Writing Doctors, Body Work, and Body Texts in the French Revolution

Abstract

This paper explores the construction of the identities of Philippe Curtius and his protégé Marie Grosholtz, known as Madame Tussaud, as providers of medical and health services, body workers, and entrepreneurs in key works that charted their experiences during the volatile period of the French Revolution. As purveyors of entertainment that derived its attraction from perceived close rendering of the likenesses of noteworthy individuals, modellers in wax required attentive discernment of bodies, or at least the capacity for imaginative descriptive skills, establishing a professional language for body work. Moreover, Tussaud's account explicitly foregrounds complex gender dynamics as a young woman interacting with the bodies of male and female clients. This essay explores how important eighteenth-century gendered conceptualizations of body work are revealed in the body texts produced in this period.