Description
Book SynopsisPopular images of women were everywhere in revolutionary France. Although women's political participation was curtailed, female allegories of liberty, justice, and the republic played a crucial role in the passage from old regime to modern society. In...
Trade ReviewLandes focuses on how revolutionary leaders used images to fashion gender and national identities for the revolutionary nation's new citizens.
-- Lisa Jane Graham, Haverford College * Journal of Modern History *
Landes argues that visual images contain their own powerful discourse that is simply absent in regularly printed words.... This fascinating examination of political prints raises central questions for the study of gender and politics during the French Revolution.
-- Gary Kates, Pomona College * American Historical Review *
Women were prevented from being politically active, but Landes finds that the depiction of France as a desirable female body worked to eroticize patriotism, bind male subjects to the emerging society, and invite women to identify with the project of nationalism.
* Book News *
Landes explores the ever-present paradoxes within the sad events that revolutionary French society experienced in the 18th century, capturing in the poignant images the tragic-comic reality. She traces the interconnections between pictorial and textual political arguments and concentrates on images of both women and men, in a deeply scholarly and erudite manner.... Her research is outstanding.... Highly recommended.
* Choice *
