Summary: The Many Bodies Of Marie Antoinette

Question One Given that new perspectives and details are always being introduced into recounts of history, our interpretations of past events or people are constantly changing. Quite fittingly, the ways in which these histories are told have also been subject to change. When it was formally established as a modern discipline in the mid-nineteenth century, the writing of history was largely based on the ideas of Leopold von Ranke, who is often labeled as the “father of history as a scientific, objective discipline” (Lecture 10/11). He believed that history’s purpose was to show strictly what actually happened; it should not be used to judge the past or guide the future, however bland that may be (Ranke, p. 58).
History has since moved away
Rather than simply explain how Marie Antoinette was the victim of pornographic pamphlets, she does precisely what Ranke believed historians should not do: judge the past and challenge previous interpretation as to why the queen was subjected to this type of cruelty. Hunt argues, “The queen…was the emblem (and sacrificial victim) of the feared disintegration of gender boundaries that accompanied the Revolution” (Hunt, p. 212), introducing her belief that the pamphlets served a greater purpose than merely mocking royalty. Marie Antoinette gave rise to the power of femininity and the Revolutionaries, believing women were unfit to earn a larger role in the public sphere, felt the need to use her as an example and knock down the influential figure that could give rise to the societal changes unwanted by those in power. Not only does Hunt’s work differ in that it is inclusive of women, but it also utilizes the pamphlets as a source; she made her own deductions through an element of the time’s popular culture (Lecture 10/20), as opposed to relying on accounts of