Tea at Trianon: The Masculine Standard

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

Sunday, November 8, 2026

The Masculine Standard

From Of Home and Womanhood:

Why have we allowed the masculine standard to become the standard for all female accomplishments as well? I am sorry to tell you but women will never be able to work and perform the same as men, we are built differently. We aspire to different jobs, we do things differently and most of all once we have children these differences become even more obvious. You will never be a man, and thank God for that, because you’re not made to be one.
And the funniest bit here is that we all love, appreciate and need intelligent children. We want children who will grow up to make the world a better place, who will advance humanity, who will be kind, hard working, smart people. We understand that children matter in this sense, but despite this, we look down upon their care. And another thing I do not understand is this idea that our own intelligence and capabilities as women, and mothers, must exclusively be used for ourselves, or our careers, but never our own homes and families. It seems to me that the people who of all the rest of the people in the world, should be deserving of our talents, it would be our very own children. But alas, it is not.
Smart women do not raise babies, they do other things, they tell me. But if we are all to be pragmatic here for a moment, and just brutally honest, most of us will never accomplish anything grandiose. Most of us, if not the overwhelming majority of us, will just be terribly ordinary people.
Most of us will have ordinary jobs, and is that worth more than our children? (Read more.)