As the 18th century progressed toward the "sex panic" that presaged a massive shift in attitudes towards women's sexuality, we see how images of sexual license--both heterosexual and homosexual--came to be viewed as signs of the decay and collapse of civil society itself. In France, these images got caught up in the larger upheavals that led to the Revolution. It becomes difficult to decipher exactly what the women of the French court were actually doing with each other, as opposed to what they were accused of doing as a symbolic displacement of hostility about other aspects of society and politics. The more I read about this era, the less I'm certain that I know. In some ways, the image of sapphic chaos in the later 18th century French court feels like a preview of the image of lesbian decadence that would bloom a century later. While attitudes towards relationships between women in western Europe share some trends and similarities, the specific form they take in particular countries is often shaped by local politics and anxieties. The Revolution not only employed the image of lesbian relations as an example of the destructive nature of uncontrolled women (whether in the aristocracy, or later among revolutionaries), but reaction to those images then shaped attitudes in England and elsewhere as we've seen in this current series of articles.
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