Tea at Trianon: Mean Girls

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

Tuesday, April 13, 2010

Mean Girls

How women have long made life hell for each other, especially at school. What is worse is that now there are few shared standards of appropriate public behavior.

Christopher Caldwell goes to the heart of the matter, saying: "In place of moralism we have nothing but the will to power and the desire to ostracise – a values system that differs from the old one only in its arbitrariness." Share

1 comment:

Julygirl said...: This is the kind of bullying that cannot be squelched as easily as male bullying because male bullying comes from asserting male dominance over the other male. This current trend comes from malice and toxic personalities. Of course it is a form or power, same as bullying. In the world our young people inhabit courtesy and refinement are a sign of weakness. It is all part of 'regression to the mean' this society has been experiencing since the mid 1960s. This has escalated as our society becomes more plebeian.; April 13, 2010 at 4:46:00 PM EDT