Book Review: ‘The Revolutionary Self,’ by Lynn Hunt

THE REVOLUTIONARY SELF: Social Change and the Emergence of the Modern Individual, 1770-1800, by Lynn Hunt

“Over the course of the 1700s,” Lynn Hunt writes in the opening of “The Revolutionary Self,” her study of the rise of modern individualism, “people in Europe and British North America came to have a happier view of human prospects.” The rosier perspective came from the perception that human beings, to varying degrees, could shape their own lives. Meanwhile, major political and social upheavals led to an understanding of society as a distinct entity with its own logic.

The simultaneous discoveries of the individual and society created, Hunt argues, a paradox. At the very moment that growing secularization was overtaking the idea of original sin, people also began to see themselves as molded, however subtly, by social forces like race, class and sexuality, “all the markers,” she writes, “given value by modern bureaucracies.” What helped people ditch a community based in divine order for one where free will and social determinism locked horns? The French Revolution.

Hunt, a distinguished professor of European history and an expert in the French Revolution, is clear that the concepts she wants to explore are not easily captured. The notion of society is particularly “nebulous,” she admits. But she grounds these abstract forces in the minutiae of cultural practice as she moves through a wide range of subjects, from soldiering and teatime to Scottish armchair travelers and French political cartoons. In passing, we get a close look at how revolution impacts daily life.

Hunt starts by tracing new ways of thinking about society in Britain, where in the 18th century travel writing was all the rage. Eyewitness accounts knocked readers “off kilter” yet reaffirmed their sense of European superiority. John Locke, for instance, marveled at reports suggesting that Indigenous Americans had no notion of money.

Such dispatches did provoke some searching reflections, and Europeans began to consider their own social orders in a fresh light. Scottish thinkers in particular, among them Adam Smith’s disciple John Millar, argued that human development proceeded in stages and could be measured by women’s status — a radical idea at the time. In refined societies, Millar observed, men and women ate and talked together, which made female literacy desirable. Hunt suggests that tea drinking, a habit of British elites that finally reached the masses in the 18th century, may have encouraged such ideas. While coffeehouses were the domain of men, at home tea parties prompted men and women to converse as equals. Tragically, Hunt notes, the same global commodity that may have helped liberate British women did the opposite for West Africans, who endured the Middle Passage in ever larger numbers to work as slaves in the Caribbean sugar fields and sweeten English tea.

In France, the dynamic between society and the individual played out in the pamphlets and prints that proliferated during the revolution. Caricatures mocking nobles and the clergy encouraged people to rethink their social relationships. Thanks to lax censorship, thousands of these painted prints were published, and theatergoers in 1790s Paris could also choose from among two dozen performances a day. Political cartoons and plays enabled people, especially those who could not read, to assess the astounding changes taking place around them. Contemporary pundits applauded or bemoaned how visual culture undermined the ancien régime (itself a new term) by turning it into an easily accessible object of study and scorn.

The artists who helped make society visible also gained power in the process. Take Marie-Gabrielle Capet, a female painter of modest background who worked in the Parisian studio of a well-connected husband-and-wife team. Like most women artists, Capet painted portraits and miniatures. She began exhibiting in the 1780s and, over three tumultuous decades, she deftly adapted to a dizzying succession of fashion trends. Hunt elaborates on the political significance of choices such as wearing muslin or sporting a Titus haircut (the first short hairstyle for men and women in France) to show how Capet’s art reflected and shaped rapid social shifts. Capet’s depictions of female artists, including herself, underscored women’s individuality and greater equality.

The French Revolution reformed the lives not only of civilians but of soldiers as well. While fighting the French Revolutionary wars against other European nations, the armed forces dealt with daunting challenges: inadequate food, too few guns and tents, and expectations of democracy and equality that tested discipline and loyalty. Still, patriotic fervor, pluck and innovative tactics made the revolutionary army surprisingly successful. A new officer corps developed, made up of the sons of farmers, coopers and innkeepers, who, short on experience but long on daring, advanced rapidly.

The career of Napoleon Bonaparte, a young upstart, personified the new reliance on personal ambition and, ironically, his dictatorship was a made possible by the liberalizing military reforms that enabled his ascent. The new military individual, Hunt suggests, was caught between autonomy and collectivity. “Ordinary soldiers could achieve previously unimaginable advancement through the exercise of their individual initiatives, but their newfound allegiance to the nation and to their charismatic superiors also facilitated their acceptance of an increasingly dictatorial authority.”

Soldiering in the age of revolution wasn’t the only vehicle for individuals to have some influence over their own lives. Public finance changed everyone’s relationship to the state and society. Hunt’s guide through the thicket is a double-faced Genevan financier, Étienne Clavière, who admired the American Republic, opposed slavery and believed in the positive power of commerce. Arriving in France in 1784, he pushed to convert the crown’s debt into one held by society through assignats, or bonds, that functioned as paper money. In the early 1790s, Clavière became minister of finance, but his visionary proposals for putting the country’s finances on a sound and transparent footing, many of which were eventually adopted, ran afoul of revolutionaries who distrusted him. Imprisoned, he killed himself in 1793 to escape the guillotine.

Hunt investigates an important moment in the history of the individual and society. I wish she had included more details about the French Revolution — readers less familiar with this watershed event may get lost. Yet her book comes at an opportune time, reminding us that seemingly small new habits, whether drinking tea or befriending Chatbots, can lead to revolutions in our sense of self — changes whose full magnitude we may not understand until we have already transformed.

THE REVOLUTIONARY SELF: Social Change and the Emergence of the Modern Individual, 1770-1800 | By Lynn Hunt | Norton | 199 pp. | $35