For decades, scholars have attempted to capture the circumstances that led up to the French Revolution. In The Coming of the French Revolution, for instance, Georges Lefebvre explains the causes of the French Revolution with a socioeconomic interpretation. In particular, Lefebvre argues that the rising dominance of the bourgeoisie produced the political turmoil of the revolution.[1] In other works, scholars, such as Francois Furet, Robert Darnton, and Keith Michael Baker, underscore the importance of political ideologies and culture for understanding the causes of the revolution.[2] Still others historians, such as Timothy Tackett, contend that the ineptitude of the royal family also helped to bring about the war. Tackett, for example, insists that the salacious and careless actions of the royal family before and during the war undermined the public’s perception of the family as a symbol of sacred authority.[3]
Similar to Tackett’s analysis, Caroline Weber also draws attention to the significance of the royal family in Queen of Fashion: What Marie Antoinette Wore to the Revolution.[4] The central aim of Weber’s study is to show how Marie Antoinette used the appeal of court fashion to exert political power. Through a comparison of Marie Antoinette to her famous ancestor, Louis XIV, Weber argues that the queen “identified fashion as a key weapon in her struggle for personal prestige, authority, and sometimes mere survival.”[5] In all, Weber concludes that Marie Antoinette fought her political adversaries with style.
According to Weber’s biographical narrative, political insecurity plagued Marie Antoinette’s arrival in France. To start, the young and painfully shy Dauphin refused to consummate his marriage, which prevented the young Dauphine from immediately fulfilling the crucial duty of providing an heir to the throne. Additionally, a number of the future queen’s subjects despised her from the outset, because her marriage symbolized a political alliance with the reviled Austria. During Marie Antoinette’s first few months in France, her troubles appeared to grow worse after she initially refused to wear the harsh and painful whalebone corps (a severely uncomfortable corset worn by the highest members of the elite). But, as Weber explains, Marie Antoinette’s eventual acceptance of the corset marked a significant turning point in the young princess’s life, as she had finally realized that in politics “appearances were indeed everything.”[6]
Upon this epiphany, Weber contends, Marie Antoinette began to actively undermine the etiquette constraints of Versailles to create a source of political power for herself. Thus, in Weber’s analysis, Marie Antoinette used the politics of fashion to gain influence.[7] For instance, Weber explains that with some of her more daring outfits, like her riding ensembles, Marie Antoinette challenged French cultural norms by wearing breeches instead of skirts.[8] Weber also points to Marie Antoinette’s use of the ornate style of the pouf. The pouf was a lavish hairstyle that allowed the wearer to demonstrate feelings (pouf au sentiment) or to celebrate an event (pouf a la circonstance). In Weber’s words, the style was like a “personalized mobile billboard,” which the Queen employed with the most extravagant of styles in an attempt to underpin her social status and importance.[9] Weber concludes that Marie Antoinette adopted this ostentatious lifestyle for the purposes of constructing an illusion of authority. But, as Weber notes, the French did not expect this type of behavior from their Queen. While the Queen’s predecessors had conducted quiet lives devoted to childbearing and prayer, Marie Antoinette’s liveliness, which her excessive style represented, appeared to many to be too similar to the antics of a King’s mistress.[10] Thus, the allure of fashion proved to be a double-edged sword for Marie Antoinette; while her use of fashion may have allowed her to create a site of political power, it also helped to provoke resentment and suspicion amongst her subjects.
Marie Antoinette’s attempt to live a simple life in the countryside during the later part of her reign also spurred resentment among the French populace. As Weber details, Marie Antoinette not only disliked the strict etiquette codes of Versailles, she also cherished her family’s privacy. To provide his Queen with a refuge away from the inquisitive eye of the public, Louis XVI bestowed the country estate of Petit Trianon to her. The vast estate allowed the Queen to create an imagined life of simplicity and nature, which she modeled on the writings of Rousseau.[11] Weber also notes that while staying at Trianon, the Queen often wore a gaulle, a lightweight, informal dress. The gualle, however, abandoned the etiquette standards of the French Court, as the relaxed style did not provide a clear indication of the wearer’s social status. As Weber further explicates, if the Queen’s dress could be confused with a commoner’s attire, then it posed a threat to traditional social boundaries. The Queen’s frequent visits to Trianon also undermined another French tradition: the constant presence of the monarch and his family at Court to serve as a sublime object for public worship. Eventually, the Queen’s frequent, casual stays at Trianon gave rise to the claim that she had an Austrian disregard for French social customs.[12]
The growing discontent with the Queen’s antics intensified in 1786 as the Diamond Necklace Affair unfolded. (In this incident, the public accused the Queen of attempting to defraud the crown jewelers of a very expensive diamond necklace.)[13] In the end, the affair bolstered the public’s claims that the Queen was an insolent foreigner whose insatiable desire drove her to seek, by any means possible, a lavish diamond necklace that was originally intended for the infamous mistress of Louis XV. Throughout the remaining parts of the text, Weber continues to narrate the Queen’s life by paying close attention to the Queen’s fashion choices. In particular, Weber discusses Marie Antoinette’s increasing influence over her husband, the royal family’s failed attempt to escape in 1791, the gruesome murder of the Queen’s close friend, Princesse de Lamballe, the trial and execution of the King, and the agonizing separation of the Queen from her beloved son, Louis Charles. Even when staring death in the face, the fallen Queen still looked to fashion as a means of expression. As Weber describes, Marie Antoinette attended her execution in a plain white chemise, which was enhanced by the Queen’s severely white hair and significantly pale skin tone. Thus, Marie Antoinette faced her death doused in white to symbolically protest her innocence and purity. [14]
To establish how Marie Antoinette used fashion as a central means of expression, Weber employs a variety of sources. To start, she relies on a wealth of secondary source. For instance, she gives her analysis cultural depth by drawing on the studies of Lynn Hunt, Timothy Tackett, Robert Darnton, and Sarah Maza. Weber also incorporates primary sources such as pamphlets, satirical cartoons, fashion journals, and the accounts of Marie Antionette’s wardrobe manager.[15] In particular, Weber’s reliance on the circulation of pamphlets and satirical cartoons wonderfully reinforces Robert Danton’s contention that the flourishing information society of late-eighteenth-century France helped to bring about the revolution.[16] Altogether, Weber’s source material supports her assertion that fashion played an intricate role in Marie Antoinette’s life.
Weber’s analysis, however, does contain a number of shortcomings. The most glaring of which is her claim that Marie Antoinette deliberately used fashion as a way to exert political power. In particular, Weber compares the Queen to Louis XIV to imply that Marie Antoinette was an astute ruler who employed fashion in an effort to construct a site of power within a politically insecure system. But, Weber’s analysis fails to establish Marie Antoinette’s intentions and motives. Furthermore, in several parts of Weber’s text, Marie Antoinette appears more like a person desperately trying to rebel against a system she detests. Hence, it is plausible that Marie Antoinette’s fashion choices were more about gaining personal autonomy than asserting political influence. As Weber notes, Marie Antoinette deplored the tedious protocols and etiquette-ridden life of Versailles. One could argue, then, that rather than using fashion as a way to exert political power within the established system, Marie Antoinette was actually employing it as a means to regain control over her body and denounce a system she despised. Perhaps, in this light, Marie Antoinette actually could be described as one of the first revolutionaries.
[1] Georges Lefebvre, The Coming of the French Revolution, trans. R.R. Palmer (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005).
[2] Francois Furet, Interpreting the French Revolution, trans. Elborg Forster (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981); Robert Darnton, “An early Information Society: News and the Media in Eighteenth-Century Paris,” American Historical Review 105 (2000): 1-35; Keith Michael Baker, Inventing the French Revolution: Essays on French Political Culture in the Eighteenth century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990).
[3] Timothy Tackett, When the King Took Flight (Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2003).
[4] Caroline Weber, Queen of Fashion: What Marie Antoinette Wore to the Revolution (New York: Picador, 2006).
[5] Ibid., 3.
[6] Ibid., 74.
[7] Ibid.
[8] Ibid., 81.
[9] Ibid., 104.
[10] Ibid., 98-99.
[11] Ibid., 144-146.
[12] Ibid., 138
[13] Ibid., 164-171.
[14] Ibid., 286-288.
[15] Ibid., 7.
[16] Robert Darnton, “An early Information Society: News and the Media in Eighteenth-Century Paris,” American Historical Review 105 (2000): 1-35.