Tea at Trianon: Henrietta Maria: Constructing and Reconstructing Early Modern Royal Motherhood and Confessional Identity

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, August 6, 2024

Henrietta Maria: Constructing and Reconstructing Early Modern Royal Motherhood and Confessional Identity

From Dr. Amy Saunders:

This article examines representations of Henrietta Maria’s (1609-1669) Catholicism and motherhood in a variety of artistic mediums and analyses how these objects are now reinterpreted within heritage sites and museum spaces in England. Henrietta Maria’s patronage, agency, motherhood, pregnancy, and confessional and foreign identity are often omitted from these heritage reconstructions despite the centrality of these themes within the artworks themselves. Her confessional and foreign identity places her in a liminal position within heritage spaces, where she is situated in opposition to Protestant queen regnants and queen consorts who are represented as more admirable or ‘successful’, due to their politics, identities, and activities. Furthermore, this article suggests that the continuation of a Protestant monarchy in England into the twenty-first century has influenced these representations with Henrietta Maria’s narrative not aligning to retrospectively applied ideals of the later royal family. (Read more.)