Marie Antoinette: The Journey
by Antonia Fraser
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Book Summary Information
Author: Antonia FraserEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2002-11-12
ISBN: 0385489498
Number of pages: 544
Publisher: Anchor
Book Reviews of Marie Antoinette: The Journey
Book Review: Marie Antoinette: The Journey
Summary: 4 Stars
At 544 pages, MARIE ANTOINETTE "The Journey", is an immense book. Antonia Fraser has the amazing capability to make history interesting and simple to read. Books regarding noble families typically are more apt to be dreadfully complex and challenging to understand. However, Fraser gradually presents the main players accompanied by the setting of 18th-century Austria and France. No aspect gets away from her eye; from the crackle of material to the queen's individual possessions, to the affiliation among the royal family, to their consultants, this book is energetic, gripping, and educational.
Marie Antoinette's story is such a distressing one but Antonia Fraser writes it as a caring, yet silent observer, and brings her to life in such a way no other could. One of the key themes throughout this book is what little control Marie Antoinette really had over her own life. She was a pawn on her mother's chessboard. Marie Antoinette, the youngest of fifteen children, was married off to the Dauphin of France, Louis XVI at the age of 14, in expectation to obtain a secure affiliation with France, if not a future for Austria.
Regrettably the marriage didn't begin as planned. It took eight years for the couple to ultimately deliver a successor because their marriage remained unconsummated for over seven years. Without suitable training she had a fascination for mingling, spending, dancing and gambling. In spite of this, after she became a mother, the partying started winding down. In addition, the reader must remember that she was a teenager and in her very earlier twenties when she did most of her foolishness. If she was a squanderer, she was in good company as the entire court of Versailles lived extravagantly. Marie Antoinette substituted her gambling addiction with a new hobby. She starred in exclusive theatrical performances where she performed as a milkmaid. Antonia Fraser disputes that Marie Antoinette's wastefulness and partying were actual responses to her lack of power, her marriage, and the excessive system of etiquette in the French court.
Fraser also gives several details about the charitable works of Marie-Antoinette, thus revealing her efforts to help the poor to be vaster than I had initially imagined. Her gifts and grants filled her whole reign and certainly her whole life, dating back to infancy gifts for those in need. Kindness was not only part of her rearing, but part of her sympathetic personality, of which Fraser writes many examples. She was kept in the dark about politics and recent events but they surprisingly still held her accountable for all the bad things that were going on in her country. They wanted her to be an embellishment, not to govern French people who were besieged under burdensome taxes.
Marie Antoinette's political beginnings finally came about when France was taken over by the revolutionary forces. Her husband who was just as inexperienced in politics as she was discovered that he had no capability to yield decisions about their impending future. So Marie Antoinette had taken the reins in an attempt to rescue the kingdom for her son. Regrettably, due to her lack of understanding of politics, she did not make the right choices, and her whole family ultimately encountered a dire downfall. The reader may feel much linked to the individual strengths and weaknesses of these characters. What was in their "less than competent" hands to transform, and what was carried along by the dishonesty of a court system based on greed and a tormented method of indisputable tradition. Without a doubt, you feel more compassion for the king and his queen after analysis of this book.
Antonia Fraser's sparklingly persuasive and amusing writing method contributes itself flawlessly to the alluring chronicle of the unfortunate French queen. Reading Antonia Fraser's book is like viewing a video of a calamity. Fraser sheds light from the inside out with her subjects. The book is full of splendid detail about court life, seen through Marie Antoinette's eyes. Fraser moves the story from Marie Antoinette's birth to her prearranged marriage, then to adulthood, her delight at the birth of her children, the approaching breakdown of the French aristocracy, and lastly her unfortunate death at a young age.
Fraser remains on the Queen's Austrian life, before Versailles, long enough to guide the reader to new light about this woman's anguish on account of her astonishing disposition. Pre-Revolutionary France bleeds through the pages. Fraser writes like an engrossed surgeon; her research shows flawless shrewdness of superior resources that is beyond compare, an indispensable book about astounding things.
Ms. Fraser relentlessly sets up the events leading to the termination of the royal family in the French Revolution. She describes a compassionate image of Marie Antoinette, but leaves room for the reader to determine if she was worthy to be as loathed as she was. This was a woman who was clearly slandered and criticized. She had her faults (which were certainly not overlooked by Fraser), but surely no one who has even a small amount of empathy could think that this woman warranted the cruel behavior she received and the horrible disgrace to which she was subjected to. Fraser's magnificent writing technique makes the reader overlook the conclusion of events and in its place has you on the rim of your seat at times. I would say Fraser fulfilled her goal of not letting Marie Antoinette's life story be surpassed by how it ended. Her life was about more than that. She is represented to be kind, compassionate and a somewhat normal woman: she was not extremely stunning (even though she had a vast amount of charisma, sophistication and elegance that made her looks, as if she was beautiful), she was not extremely smart, ruthless or creative. However, what made her extraordinary in the end, was her vast amount of bravery in the face of surprising, mind-boggling adversity. She confronted the unbelievable trials life pitched at her with a commendable strength and poise that few others could.
Marie Antoinette's education was periodic and deficient, in part because her much loved governess was not much of a teacher and never required her to study for any length of time. When Marie Antoinette went to trial she reacted with enormous intellectual sharpness. She stunned the courtroom with her humor and confidence. The only time she was truly upset was when she was wrongly blamed of incest. After her initial shock Marie Antoinette answered, "I speak to all the mothers in the courtroom." This must have really affected Marie Antoinette because motherhood was something she did extremely well. I found it to be enchanting, alluring, fascinating, educational, and discerning making it a delight to read and a book that I could not put down until the end. I came away from the book with a better awareness, understanding, and sympathy for one of the most renowned women in history and a much profound appreciation of the French Revolution and of the countless factors leading up to it.
In fact there was one chapter that went into the story of how she and the king, were trying to escape Paris and their incarceration, I genuinely anticipated that they would get away! I was so swept along by the author's flow that I truly embraced silent hope for the queen's release from the Conciergerie, where she was confined prior to her death. As an end result, I was trampled when Marie Antoinette met her horrific death. Once the expected decision was made, she met her death with courage.
The book is a work of art at illustrating how people are creations of their era. Sometimes it is very tough to stay focused. There are countless characters to keep straight, several different names for the same person. Ms. Frazier every now and then refers to people by their descendant's names, occasionally by their first names, and at times by their titles. I found myself continuously going back and forth in the book trying to figure out precisely who she was talking about. It also lags when Fraser attempts to give details on the bloodline relationships between different aristocrats. If all of Miss Frazer's details and theories are to be believed, then Marie Antoinette was one of the prevalent scapegoats in history and also one of its most superb heroines.
Summary of Marie Antoinette: The Journey
France?s beleaguered queen, Marie Antoinette, wrongly accused of uttering the infamous ?Let them eat cake,? was the subject of ridicule and curiosity even before her death; she has since been the object of debate and speculation and the fascination so often accorded tragic figures in history. Married in mere girlhood, this essentially lighthearted, privileged, but otherwise unremarkable child was thrust into an unparalleled time and place, and was commanded by circumstance to play a significant role in history. Antonia Fraser?s lavish and engaging portrait of Marie Antoinette, one of the most recognizable women in European history, excites compassion and regard for all aspects of her subject, immersing the reader not only in the coming-of-age of a graceful woman, but also in the unraveling of an era.In the past, Antonia Fraser's bestselling histories and biographies have focused on people and events in her native England, from Mary Queen of Scots to Faith and Treason: The Story of the Gunpowder Plot. Now she crosses the Channel to limn the life of France's unhappiest queen, bringing along her gift for fluent storytelling, vivid characterization, and evocative historical background. Marie Antoinette (1755-93) emerges in Fraser's sympathetic portrait as a goodhearted girl woefully undereducated and poorly prepared for the dynastic political intrigues into which she was thrust at age 14, when her mother, Empress Maria Theresa, married her off to the future Louis XVI to further Austria's interests in France. Far from being the licentious monster later depicted by the radicals who sent her to the guillotine at the height of the French Revolution, young Marie Antoinette was quite prudish, as well as thoroughly humiliated by her husband's widely known failure to have complete intercourse with her for seven long years (the gory details were reported to any number of concerned royal parties, including her mother and brother). She compensated by spending lavishly on clothes and palaces, but Fraser points out that this hardly made her unique among 18th-century royalty, and in any case the causes of the Revolution went far beyond one woman's frivolities. The moving final chapters show Marie Antoinette gaining in dignity and courage as the Revolution stripped her of everything, subjected her to horrific brutalities (a mob paraded the head of her closest female friend on a pike below her window), and eventually took her life. Fraser makes no attempt to hide the queen's shortcomings, in particular her poor political skills, but focuses on her personal warmth and noble bearing during her final ordeal. It's another fine piece of popular historical biography to add to Fraser's already impressive bibliography. --Wendy Smith
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