Marie Antoinette: The Journey by Antonia Fraser
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Book Reviews of Marie Antoinette: The Journey
Book Review: Marie Antoinette's day in court...209 years after her death
Summary: 5 Stars
Antonia Fraser does an excellent job with her detailed biography of one of history's most maligned figures, and offers a view of a different, more human Marie Antoinette. I liked very much that she took the time to provide the background of court life and politics in both France and Austria, what drove these two countries (not traditional enemies like France and Britain, but uneasy, distrustful, sometimes allies, sometimes enemies) to make the kind of political pact represented by the marriage of Marie Antoinette to Louis XVI, and the not-so-surprising results of the doomed-from-the-start union. She goes into great detail about how ill-prepared Marie Antoinette was to cope with being the Queen of France. She was poorly educated, not given enough instruction about political intrigue, nor given good advice about how to go about fulfilling her primary duties (to provide an heir to the Bourbon throne) when she had a husband who had no interest in her and plenty of his own issues to address! She was asked to serve far too many masters--her husband, France and the French people, her mother, Austria, her family, etc. The French people (and the French court) accused her of serving Austria. Her mother (Empress of Austria) accused her of forgetting her duties (she was married off to Louis in order to influence France and to bring France into a closer relationship with Austria) because she was not advancing Austria's cause! She was married to the heir to the throne who did not consumate the marriage for 7 years, yet she was blamed for not providing an heir! Granted, both she and Louis were very young when they married in 1770--she was only 14 years old, and Louis was only 15 years old. Fraser provides descriptions of a child-like (physically and emotionally) Marie Antoinette, and Louis as an overweight teenager who had issues of his own in addition to having been taught not to trust Austrians. Marie Antoinette was not perfect. She was extravagant, spent huge sums of money on clothes, parties, and a residence called (Le Petit Trianon) at a time when France was facing internal and external hardships. Should she have been wiser about the political storm brewing in her adopted country? Perhaps, but since she had so little influence with her husband, I have many doubts that she could have saved the monarchy by behaving differently. She was a convenient scapegoat for many different factions in France because she was considered an outsider, even after she had children. She became a symbol of everything that was wrong with the monarchy, and at that point, nothing could save her or her family. I enjoyed this book because Fraser shows a side of Marie Antoinette that is often conveniently forgotten in standard history classes, and gives her her day in court (a chance to state her side of the story, a chance to defend herself, a chance to be heard). I highly recommend it.
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: A Human Look at Marie Antoinette
Summary: 5 Stars
It is very easy on the surface to not like Marie Antoinette. The spoiled French Queen who when told of the starving population of France was demanding bread supposedly said "Let them eat cake." Antonia Fraser goes beyond this stereotype and delivers a very captivating look at the real woman beyond the rumors and hearsay of the French Revolution.
Born the last daughter and 15th child of the formidable Austrian Empress Maria Teresa, Marie Antonia was brought up in the opulence of Vienna. When she was 9 years old her father Emperor Francis died. When she was 15 she was married to her second cousin Louis August the grandson of Louis XV of France as well as the Dauphin of France.
They lived together for several years while their relations (especially her mother) and courtiers waited for an heir to the throne of France to secure the Franco-Austrian alliance that led to their marriage.
Several years after the marriage they became King and Queen of France after the death of Louis XV and shortly afterward became the parents of a girl Marie-Thérèse-Charlotte and shortly afterward of Louis Joseph (the Dauphin of France) and Louis Charles (The Duke of Normandy.)
Even before the French Revolution tragedy struck the family. Another daughter had died several months after her birth and then the Dauphin died as well.
Then the French Revolution happened and the family became prisoners of the Revolutionaries. Louis was shortly afterward put on trial and executed. Several months later the "Widow Capet" was also put on trial and executed while her two surviving children were still held prisoners.
A very captivating book about the life of Marie Antoinette!!!
Book Review: The 'Austrian Woman' Revealed
Summary: 5 Stars
I just finished this book last night. I picked it up on the recommendation of a friend, knowing nothing about Marie Antoinette or this particular era of French history. I finished the book, voraciously reading its final chapters. The "Austrian Woman's" story is completely fascinating as told by Antonia Fraser. Ms. Fraser rebukes a lot of scurrilous stories and assumptions that have been made over the past few hundreds years regarding the French Queen. Although I was not familiar with some of the rumors (lesbianism, orgies, lovers, and more excesses) it is easy, after reading the book, to see how these stories became attached to Marie Antoinette.
Fraser illustrates the life of a Royal as a difficult position. The Machiavellian intrigues of court life are fascinating. Even the day-to-day events like the dressing of the Queen are shown to be hilarious in their courtly pomp. Particularly interesting is how Fraser dramatizes what it must have been like to have an entire country direct its dissatisfaction at the Queen. The final chapters detailing the imprisonment of the Royal Family in the tower are heartbreaking, no matter what their excesses were. As the end approaches and the Queen's close friend's head was paraded around on a pike, one wonders why the Royals were meant to suffer so.
Ms. Fraser treats her subject fairly. She seems to admire Marie Antoinette, but doesn't excuse some of her miscalculations. Fraser's summation in the final chapters is particularly enlightening.
I highly recommend Antonia Fraser's MARIE ANTOINETTE: THE JOURNEY. It is an engrossing read, and the court life of Marie and King Louis XVI is quite fascinating.
Book Review: Probably the best biography I have read,
Summary: 5 Stars
There can be few people who lived 2 centuries or more ago, about whose lives so much detail is known as Marie-Antoinette. Marie-Antoinette was born the daughter of the empress of Austria, a Habsburger, and married to the dauphin of Europe's wealthiest country, France. Royals didn't have any privacy in those days. For instance, when Marie-Antoinette gave birth for the first time, a whole coterie of courtiers was sitting in the bedroom to observe the spectacle, only because their aristocratic rank entitled them to it. Hence, we know an astounding amount of detail about Marie-Antoinette's interesting life.
Usually I am wary of 400 plus page long biographies, but in this case, because Marie-Antoinette had such an amazing life and so much is known about her (and has been researched in meticulous detail by the author), the book is compelling from the first till the last page, eventhough we already know how it is going to end. The author has so much facts and insights from correspondence from and to Marie-Antoinette, that she can credibly weave them together to form a consistent psychological portrait as is rare for a biography.
The impression one is left with is of a court and an ancien regime which was ossified beyond description but a thoroughly decent but weak king and a queen who was a strong woman, but who accepted to be loyal to her family through thick and thin. That this ancien regime was (largely) swept away in France is certainly for the better, but the reader cannot help but feeling pity for this woman, who was a good mother, but merely a pawn in the power game of the European royal marriage market.