ABSTRACT of CRIMES and CALAMITIES: MARIE ANTOINETTE in AMERICAN POLITICAL DISCOURSE by Heather J. Sommer Early American Attitude
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ABSTRACT OF CRIMES AND CALAMITIES: MARIE ANTOINETTE IN AMERICAN POLITICAL DISCOURSE by Heather J. Sommer Early American attitudes toward Marie Antoinette as found in print culture and correspondence illustrates how factions came to understand her as exemplifying the threat politicized women appeared to pose to their republican experiment. Despite differing opinions about the course of the French Revolution and the queen’s role within it, Federalists and Republicans believed she exacerbated France’s difficulties and disapproved of her conduct. In a time when American women were increasingly engaged in the public sphere, both parties used Marie Antoinette as a counterexample to define American women’s proper role within the new republic. Partisans suggested the queen’s absolutist agenda undercut French reform and/or hindered the people’s liberty and that American women should avoid political activity in order to be spared a similar disastrous fate. This instruction helped both parties devise an ideal republican society that promoted exclusive male political participation and female domesticity while protecting against feminine and monarchical depravities. OF CRIMES AND CALAMITIES: MARIE ANTOINETTE IN AMERICAN POLITICAL DISCOURSE A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of Miami University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts Department of History by Heather J. Sommer Miami University Oxford, Ohio 2018 Advisor_______________________________ Dr. Lindsay Schakenbach Regele Reader________________________________ Dr. P. Renée Baernstein Reader________________________________ Dr. William Brown © Heather J. Sommer 2018 Table of Contents Dedication ………………………………………………………………………………………. iv Acknowledgements …………………………………………………………………………….... v Introduction ……………………………………………………………………………………… 1 Chapter One ……………………………………………………………………………………. 17 Chapter Two ……………………………………………………………………………………. 35 Chapter Three …………………………………………………………………………………... 56 Epilogue ………………………………………………………………………………………... 70 Appendix ……………………………………………………………………………………….. 73 Bibliography …………………………………………………………………………………… 78 iii To Mom and Dad iv Acknowledgements This work would not exist without the help of numerous individuals who have contributed either knowingly or unwittingly. I would first like to thank my wonderful advisor, Lindsay Schakenbach Regele, for her direction, feedback and encouragement, as well as the other members of my committee, P. Renée Baernstein and William Brown. Additional faculty members at Miami University, particularly Erik Jensen and Amanda McVety, have provided invaluable assistance in the development of this project. I am also grateful to my fellow graduate students for allowing me to bounce ideas off of them and for keeping me sane, with a special thanks to my dear friend and office mate, Erin Johnson, for her insight and company. In regards to accessing source material, I am indebted to the anonymous people who spent hours upon hours scanning or transcribing eighteenth-century newspaper articles, letters, books, etc. and making them available through digital archives such as Early American Imprints, Early American Newspapers, Founders Online, the Library of Congress Online, and Archives.org. I also owe thanks to Miami University’s library staff for securing access to many of these primary materials and other works, some of which were not easy to retrieve. As for the composition of this work, I am thankful for Kate Francis at the Howe Writing Center, who helped me keep my thoughts and words straight throughout the writing process. The foundation for this thesis was built during my time as an undergraduate at Ohio Northern University. The amazing faculty in the department formerly known as History, Politics, and Justice cemented my passion for history, and I am eternally grateful for their continual support. A huge thanks to Robert Waters, my undergraduate advisor, for suggesting this research topic as well for his continued guidance and tolerance even though I am no longer his responsibility. I also wish to thank fellow ONU alum Jared Hardesty at Western Washington University for helping me frame this project early on. Finally, I cannot even begin to express my love and appreciation for my family and friends who have endured many unsolicited ramblings about the American and French Revolutions. I am especially beholden to my aunt, Jeanne Sommer, for helping me prepare for my defense. Likewise, my parents, Rich and Annette Sommer, have been actively involved throughout this whole endeavor, providing unending support despite me showering them with my blood, sweat, and tears. Mostly tears. v Introduction July 14, 2018 will mark the twenty-fourth annual Bastille Day celebration in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Plans include a cabaret tribute to the French Revolution, complete with the guillotining of watermelons and intermittent commentary on current political issues, such as minority rights, that connects past and present through the themes of oppression and revolution. Each year the act culminates with a less-than historically accurate reenactment of the Storming of the Bastille, in which French revolutionaries scale the grim walls of “the Bastille” (Eastern State Penitentiary) and capture “Marie Antoinette.” As the show climaxes, the queen, representing the ills of tyrannical regimes from the eighteenth century to today, mockingly cries out to the crowd, “Let them eat Tastykake!” as thousands of Butterscotch Krimpets are flung from the prison’s towers onto attendees below.1 This modern lampoon of Marie Antoinette is a dramatic example of how the queen’s persona continues to be interpreted by Americans in a political context. Long before an impersonator chucked sponge cakes from a prison tower in a satirical display of despotic power, Philadelphians included a wax figure of the queen in a 1794 execution exhibition, one such instance in which Americans propagated negative (and occasionally positive) depictions of the unfortunate monarch to convey ideas about the political climate of the Early Republic.2 Although American political factions debated the true maliciousness of her actions and the justness of her fate, discussions of Marie Antoinette’s political activity reveal an uneasiness both Federalists and Republicans felt toward the French queen. In a time when women in the United States were becoming increasingly active in public life, Marie Antoinette disturbed politically engaged American men across party lines because she seemed to single-handedly alter the destiny of an entire nation. While these men used the queen to express opposing opinions of the French Revolution, they agreed that she exemplified the threat politicized women posed to their republican experiment. Therefore, partisan reactions to Marie Antoinette’s role in French 1 Eastern State Penitentiary, “Bastille Day,” Events, (Web: Eastern State Penitentiary Historic Site, Inc., 2018). 2 William Cobbett, The political censor; or Review of the most interesting political occurrences, relative to the United States of America, (Philadelphia: William Cobbett, 1796), 9-10. 1 affairs reveal distinct and competing political visions that nonetheless converged on the subject of her political tampering to promote the exclusion of women in the American public sphere.3 Curiously, in a republic that had thrown off the shackles of monarchical power, Queen Marie Antoinette and King Louis XVI were American heroes when the French Revolution began in 1789. The kingdom of France became the first U.S. ally in 1778, and Americans knew that without the financial and military support of the absolutist French monarchy, they likely would have lost their War for Independence. Treaties and gratitude connected the American political elite to the French royal government. Although Americans inherited an aversion to Catholic absolutism from the British, the French monarchy under Louis XVI came to represent the prospect of reform due to his defense of freedom of religion, assembly, commerce, and, in helping the colonists defeat Great Britain, republicanism. Americans initially did not concern themselves with the contradiction that a people who had just left one monarchy turned to revere another, for independence had been secured. When France wished to gain liberty from their king, however, this American paradox became more palpable and more contentious.4 This affection for the French monarchs stemmed from an even deeper contradiction within the early American political psyche. Americans’ feelings toward monarchy on the whole were complex, and they found themselves in a political identity crisis following the American Revolution as they redefined themselves after over 150 years of being royal British subjects. Despite the popular myth that Americans completely disavowed monarchy during and after their revolution, many still retained respect for the persons and institution of monarchy, be it conscious or not. They did not reject all aspects of the institution, such as the stable executive 3 For the purpose of this work, the early American public sphere is broadly defined as the intellectual and social space within civil society (meaning the nongovernmental entities and associations existing beyond both the family unit and the state) in which political opinions are developed, discussed, debated, and transmitted to representative government for informed lawmaking. For more on these terminologies and other usages, see Jürgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An