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Marie Antoinette 's Influence On The French Revolution

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In 1755, Josèphe Jeanne Marie-Antoinette was born as the daughter of Empress Maria Theresa; the sovereign who ruled the Hapsburg-Lorraine House in Austria. As a princess and a member of the Hapsburg dynasty, she inherited good looks which earned her a title of “youthful goddess of beauty and virtue” upon her arrival in France. At her age of fourteen, her mother sent her off to faraway France to married Dauphin, later known as Louis XVI, in order to secure a diplomatic alliance through marriage with France, a former enemy of Austria. Initially, Marie Antoinette had charmed the French people with her delicate looks; however, as she became the queen, slanderous accusations piled continuously which eventually damaged her reputation and led to her death. Why the French people hated Marie-Antoinette so much and what are the sinful things she ‘did’ in order to earn their wrath? From the existing pamphlets published before the French Revolution up to Coppola’s film Marie Antoinette, the press demonized the once adored lady into a highly lascivious whore. Marie-Antoinette’s sexual abuse were caused by the public perception as a sexualized body, a hidden fear towards all publicly active women and the potential power of their bodies, in which they use their sexual advantages toward men to gain an access to political power. First, the queen was an unwelcome guest in French people’s eyes. Marie-Antoinette was treated as a scapegoat due to her gender and the French people’s fear of

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