“Cette main ouverte de la danseuse”: Marie-Madeleine Guimard’s economic agency, or largesse as resistance

This paper examines the economic agency of the eighteenth-century ballet dancer, Marie-Madeleine Guimard, as a multi-faceted tool of advocacy and resistance that allowed Guimard to negotiate the burdens placed on her by the institutional framework of her professional life as a French Opera dancer while refashioning the moral economy imposed on female stage performers. Guimard’s celebrity in the eighteenth-century was stoked by two facets of her personal life, which were widely reported by the media: her taste for luxury, on the one hand, and her generosity towards the poor on the other hand. I focus my attention on the generic importance of the anecdote in media discourse and biographical writings as a key to understanding the economic resistance of Guimard, which I argue, shaped the public’s perception of her as a philanthropist-celebrity. Her philanthropy was considered newsworthy, especially when told in conjunction with her extravagant spending habits. Guimard’s largesse takes on a polemic dimension, evincing her project of refashioning the prevailing idées reçues concerning the morality of actresses and stage performers.