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This article explains why women – including Queen Marie Antoinette – were publicly executed by guillotine during the French Revolution, as well as the additional humiliations and psychological suffering they endured beyond death. The content is for educational and historical documentation purposes only, based on technical, legal, and social practices in late 18th-century France. It does not aim to shock gratuitously, glorify violence, or describe graphic details causing trauma.
Women and the Guillotine: Why Did They Have to Suffer During the French Revolution?
In the history of French executions, the guillotine stands as an enduring symbol of the French Revolution and the Reign of Terror (1793-1794). Thousands of people, both men and women, were executed by this device. Among them, many women – from unknown commoners to aristocrats and even Queen Marie Antoinette – were forced to ascend the scaffold. A common question arises: why did women have to endure this brutality, and did they suffer additional forms of humiliation that men were spared? This article examines three aspects: the theoretical equality of the guillotine, the reality of gender-specific degradation, and the specific case of Marie Antoinette.
First, theoretically, the guillotine was designed as an instrument of equality
Before the French Revolution, France maintained two separate execution systems based on social class. Nobles – including noblewomen – were typically beheaded by sword or axe, a death considered quick and honorable. Commoners – including poor women – were hanged, burned, or broken on the wheel, deaths that were prolonged, painful, and shameful. When the guillotine was introduced in 1792, it was promoted as a revolutionary invention: every criminal, regardless of gender or class, would face the same form of execution. In theory, women were not treated more harshly than men. They were simply executed because they had been convicted of counter-revolutionary activities, conspiracy, or other political crimes. However, execution practices in reality told a very different story.
Second, in practice, women – especially aristocratic women – endured additional gender-based humiliations that men rarely experienced.
The reason lies in the social context of the time. During the Reign of Terror, the revolutionary authorities and the mob wanted not only the death of their victims; they wanted to completely erase the status, beauty, and pride of women who had once belonged to the ruling class. This manifested in three layers.
The first layer was head shaving. As previously discussed in technical documents, shaving before execution had a practical reason: long hair could catch on the blade or deflect its trajectory, resulting in incomplete or botched cuts. However, for women, particularly Marie Antoinette – famous for her towering, elaborate hairstyles – being shaved bald in public was not merely a technical step. It was a symbolic act meant to strip away their beauty, femininity, and social standing. An aristocratic woman with a shaved head looked no different from a common prisoner or a madwoman; the Revolution wanted to erase every trace of the old regime on their very bodies.
The second layer was the cutting of collars and the wearing of special execution garments. Female victims were often forced to wear a thin, loose white gown with a collar cut so wide that it exposed their shoulders and chest. Unlike men, who merely needed to unbutton their collar, women were typically required to expose much more of their upper body. The purpose was not purely technical – to help the executioner secure the neck in the wooden yoke (lunette) – but also a public degradation. The crowd, especially the market women of Paris (the poissardes), took pleasure in seeing once-refined “ladies” now filthy, disheveled, and exposed. On the journey from prison to the scaffold, female victims rode on uncovered wooden carts, hands tied behind their backs, passing through miles of crowded streets where people shouted, spat, and threw mud. Men were also jeered at, but the level of humiliation directed at women’s bodies – concerning modesty, beauty, and sexuality – was far higher.
The third layer consisted of psychological and physical violations immediately before death. Numerous contemporary accounts from executioners of the Sanson family and eyewitnesses record that, in the holding cells, women were often groped by guards, stripped of clothing, or threatened in sexually degrading ways. Although no official law permitted this, the chaos of the Revolution and the frenzy of the crowd created an environment where abuse and abuse of power were common. Even at the foot of the guillotine, some female victims had their collars yanked down one last time by the executioner, exposing their chests fully before their heads were placed in the yoke – a final “performance” for the crowd. Men rarely, if ever, endured this kind of sexualized humiliation.
Third, the case of Marie Antoinette is the clearest example of the suffering beyond death that women endured.
The Queen was executed on October 16, 1793. The night before, she was shaved bald in her cramped cell, without a mirror or warm water. The following morning, she was dressed in a thin white prisoner’s gown with a wide collar, her hands tied tightly behind her back with rope. On the wooden death cart, she traveled for an hour and a half through Paris, while thousands shouted insults, spat, and threw projectiles at her. At the scaffold, executioner Henri Sanson forcefully pulled her collar down low, exposing part of her chest to the crowd – an act that was not part of any standard technical procedure. After the blade fell, her head was picked up and raised high. The crowd not only witnessed her death; they applauded when they saw her grey hair exposed beneath the shaved scalp – a symbol of the complete collapse of a once-lavish queen. Hundreds of other, less famous women suffered similar forms of humiliation, though often to a lesser degree. This makes it clear that, while the guillotine was legally egalitarian, the crowd and the manner of execution were far from fair to women.
In conclusion, the answer to the question “why did women have to suffer?” lies in the gap between theoretical equality and social reality. Technically and legally, the guillotine was designed to treat all criminals equally. However, within the context of the French Revolution and especially the Reign of Terror, women – particularly those from aristocratic or royal backgrounds – bore an additional layer of psychological punishment that men did not face. They were treated as living symbols of the luxury, power, and injustice of the old regime. Head shaving, collar cutting, the removal of modesty, and the public exposure of their bodies were not merely procedural steps; they were acts of collective revenge, a systematic erasure of human dignity. In other words, women were not executed because they were women, but they suffered disproportionately greater mental anguish precisely because they were women – and because the revolutionary society of the time used female bodies, especially aristocratic ones, as a battlefield to vent its rage.
The guillotine became an icon of systematic cruelty, but the story of the women beneath its blade reveals an even deeper truth: no method of execution is truly fair or humane, especially when distorted by gender prejudice and mob fury.
Primary sources:
“The Days of the French Revolution” – Christopher Hibbert (1980).
“Memoirs of the Sanson Family” – Henri Sanson (19th-century memoirs).
“Marie Antoinette: The Journey” – Antonia Fraser (2001).
“A History of the Guillotine” – Daniel Arasse (1987).
Archived reports of the Committee of Public Safety (Comité de Salut Public) – 1793-1794.
Materials from the Musée de la Guillotine and the Archives Nationales de France regarding execution procedures for women.