Violent discharges: the French breast in British revolutionary era caricature

Abstract

ABSTRACT After some initial enthusiasm, public sympathy for the French Revolution waned in Britain in the 1790s. Growing violence stirred suspicion that revolutionary principles were giving way to radical despotism, and that anarchy was imminent. Satirical prints captured and propagated this disillusion, caricaturing the French as grotesque and threatening. The female body proved an especially fruitful resource; a colourful cast of cannibalistic crones, haggard fishwives, and monstrous viragos allied anxieties about radical femininity with Revolutionary corruption. The breast emerged as an evocative emblem of French unnaturalness—it appeared bare, bulbous, sagging, shrivelled, and even suckling snakes. But despite its prevalence, scholarship has overlooked one of its key incarnations. This article analyses caricatures of the French breast as physically threatening—flaming, reinforced by a gun, or shooting poisonous discharges. Mobilising medical, moral, and philosophical perspectives, it shows how it was used to position France as Britain’s dangerous and degenerate ‘other’.