Hunting with the Empress: Hunting, Gender and Dynastic Ambition at the Court of Charles VI and Maria Theresa

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2018
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Haverford College. Department of History
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Thesis
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Award
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eng
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Open Access
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Abstract
In the first half of the eighteenth century, the Habsburg family faced a dynastic crisis. Holy Roman Emperor Charles VI had no sons to inherit his kingdom. Consequently, he presented his daughter, Maria Theresa, as his heir making her the first female Habsburg regent after centuries of patrilineal descent. Contemporary gender ideals and international and internal attempts to disrupt Habsburg hegemony obstructed Maria Theresa from a smooth dynastic transition. This thesis investigates strategies employed by Maria Theresa and her father that strengthened her claim and identity as a female regent. Some strategies blurred the gender divide embedded in contemporary thoughts on patriarchal society. Others highlighted Maria Theresa’s effeminate virtues. Court hunting provides the most informative example of imperial strategies legitimizing Maria Theresa’s inheritance. The hunting vulture espoused by the Habsburg court expressed the authority of its monarch. More specifically for Maria Theresa, hunting helped characterize her as a powerful female leader by highlighting female participation in hunting and female influence on hunting culture. I start by introducing the political background of Austria and Europe in the eighteenth century and Charles’ issuing of the Pragmatic Sanction. The next section describes Maria Theresa’s state building projects and the gender dynamic in her public identity. The third section transitions into hunting highlighting the social and political implications of the sport at Charles VI’s court. The last section delves into court hunting during Maria Theresa’s reign focusing on the relationship between hunting and gender. Through hunting and a variety of other court platforms, Maria Theresa directly challenged the assumed role of early modern women and created a public identity that embraced aspects of womanhood and combined them with masculine qualities expected of contemporary rulers. By utilizing such strategies, Maria Theresa facilitated her authority and legitimized her position as a female regent in a patriarchal society.
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