Tea at Trianon: Opportunities vs. Oppression

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, December 16, 2015

Opportunities vs. Oppression

From Madame Gilflurt:

It was a time when women were so repressed!”

“They lived in a man’s world!”

“There was nothing for women back then!”

These kind of statements drive me mad. I don’t know about other history lovers out there, but it gets on my nerves, intolerably. The 18^th Century was such a changing, moving and evolving period that gave opportunities for not just men, but for women alike. I would like to say it is all relative to their class or financial situation, in which yes that is a great part of it. But it was not always the case as I will point out throughout this blog.

But a woman of sure common sense and basic level of intelligence would be surely capable of doing well for herself, no matter what her background was. Like today, things never change, where some of the most accomplished and richest people in the world are women. Yes there was awful sexist attitudes towards the fairer sex from men in this period, but that kind of ignorant thinking hasn’t changed either today. In my opinion, it is futile and intolerant for men to think of themselves superior, when most women have many more attributes that deserve accomplishment than most men of the world.

The 18^th Century, of which mainly I speak about in England, was a fantastic era for evolution. The evolution of people’s thinking, ways of making money and basic sense of comfortable living was something that changed so radically. It is a topic not many people know of, which rather annoys me when people say ‘there was nothing for us women out there’. People nowadays like to talk about people who suffer, gritty upbringings and tragedy. But it is from this horror that women mainly could rise in the 1700’s to become so much more. This undoubtable need to have some level of intelligent capability, gave rise to strong and independent women who became icons. (Read more.)