Divide.
She wanted to be what she–willful woman that she was–wanted to be, not what French etiquette would make her. It was a revolt, of sorts, but hardly a profound political one. Jacques Revel has well articulated the dilemma of Marie-Antoinette in writing of her pretension to conduct her life as she wished. Marie-Antoinette “forgot the maxim that royalty has no right to private life.”
–Mary D. Sheriff, ‘The Portrait of the Queen’
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