'' by
Eugène Delacroix (1830), celebrates the
July Revolution (
Louvre Museum). Since classical times it was common to represent ideas and abstract entities by gods, goddesses, and
allegorical personifications. During the
French Revolution of 1789, many allegorical personifications of '
Liberty' and '
Reason' appeared. These two figures finally merged into one: a female figure, shown either sitting or standing and accompanied by various attributes, including the
cockade of France and the
Phrygian cap. This woman typically symbolised Liberty, Reason, the Nation, the Homeland and the civic virtues of the Republic. In September 1792, the
National Convention decided by decree that the new seal of the state would represent a standing woman holding a spear with a Phrygian cap held aloft on top of it. Historian
Maurice Agulhon, who in several works set out on a detailed investigation to discover the origins of Marianne, suggests that it is the traditions and mentality of the French that led to the use of a woman to represent the Republic. A feminine allegory was also a manner to symbolise the breaking with the
old monarchy headed by kings and promote modern
republican ideology. Even before the French Revolution, the
Kingdom of France was embodied in masculine figures, as depicted in certain ceilings of
Palace of Versailles. Furthermore, France and the Republic themselves are, in French, feminine nouns (
la France,
la République),
The Second Empire During the
Second Empire (1852–1870), this depiction became clandestine and served as a symbol of protest against the regime. The common use of the name "Marianne" for the depiction of "Liberty" started around 1848/1851, becoming generalised throughout France around 1875.
The Third Republic from
Punch by
John Bernard Partridge;
John Bull stalks off with a defiant Marianne and turns his back on the
Kaiser, who pretends not to care. The usage began to be more official during the
Third Republic (1870–1940). Much of the popularity of Marianne was due to the fact that she symbolized French republicanism while at the same time being neutral enough to make her into a symbol that appealed to most people. The legacy of the French Revolution tended to divide people in France as different people in France had different revolutionary heroes and villains, and unlike the United States, the French had no cult of "the Founding Fathers" whose memory was venerated by all. For this reason, the French state tended to promote abstract symbols like Marianne as an unifying national symbol instead of using personalities from history as a national symbol in the manner which the United States used George Washington and Venezuela used Simon Bolivar as national symbols in the 19th century. As a symbol of the Revolution and of the republic, Marianne was sufficiently inoffensive enough to appeal to most people without causing any controversy. Marianne's femininity made her appear less threatening as a symbol of the republic than a male figure would have been. After a turbulent first decade in the 1870s, by the 1880s the republic was accepted by most people in France and as such, the French state did not need history to justify itself, using Marianne as the unifying symbol of the republic. The only historical event that was regularly honored in France was Bastille Day, as the storming of the Bastille in 1789 was the revolutionary occurrence that appealed to most of the French, and the rest of the events of the revolution were not officially honored in order to keep the memory of the revolution as harmonious as possible. It was the strategy of the republican leaders to use symbols and the memory of history in such a way to create as wide a national consensus as possible in favor of the republic, which was why Marianne became such a prominent symbol of the republic. By contrast, the newly unified German
Reich had too many historical traditions to draw upon, reflecting the histories of the various German states, none of which could appeal to everybody, leading to a situation where the British historian
Eric Hobsbawm noted: "Like many another liberated 'people', 'Germany' was more easily defined by what it was against than in any other way." Hobsbawm argued for this reason, that unlike Marianne who was a symbol of the republic and freedom in general, her German counterpart,
Deutscher Michel "...seems to have been essentially an anti-foreign image". The
Hôtel de Ville in Paris (city hall) displayed a statue of "Marianne" wearing a
Phrygian cap in 1880, and was quickly followed by the other French cities. In Paris, where the
Radicals had a strong presence, a contest was launched for the statue of
Place de la République. It was won by the Morice brothers (with
Léopold Morice producing the sculpture and the architect François-Charles Morice designing the pedestal), in 1879, with an academical Marianne, with an arm lifted towards the sky and a Phrygian cap, but with her breasts covered.
Aimé-Jules Dalou lost the contest against the Morice brothers, but the City of Paris decided to build his monument on the Place de la Nation, inaugurated for the centenary of the French Revolution, in 1889, with a plaster version covered in bronze. Dalou's Marianne had the lictor's fasces, the Phrygian cap, a bare breast, and was accompanied by a Blacksmith representing Work, and allegories of Freedom, Justice, Education and Peace: all that the Republic was supposed to bring to its
citizens. The final bronze monument was inaugurated in 1899, in the turmoil of the
Dreyfus Affair, with
Waldeck-Rousseau, a Radical, in power. The ceremony was accompanied by a huge demonstration of workers, with
red flags. The government's officials, wearing black
redingotes, quit the ceremony. Marianne had been reappropriated by the workers, but as the representative of the Social and Democratic Republic (
la République démocratique et sociale, or simply
La Sociale). From the signing of the
Entente Cordiale between France and Britain in April 1904, Marianne and
John Bull personalised the agreement in a number of paintings and cartoons, most famously the Punch cartoon by
John Bernard Partridge. In the struggles between ideological parties around the turn of the twentieth century, Marianne was often denigrated by right-wing presses as a prostitute. In Imperial Germany, Marianne was usually portrayed in a manner that was very vulgar, usually suggesting that she was a prostitute or at any rate widely promiscuous while at the same time being a hysterically jealous and insane woman who however always cowered in fear at the sight of a German soldier. The German state in the Imperial period promoted a very xenophobic militarism, which portrayed the
Reich as forever in danger from foreigners and in need of an authoritarian government. The core of Prussian-German militarism was a cult of
machismo that equated militarism with masculinity, and Marianne was used in Germany to portray France as a "weak" and "feminine" nation in contrast to "strong" and "masculine" Germany. The purpose of Marianne in German propaganda was always to promote contempt for France and with it, a warning about what Germans should not be. The American historian Michael Nolan wrote in the "hyper-masculine world of Wilhelmine Germany" with its exaltation of militarism and masculine power, the very fact that Marianne was the symbol of the republic was used to argue that French men were effeminate and weak. In this regard, it is significant in German cartoons and posters, Marianne usually faced off against a male figure representing Germany, who was either a typical German soldier or Kaiser Wilhelm II himself and Marianne only very rarely took on Germania. In French cartoons and posters, it was Marianne who took on Wilhelm II, whose bombastic pomposity lent itself well for ridicule, and she almost never took on
Deutscher Michel, leading Nolan to comment that French cartoonists missed a great chance for satire since even in Germany itself, Deutscher Michel is portrayed as rather "dim-witted". On occasion, Marianne was portrayed slightly more favorably in Germany as in a cartoon from May 1914 in the magazine
Kladderadatsch where Deutscher Michel is working in his garden with a seductive and voluptuous Marianne on one side and a brutish
muzhik (Russian peasant) on the other; the message of the cartoon was that France should not be allied to Russia, and would be better off allied to Germany, since Deutscher Michel with his well tended garden is clearly a better potential husband than the vodka drinking
muzhik whose garden is a disorderly disaster. Marianne differed from Uncle Sam, John Bull, and Deutscher Michel in that Marianne was not just a symbol of France, but of the republic as well. For those on the French right, who still hankered for the House of Bourbon like
Action Française, Marianne was always rejected for her republican associations, and the preferred symbol of France was Joan of Arc. As Joan of Arc was devoutly Catholic, committed to serving King Charles VII, and fought for France against England, she perfectly symbolized the values of Catholicism, royalism, militarism and nationalism that were so dear for French monarchists. Joan was apparently asexual, and her chaste and virginal image stood in marked contrast to Marianne, whom
Action Française depicted as a prostitute or as a "slut" to symbolize the "degeneracy" of the republic. The contrast between the asexual Joan vs. the unabashedly sexualized Marianne who was often depicted bare-breasted could not have been greater. Finally, because of Joan's status as one of France' best loved heroines, it was difficult for republicans to attack Joan without seeming unpatriotic. However, the royalist attempt to have Joan of Arc replace Marianne as the symbol of France failed, in large part because most of the French people accepted the republic, and Marianne unlike Joan was the symbol of the republic. In the middle of the 19th century, Marianne was usually portrayed in France as a young woman, but by late 19th century, Marianne was more commonly presented as a middle aged, maternal woman, reflecting the fact that the republic was dominated by a centre-right coalition of older male politicians, who disliked the image of a militant young female revolutionary. After British and German newspapers began to mock the middle-aged Marianne as a symbol of supposed French decline, around 1900 the younger Marianne came back into vogue to symbolize that the republic was not in decline. In World War I, in German propaganda, Marianne was always depicted as dominating Russia, represented variously as a bear, a thuggish-looking Cossack or by the Emperor Nicholas II, with Marianne being drawn as an angry and emasculating wife. By contrast, John Bull was always depicted in German cartoons as dominating both Marianne and Russia, reflecting the German perception that Britain was the most dangerous of all of Germany's enemies. When John Bull was depicted in the company of Marianne in German cartoons, she was always the submissive one. Few Mariannes were depicted in the First World War memorials, but some living models of Marianne appeared in 1936, during the government of the
Popular Front as they had during the Second Republic (then stigmatized by the right-wing press as "unashamed prostitutes"). During World War II, Marianne represented Liberty against the
Nazi invaders, and the Republic against the
Vichy regime (see Paul Collin's representation). During Vichy, 120 of the 427 monuments of Marianne were melted, while the
Milice took out its statues in town halls in 1943. Scott wrote the topless Marianne has become "...the embodiment of emancipated French women in contrast to the veiled woman said to be subordinated by Islam". In a speech on 29 August 2016, Valls said: "Marianne has a naked breast because she is feeding the people! She is not veiled, because she is free! That is the republic!". Angelique Chisafis of
The Guardian newspaper reported: "The inference that bare breasts were a symbol of France while the Muslim headscarf was problematic sparked scorn from politicians and derision from historians and feminists". ==Origin of the name==