Tea at Trianon: Modesty and Virtue

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Wednesday, August 8, 2007

Modesty and Virtue

Wendy Shalit discusses her new book. She says:

The ideal that's presented to teens today is to disconnect sex from emotions. This is what they see on TV and shockingly, it is what is even advocated on some sex-education websites for teens. But being jaded and disconnecting sex from emotion is more of a pathology than an ideal. Studies have indicated that young people who disconnect sexuality from emotion are not happy. We need our emotions to connect and bond with others. So I wouldn't say these novels are harmless; I think they prop up a very false ideal at a vulnerable time when girls are just trying to develop their own identities. Share

2 comments:

Anonymous said...: Today my son commented that the young women (in their late teens and early 20s) where he works seem so jaded. He does not remember young people being that way when he was that age. I reminded him of how much more they were and are exposed to than he was even though his generation had been exposed to more than my generation; August 8, 2007 at 8:46:00 PM EDT
elena maria vidal said...: Joy and innocence go together, and when innocence is destroyed, joy departs.; August 8, 2007 at 8:58:00 PM EDT