Analysis: The Many Bodies Of Marie Antoinette

The writings of history have been significantly influenced by the time periods during which they were written. Indeed, during these time periods, political institutions with regard to political power have greatly affected the ways in which history has been interpreted. The rise of the nation-state as a political entity during the late 18th- 19th centuries had greatly altered historiography, for, with history emerging as a modern discipline, history began to mirror the ideals of, and acts as a font of, the polities of the time periods during which it was written. In both historian Thomas Babington Macaulay’s “Minute on Indian Education” and historian Lynn Hunt’s “The Many Bodies of Marie Antoinette,” the correlation between history and power …show more content…
Through this subject, Hunt underlines how the overwhelming and vehement pornographic pamphlets about Antoinette were ways in which gender stereotypes were revealed and pushed during this time period. Indeed, Hunt explores the nature of these pamphlets by using a different method of interpreting history: through analyzing the French Revolution in terms of cultural history— “high and popular culture—and gender history— “power relations”—and how they provide a different analysis of the French Revolution. Through these pamphlets, Hunt illustrates the perspective from which the representation of Antoinette and thus women in general is offered: Frenchmen supported the need for a “separation of women from the public sphere”; in this, the pamphlets serve as a physical reminder of how women and politics shouldn’t mix (Hunt, 213). Likewise, this notion evokes a sense of fear among Frenchmen of what would happen if women and politics do mix: the pamphlets served “as political propaganda” in order to further represent “the ‘problem of the feminine’” in regard to politics (Lecture 10/19). This perspective, moreover, ties to Hunt’s bigger argument: the perspective from which the pamphlets were created elucidates on this “pro-male culture among the revolutionaries, in a sense making the situation of women the same or worse than before the Revolution” (Lecture 10/19). Hence, through Hut’s using gender and social histories as fonts to analyze history, she re-analyzes the ideals of the Revolution in that they are paradoxical: these revolutionaries pushed for liberty, egalitarianism, and liberalism; yet, their sexist and lofty ideals toward gender and sexuality overbear this yearning. Thus,