incestuous Roman Empress who had many lovers and took many

lives. Finally, the tribunal charged the queen with incest with her six year old son, which was

extremely shocking and horrific to the people. The bill of indictment stated that forgetting her

quality of mother and the demarcation prescribed by the laws of nature, she has not stopped short

of indulging herself in incestuous relations with her young son, Louis-Charles Capet.24 The

language of this indictment, particularly the reference to motherhood and laws of nature, call to

mind the common viewpoint in post-Revolutionary France that the woman belonged in the

24
Lynn Hunt, The Family Romance of the French Revolution (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993. pp
90-94
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private sphere, in the domestic role of a good mother. This charge of incest is the ultimate

antithesis to the ideal of what a woman should be and how she should behave, along with

appealing to the horrific nature of such an act. All of the charges against Marie Antoinette

portray her as a monstrous, sexualized creature and a threat to gender roles in society.

The point of trying and executing Marie Antoinette after the Revolution succeeded

confounds logic, but when viewed in light of her role as the ultimate symbol of a woman in the

public sphere it was essential to the male agenda of returning women to the private sphere.

Queens in France had no power to rule if the monarchy was even in place, Marie Antoinettes

son would take the throne. The length of time between her trial and that of her husbands

certainly separates the two issues; her trial and execution was not for the sake of the new

Republic, but to put counterrevolutionary women and women who had been active in salons and

revolutionary political thinking and action back into a life of societally acceptable domesticity.

The emblematic figure of Marie Antoinette was the antithesis of the latter ideal, and her death

and with it the death of the ancin regime represented the end of gender differentiation and

eased the common fear men held of the feminization of men and the masculinization of women.

Conclusion

Marie Antoinette was in many ways a victim of circumstance; while she did have flaws,

she by no means was guilty of all she was accused of, let alone did she bear responsibility for the

fall of the Monarchy. The dominos of the French Revolution had begun to fall before her reign

began, and some historians argue that it was inevitable. The queen became a symbol for all

women in the public sphere, and as the fear of gender lines and roles blurring increased, her

vilification served both voice those fears and attempt to reassert the proper place for women.
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She was sexualized and portrayed as shockingly promiscuous and debauched, which in the

French revolutionary mind, went hand in hand with political corruption. Her sexual body was

seen as the instrument through which she controlled and influenced men and politics, and this is

what was focused on. Her trial and execution underscored all of these points, and ultimately

served as a symbolic execution of women acting in the public sphere in post-Revolutionary

France.