Marie Antoinette: The Journey by Antonia Fraser
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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.
Book Review: The Austrian woman
Summary: 4 Stars
Pampered daughter of an Empress, doomed Queen of France, Marie Antoinette is one of the most Romantic figures in world history. Though many denounce her as selfish and stupid, she has her champions who see her as a compassionate woman victimized by historical circumstances. One of these is Antonia Fraser, whose "Marie Antoinette: The Journey" (2001) may well be one of the most sympathetic portraits ever written of a monarch, aside from "official biographies". (But then, the author handled Mary, Queen of Scots the same way.) Beginning with her childhood as an Archduchess in Vienna, daughter of the doting but stern Maria Theresa, the book follows Maria Antonia's journey into France as the fiancée of the hapless Dauphin, becoming the sparkling Marie Antoinette. Extraordinarily popular (at first), she usually displayed the finest discretion and kindness, despite her haughty attitude towards the Comtesse du Barry (who, incidently, was to share her fate). So many of the nasty rumors circulated about her were most likely untrue, including the "Let them eat cake" story, which Antonia Fraser says was first attributed to the wife of Louis XIV in the 17th Century. The libelles accusing Marie Antoinette of cruelty and promiscuity only prove that trashy publications are not confined to our era. Her attachment to Count Axel Fersen is recounted unblushingly, and it becomes particularly touching in 1791, when the dashing Swede tried to to help the Queen get her family out of France. Probably the most complicated and incriminating episode in Marie Antoinette's life was the Diamond Necklace Affair (Napoleon said it more than anything else led her to the guillotine), and Antonia Fraser describes its intricacies carefully -- emphasizing, bien sūr, the Queen's innocence. Oddly enough, of the many portraits of Marie Antoinette, few show her displaying a necklace at all, much less anything resembling the rivière of the scandal. For a woman supposedly so enamored of jewels, she didn't seem to wear many. (There are more than 50 illustrations, most of them color plates.) The book is nearly 500 pages long, but the descriptions of court life and an increasingly dangerous political situation make for easy reading. Despite her husband's respect and the adoration of her children, Marie Antoinette will always have her detractors. But this biography shows that the Queen's final torments, as well as the judicial travesties enacted against her, more than compensate for any mistakes she may have made during her luxurious journey to disaster.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: Unquiet ghosts of Versailles
Summary: 4 Stars
The best biographers know they have to be sympathetic to their subjects somehow or the biography just isn't very interesting; fortunately in Marie Antoinette Antonia Fraser found not only someone sympathetic but even someone who was, for all her faults, ultimately admirable in her composure and grace in the midst of horrors. Fraser does not whitewash the queen's extravagance nor her intellectual limitations nor even her affair with Count Felsen of Sweden, but she also shows that the Austrian-born consort has been unjustly maligned for being excessively Machiavellian (which she was almost incapable of being) and for the Diamond Necklace Affair (where the queen was almost wholly innocent, although she did mismanage her own exoneration). She is also very moving in her descriptions of how Marie Antoinette was a pawn in her mother's dynastic strategies, and perceptive in her explanations of how Louis XVI's sexual awkwardness resulted initially in the queen's constant anxiety regarding her inopportunity to provide an heir and then later in her unlucky assumption of the roles usually accorded to the king's mistress. Fraser writes beautifully, with a strong sense of narrative and character: I found it a hard to stop reading. The color photo inserts are also quite well chosen. My only strong gripe would be the inadequate genealogical charts Fraser provides, which is especially unfortunate given the multiple (and confusing) titles assumed by the king's and queen's immediate Bourbon and Hapsburg family members. Fraser wastes space providing a chart showing how both Louis and Marie Antoinette are descended from mary Stuart--something of great interest to her, perhaps (as the foremost biographer of Mary, Queen of Scots), but not to her readers, who would benefit more from a chart explainging other things.
Book Review: Very good biography on Marie Antoninette
Summary: 4 Stars
Marie Antoninette proves to be a highly readable and nicely research biography. Antonia Fraser made it pretty clear that this Queen of France was probably one of the most misunderstood and most falsely maligned personalities of the French Revolution, accused by her enemies from being a lesbian to a drunkard. While Marie Antoniette was a person of many weaknesses, the author made it clear that outside of her undereducated and immature mind, her spendthrift ways which probably wasn't good for France, Marie Antoniette was none of the things that she was accused of being. Actually in reading this book, I was bit surprised how ordinary and somewhat boring her life was until the last six years before her death.But here's lies the weakness of the book. The book really doesn't go that deep into Marie Antoniette's life during that crucial period. I have read more detail accounts of her life in other books that dealt strictly with the French Revolution then I have in this biography. The book was very good in informing the reader of the pre-French Revolution period of Marie Antoninette's life but faltered afterward. Maybe Antonia Fraser should have stop in 1789 since she really didn't have much to add that wasn't written before by other authors. (Of course, if she did that, it won't be a "complete biography".)
Overall though, this book is well worth any reader's time to read if you have such interest in the life and time of Marie Antoninette. For those who don't read much on the French Revolution, its an excellent choice! Author's effort to rehabilitate Marie Antoninette's reputation proves to be pretty successful and with certain justice, long overdue.