It Keeps Coming Back to Marie Antoinette

Among the political propaganda published during the French Revolution against Queen Marie-Antoinette (MA, for convenience) was a prominent theme of her sexual profligacy, and in particular the charge that she engaged in lesbian sex (as well as other sexual charges). In this context, her lesbian relations were depicted, not an accompaniment or “appetizer” to heterosexual acts (as often presented in pornography of the time), but as a preference.

This association of MA with sapphic relations informed her public image—though not always overtly sexually—in succeeding centuries. But as much as lesbianism was used as a weapon against MA, MA’s alleged lesbianism tells us much about attitudes toward lesbians in her era. The intersection of these two themes can make a study of both subjects a bit fraught from a historian’s point of view. Political tracts are deliberately exaggerated and use parody, making it impossible to separate fact from fiction. Was MA a lesbian, with the satirists fastening on this as a weapon against her, thus creating an atmosphere of anti-lesbian sentiment deriving from animus against the queen? Or was there a general social anxiety about lesbianism, leading satirists to choose it as a weapon against the queen? Was there an actual lesbian subculture in France that provided the framework for the specifics of the charges? Or was the alleged network of lesbians among the queen’s circle entirely an invention of her enemies?

Historians of sexuality have conflicting ideas and chronologies of models of sexual difference, but generally agree that the 18th century was an era when older metaphysical models were shifting to medical and “scientific” models, in line with the Enlightenment in general. Many of the underlying ideas remained the same, only the superficial explanation changed—such as “women’s sinful nature” shifting to “woman’s inherent weakness and hysteria.” With a shift to same-sex desire and activity no longer being ascribed to sexual natures existing on a continuum between male and female, new identities must be posited (Trumbach’s “four genders”) to account for desire that broke heterosexual models.

In France, public discourse around gender and sexual non-conformity was increasing across the 18th century and became intertwined with ideas about the state, rather than merely being individual foibles. MA complicated ideas about gender and sexuality, at once being seen as hyper-feminine and dangerously masculine. She “passes as a woman but acts like a man.” The authors of this article assert that MA cannot be pinned down to one specific reading precisely because the frameworks for understanding sex and gender were in flux. Official structures and opinions were intolerant of anything “unnatural” by older models, but Enlightenment ideas were challenging the definition and boundaries of “natural.” Political pornography attacking MA as lesbian did not merely reflect understandings, but shaped them.

One thread of the hatred for MA was the image of her as wielding inappropriate political power. This bled over into the image of her ceding that power to sexual partners (in much the same way that kings’ mistresses became targets if thought to have too much influence). King Louis’ well-known sexual failings generated the image of a frustrated and thus sexually voracious MA. While accusations against MA included several men of the court, sex with women was framed as superior and inexhaustible.

Another thread was a shift in the social and economic place of pornography. Previously intersecting several other genres (medical, philosophical), after the Revolution pornography came to be seen and defined as a distinct genre. This segregation of the sexual from the philosophical and political turned pornography from public discourse into private vice. It became apolitical and focused on personal sexual arousal—a shift that had not yet taken place during the propaganda campaign against MA. Before that shift, pornography was one of the tools used for establishing and maintaining political and social order, by helping define the boundaries of the acceptable.

This article has an extensive analysis of the symbolic hierarchies inherent in depictions of various sexual pairings and acts.

Within this context, satires against MA focused on her supposed relations with the comtesse de Polignac and the princesse de Lamballe (who were, objectively, her closest friends and confidantes in the court). The net expanded outside the aristocracy to artists patronized by the queen, including singer Arnould, actress Raucourt, and painter Vigée-Lebrun. These rumors circulated before the Revolution. Early in the Revolution, royalists might try to displace criticism of the queen onto these favorites who had “led her astray.” But a focus on the queen herself overwhelmed ever these efforts. Eventually, the alleged sexual depravity of the queen became the supposed proof that monarchy itself was unsupportable.

In contrast to Renaissance pornography that celebrated pleasure, these publications served as a warning to police morality and a rationale for the queen’s execution.

Interestingly, the subjects, treatment, preoccupations, and tone of the political sexual satires closely parallel those of libertine pornography by authors such as Sade, even to the fascination with lesbianism. Within the context of political attacks on women who stepped outside “proper” role, lesbianism was primarily charged against aristocrats, even when charges of “masculinity” were in play against others—primarily, but not exclusively, as some women pushing for equal rights were added to the roster of MA’s alleged lovers. Overall, a contrast was established between the immoral, libertine, sapphic aristocrat and the moral, domestic, heterosexual bourgeoise woman—a contrast that reverberated into the 19th century.

Revolutionary attacks on MA were scarcely uniform or coherent. Beside the continuing theme of lesbianism were allegations of more broad-ranging sexual transgressions, and pamphleteers often inserted their own personal preoccupations into the attacks. MA’s alleged abandonment of material impulses fed into anxiety about declining birthrates.

The article concludes with a discussion of the image of the “hermaphrodite” both physiological and behavioral, and how MA was fitted into this tradition.

[Note: Although some historians have defined “tribade” (the term generally used in these documents) as being associated with the motif of the macro-clitoral woman, the specific sex acts described in this political pornography focus on manual stimulation, dildos, and sometimes oral sex.]