Reducing historical lives to ‘male’ and ‘female’ roles, we lose the nuance of those lives and a clearer understanding of past societies, suggests CLAIRE ISABELLA GILMOUR
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In the footsteps of Honore Daumier
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“FREEDOM and justice for all are infinitely more to be desired than pedestals for a few,” once said Honore Daumier, the legendary French cartoonist and caricaturist, in what is movingly reminiscent of Labour’s rallying cry, under Jeremy Corbyn, “for the many not the few.”
To illustrate what he meant, in 1831 Daumier “put” the king Louis-Philippe on a pedestal only to mercilessly ridicule him, to much popular acclaim.
The cartoon of the monarch, in the comic journal La Caricature, depicted him as the hideously gluttonous Gargantua, a household personage in France and protagonist of the 16th century satire by Francois Rabelais.
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