Marie Antoinette's opinions evolve over time, and she's entirely happy with that. Robespierre was opposed to her personally because of her believing constitutional monarchy,. He detestingly and secondly, because she was a nuisance - so these two things. She also accused him of instigating the September massacres; I don't think he actually was so instrumental in the September massacres. Numerous people warned her. In fact, one of her, a fish, the person who was supposed to put it up didn't want to putting it up. So she's forever trying to convince others of her opinions.
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the French playwright who, in 1791, wrote The Declaration of the Rights of Woman and of the Female Citizen. This was Olympe de Gouges (1748-93) and she was responding to The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen from 1789, the start of the French Revolution which, by excluding women from these rights, had fallen far short of its apparent goals. Where the latter declared ‘men are born equal’, she asserted ‘women are born equal to men,’ adding, ‘since women are allowed to mount the scaffold, they should also be allowed to stand in parliament and defend their rights’. Two years later this playwright, novelist, activist and woman of letters did herself mount the scaffold, two weeks after Marie Antoinette, for the crime of being open to the idea of a constitutional monarchy and, for two hundred years, her reputation died with her, only to be revived with great vigour in the last 40 years.
With
Catriona Seth
Marshal Foch Professor of French Literature at the University of Oxford
Katherine Astbury
Professor of French Studies at the University of Warwick
And
Sanja Perovic
Reader in 18th century French studies at King’s College London
Producer: Simon Tillotson