Marie Antoinette: The Journey
by Antonia Fraser
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Book Reviews of Marie Antoinette: The Journey
Book Review: Read It and Weep
Summary: 4 Stars
I began reading this wonderful biography of Marie Antoinette while planning a trip to France and although the book is long, and at times rather tedious, it did not dissapoint my intrigue with this historically tragic figure.Antonia Fraser has written what seems to be about as accurate a biography as possible. Many horrible stories have been told about Marie Antoinette and this book covers those as well as many more that I never knew. Like most people my introduction to Marie Antoinette was with her "Let them eat cake..." speech and her over-extravagant life style. It seemed almost understandable that she was beheaded based on such misrepresentation. In reality the story reads much more tragically once you get to know a bit about her life and how it all ended.
Imagine being a precocious but innocent young girl raised up like property to be sold to the highest royal bidder. Then at 14 being sent away from your friends and family to become the wife of another royal child. Marie Antoinette left Austria and had to adapt to becomming a future queen of France within only a few short years. The French, during those times, being notoriously inclined to think of Austrian women as unflattering and unfeminine oafs. But young Marie pulled it all off and successfully became the star of France. Her husband Louis XVI was more interested in hunting and gadgets than creating a future French dynasty with Marie. So it isn't a wonder that she fills up her life with all the riches of royality. Her life is a sad saga from beginning to end despite her royality and wealth. The final chapters of this book are unimaginable to fathom. She is taken from her family once again, thrown in a small cell, stripped of any royal privileges and left to contemplate her own demise.
Imagine becomming all you never dreamed of, hearing the crowd cheer the beheading of your husband, listening to the coerced testimony of your only son stating the abuses he suffered by your own hands, seeing the head of your friend paraded on a stake past your cell window, hemorrhaging from stress and exhaustion and then having to walk up a platform towards your death with a roaring crowd surrounding you.....few of us could stand it, but Marie Antoinette did. Her story is a great read but in order to get Marie's true essence one must walk the halls of Versailles and then sit in contemplation near her cell in the La Conciergerie.....this extraordinarily strong woman lives on in infamy and her spirit reigns supreme.
Book Review: A disappointing biography
Summary: 2 Stars
Having been a fan of Antonia Fraser for many years, I highly anticipated her biography of Queen Marie-Antoinette, but have been very disappointed in that she often chooses the sensational over the factual. She depicts Marie-Antoinette's mother Empress Maria Theresa as heartless and calculating for sending her daughter to France at age 14 to get married, but arranged marriages were the norm; the empress was not doing anything out of the ordinary. What startled me most is that Fraser not only insists on Antoinette having an affair with Count Axel von Fersen, of which there is little concrete evidence, but goes onto maintain that Axel used condoms to keep the queen from getting pregnant. It seems to me that Marie-Antoinette loved children so much; she came from a family of sixteen where children were valued and her more liberal sister Caroline went on to have eleven children or more. She was also a devout Catholic and using such devices were unthinkable, unless one was a prostitute or dealing with prostitutes. In this case Fraser is applying the morals of some British aristocratic ladies to a queen of France. If Marie-Antoinette had been caught in adultery, it would have been considered treason; she would have been sent to a convent and had her children taken away from her. With all of her enemies at Court, that was not a risk she would have taken, if she had been so inclined. On a smaller scale, Fraser makes ridiculous assertions about Marie-Antoinette dyeing her hair - in all the pictures that I have seen of her, her hair looks grey from either powder or premature age; I have never read any first hand accounts of her dyeing it. Not that that is a big deal; but it makes me wonder where Lady Fraser's life ends and where Marie-Antoinette's life begins. I found it offensive that at the end Fraser interprets Marie-Antoinette's death as some kind of sacrifice for the cause of democracy, when she believed in monarchy and wanted her little son to be king. Especially, since Marie-Antoinette's murder was followed not by democracy but by dictatorships and Napoleon crowning himslf emperor. Sadly, there is a lacuna of decent biographies of the queen in the English language. One can only hope that the works of Bertieres, Chalon, and Delorme will soon be translated and published in English. Fraser's book does have some interesting details (aside from those which flow from her imagination) and it is much more sympathetic to the queen than Lever's travesty.Book Review: Another soap opera
Summary: 2 Stars
There is no doubt that Antonia Fraser's "The Journey" is written in the author's usual wry, witty and highly engaging style (although I must say that I never before heard of sex described as "lugubrious.") There is also no doubt that Fraser has done a great deal to redeem Marie-Antoinette's shredded reputation by accurately describing her as being compassionate to the hardships of the French people. The book is full of vivid detail which makes it very readable. However, I was disappointed to see that Fraser resorts to many popular misconceptions. For one thing, why does Fraser act like Marie Antoinette was the only princess to be sent away from home as a teenager to seal a dynastic marriage? What about Sophie of Anhalt-Zerbst (Catherine the Great) who was also a young stranger in a foreign land? This sort of thing happened all the time - it was what being a princess was all about. I was glad that Fraser did not fall into the myth of Louis XVI's impotence/ phimosis and surgery and all that. She simplistically portrays him as being asexual, which was not true, because he told his aunt after consummating his marriage that he enjoyed "it." But never has any other biographer subjected the reader to the spectacle of Fersen and the queen fiddling with primitive prophylactics while consummating their grand passion. I must say, it is a first. Fraser insists that Marie Antoinette slept with Fersen for many years and yet gives no solid proof, while at the same time maintaining that she was a woman of high moral character. I usually do not think of a woman who is shared by both a lover and a husband as having a high moral character, but I guess Fraser does. Oh, well. It is such romantic fantasies that turn this book into more of a soap opera than a serious biography. I found it absurd when Fraser insists that the tormented queen of France was ultimately a martyr for the cause of the socialism and democracy which the French people now enjoy. If the queen had had her way, her descendant would be reigning today, and that is just the reality of it. For a better study of Marie Antoinette's relationship with her husband, I would recommend Vincent Cronin's "Louis and Antoinette." As for better biographies of the queen, let me join some fellow reviewers in the hope that the works of Delorme and Bertieres will soon be available in English.Book Review: Wry, engaging, lively; Fraser is a wonderful writer
Summary: 5 Stars
Antonia Fraser has the wonderful ability to make history engrossing and easy to read. Books about royal lineages usually tend to be very complicated and difficult to read, but Fraser slowly introduces the major players amid the backdrop of 18th-century Austria and France. No detail escapes her eye; from the rustle of fabric to the queen's personal effects to the relationship between the royal family to their advisers, this book is lively, engrossing, and informative without resembling a textbook. You can literally read the entire book on a long airplane flight and feel that you've learned a great deal about Marie Antoinette, with the added benefit that you don't have to re-read each paragraph ten times in order to understand it. For anyone who doubts how easy it is to read and understand this book, please pick up a copy of Alison Weir's "The Life of Elizabeth I" and try to read a couple of pages; suffice it to say that you'll see why Fraser is such a good writer.
Fraser moves the story in and out from Marie Antoinette's birth to her arranged marriage, then to adulthood, her joy at the birth of her children, the impending collapse of the French aristocracy, and finally her untimely death at a young age. I challenge anyone to remain unmoved by the description of her despair at having her children taken away from her. This book dispels a lot of myths about Marie Antoinette; where she is popularly portrayed as callous, petty, demanding, and materialistic, she was in fact exactly the opposite: she was gracious, polite, gentle, and kind, and she never said "let them eat cake". People who casually dismiss the execution of Marie and her husband need to read this book to understand how ill-deserved their deaths really were; for one thing they had nothing whatsoever to do with treason against their country. They tried to escape France to save their lives.
If you don't like reading about history or biographies in general, this book will quickly change your mind. It's not easy to entertain and educate, but Fraser manages the task with ease.
Book Review: "Will the people never be tired of my weaknesses?.
Summary: 3 Stars
A refreshing look at the life of the Marie Antionette.I read the book twice.
What I liked was the author did not have to defend the French Revolution from the point of view of an 'Idealogue'.
The tone is objective,and contrasts the inconsistency of French Revolutionaries in their ideas and behaviour.For example contrasting the murders at the Tullieries and the accusation that the Monarchy was responsible for the shedding of the blood of French Patriots,while they themselves were covered in the blood of French men, woman, and children.
The book paints the picture of Marie Antionette as a human being.She leaps off the pages and one can see she was no Medea,or Brunhilde,or Athaliah,but a vulnerable person who had 'weaknesses.'
She tried to create a semblance of famly life at the 'Petite Trianon'.After viewing the Versailles State bedroom,and Petite Trianon,I can understand why she fled to her village.
She lived, loved and lost,and in the end by her death, showed she was truly a 'Daughter of the Caesars'.
My interest was caught by the Convent visit of Dr John Moore,when he brought clothes for the Dauphin from the Duchess of Sutherland.Is it possible he took the Dauphin before the Temple imprisonment? The Deputies asked Marie Antionette why the Dauphin was crying so much?.
We know Marie Antionette adopted poor boys that had blue eyes and blond hair,was the Dauphin taken in the few short hours before the Temple? Marie Antionette must have had no illusions that they were in deadly peril.Could she have given up the Dauphin then?Interesting question!.
I recomend this book for anyone interested in a balanced,empathetic view of the life of Marie Antionette, from birth to her gut-wrenching fate.
I will never hear the 'Marseillaise',again without a shudder.