As a child (and budding feminist), I inhaled historical fiction about queens and other formidable women. This led to my scholarly interest in female power and authority. Aristocratic women had meaningful political influence in Old Regime France through family networks and proximity to power. However, with the French Revolution of 1789, women’s exclusion from political power (and the vote) was made explicit. This led me to examine the tools women had to accumulate political and social capital, including beauty and the control of fashion. We need to take the intersection of beauty, fashion, and politics seriously to understand the operation of power in both history and the modern world. The books I chose privilege my own interest in eighteenth-century France, but have a broader significance. And they are all really fun to read!
I wrote...
The Creation of the French Royal Mistress: From Agnès Sorel to Madame Du Barry
By
Tracy Adams,
Christine Adams
What is my book about?
This study explores the emergence and development of the position of the French royal mistress through detailed portraits of nine of its most significant incumbents. While kings have always had extraconjugal sexual partners, only in France did the royal mistress become a quasi-institutionalized political position.
Beginning in the fifteenth century, key structures converged to create a space at court for the royal mistress. The first was an idea of gender already in place: that while women were legally inferior to men, they were men’s equals in competence. For example, because of their legal subordinacy, queens were considered the safest regents for their husbands; in a similar fashion, the royal mistress was the surest counterpoint to the royal favorite. Second, the Renaissance was a period during which people began to experience space as theatrical. This shift to a theatrical world opened up new ways of imagining political guile, which came to be positively associated with the royal mistress.
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The Books I Picked & Why
Sexing La Mode: Gender, Fashion and Commercial Culture in Old Regime France
By
Jennifer M. Jones
Why this book?
A major divergence in the nature of elite men's and women’s clothing styles took place in the eighteenth century that symbolized a new understanding of both femininity and French national identity. The fancy dress men wore at court transformed into the sober black suit of the male professional, while women’s clothing became increasingly ornate, fussy, and “feminine” in the modern understanding of the term. Jones links fashion and gender systems to social, cultural, and economic practices—including the rise of consumer culture—and demonstrates why the study of fashion and sexuality are far from frivolous.
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Selling Beauty: Cosmetics, Commerce, and French Society, 1750-1830
By
Morag Martin
Why this book?
Women have long used face paint, hair dyes, and perfumes, despite the health risks associated with them. Martin skillfully analyzes the ambivalence women feel towards cosmetics, pushed by marketers who play on their desire to be beautiful, while moral philosophers attack the vanity and corrupting effects of artifice. The Age of Enlightenment introduced the paradox that still exists today: women are supposed to be “naturally” beautiful, but marketers convince us that beauty requires cosmetics to enhance our “natural” beauty. Like fashion, beauty is a commodity with political overtones.
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The Age of Undress: Art, Fashion, and the Classical Ideal in the 1790s
By
Amelia Rauser
Why this book?
The neoclassical style of dress—sheer, high-waisted muslin dresses that displayed a woman’s arms and eschewed traditional undergarments—that appeared in the late eighteenth century shaped European female fashions for nearly thirty years. Historians have often labeled the neoclassical movement associated with the Enlightenment and Age of Revolution as austere and masculine in its effects. However, Rauser effectively makes the case that women were at the center of 1790s neoclassicism in its most intense and embodied form, as creators and patrons—and that fashion, more so than other forms of art, reveals an era’s artistic and political culture.
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Fashion in the French Revolution
By
Aileen Ribeiro
Why this book?
Ribeiro is the author of numerous books on beauty and fashion, but this is the one I always come back to. Here, she explicitly connects social and political trends to changes in dress, beginning in the 1780s to the rise of Napoleon. The analysis is straightforward and compelling, although she also acknowledges the nuance. It’s a terrific introduction to the political importance of fashion during a period when fashion could not have been more politically salient.
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Queen of Fashion: What Marie Antoinette Wore to the Revolution
By
Caroline Weber
Why this book?
This book makes a bold argument: that Queen Marie Antoinette’s clothing choices played a part in determining both her own fate during the French Revolution as well as that of the Old Regime itself. The gripping narrative of the young Austrian princess from the time of her marriage to Louis XVI until her death on the guillotine takes place against the backdrop of her highly political role as a fashion icon. Traditionally, royal mistresses had been trendsetters in France; Weber makes the case that it was highly unusual and dangerous for the queen to show such an interest in dress. Her sartorial excesses left her vulnerable to charges of financial profligacy at a time when the French public was suffering; she became the ultimate symbol of the thoughtlessly frivolous woman, too focused on fashion.
