Diana in Amazonian Dress: Fashioning the French Huntress in the Mercure Galant, 1679–1713

This chapter examines the depiction of the French huntress in the periodical Mercure galant between 1679 and 1713, first focusing on court reports and subsequently on news from the provinces. The Mercure established a clear distinction between allegorical images and real hunting practices, described with technical terminology and real attributes, such as the newly fashionable “Amazonian dress.” Its editor and contributors consistently presented the huntress as a positive gender model and the noblest incarnation of womanly values and behaviors, which, emerging first on the hunting field, tended to then spill over into other areas of social life. The Mercure’s reports emphasized the collective dimension of female engagement in the chase as well as the coexistence of female hunting cultures in different regions and at various levels of society, each characterized by different hunting conventions and patterns of intergender sociability. This chapter suggests that the image of the huntress fashioned in the Mercure functioned as an intersectional icon. While it recalibrated gender relationships toward a more egalitarian paradigm, it also reinforced traditional social, national, and racial hierarchies. The empowered Diana thus served to assert the superiority of the aristocracy, of France, and, by extension, of Europe.