Marie Antoinette: The Journey [Paperback]

Antonia Fraser (Author)

Book Description

Release date: September 18, 2001

Never before has the life of Marie Antoinette been told so intimately and with such authority as in Antonia Fraser’s newest work, Marie Antoinette: The Journey. Famously known as the eighteenth-century French queen whose excesses have become legend, Marie Antoinette was blamed for instigating the French Revolution. But the story of her journey begun as a fourteen-year-old sent from Vienna to marry the future Louis XVI to her courageous defense before she was sent to the guillotine reveals a woman of greater complexity and character than we have previously understood. We stand beside Marie Antoinette and witness the drama of her life as she becomes a scapegoat of the Ancien Regime when her faults were minor in comparison to the punishments inflicted on her.


The youngest daughter, fifteenth out of sixteen children, of Austrian empress Maria Teresa and Francis I, Marie Antoinette was sent on a literal journey by her mother from Vienna to Versailles with the expectation that she would further Austrian interests at all times. Yet, Marie Antoinette was by nature far from interested in state affairs and much more inclined to exert a gracious, philanthropic role, patronizing the arts especially music, as royalty would come to behave in the nineteenth century. Despite this the French accused her of political interference and wrote scandalous tracts against her, mocking her lack of sophistication. Meanwhile, longing for a family and the birth of an heir who would have cemented the Franco-Austro alliance, the French queen had to endure more than eight years of public humiliation for her barren marriage before the delivery of her first of four children.

As these problems unfold, Antonia Fraser also weaves a richly detailed account of Marie Antoinette’s other, more poignant journey: from the ill-educated and unprepared girl who sought refuge in pleasure as a consolation into a magnificent, courageous woman who defied her enemies at her trial with consummate intelligence, arousing the admiration of even the most hostile revolutionaries.

Brilliantly written, Marie Antoinette is a work of impeccable scholarship. Drawing on a wealth of family letters and other archival materials, Antonia Fraser successfully avoids the hagiography of some the French queen’s admirers and the misogyny of many of her critics. The result is an utterly riveting and intensely moving book by one of our finest biographers.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

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

From Publishers Weekly

A child-princess is married off to a husband of limited carnal appetite. Her indiscretions and na‹vet‚, scorned by elderly dowagers, are coupled with charity, joie de vivre and almost divine glamour but her life is cut brutally short. The queen of France's life is rich in emotional resonance, riddled with sexual subplots and personal tragedies, and provides fertile ground for biographers. Fraser's sizable new portrait avoids the saccharine romance of Evelyne Lever's recent Marie Antoinette, balancing empathy for the pleasure-loving queen with an awareness of the inequalities that fed revolution after all, Marie herself was fully conscious of them. Her subject shows no let-them-eat cake arrogance, but is deeply (even surprisingly) compassionate, with a "public reputation for sweetness and mercy" that is only later sullied by vituperative pamphleteers and bitter unrest. She would sometimes be trapped by ingenuousness, and later by a fatal sense of duty. Yet her graceful bearing, acquired under the tutelage of her demanding mother, the empress Maria Teresa, made her an unusually popular princess before she was scapegoated as "Madame Deficit" and much, much worse. The portrait is drawn delicately, with pleasant touches of humor (a long-awaited baby is conceived around the time of Benjamin Franklin's visit: "Perhaps the King found this first contact with the virile New World inspirational"). Fraser's approach is controlled and thoughtful, avoiding the extravagance of Alison Weir's royal biographies. Her queen is neither heroine nor villain, but a young wife and mother who, in her journey into maturity, finds herself caught in a deadly vise. Color and b&w illus. (on sale: Sept. 18) Forecast: Fraser needs no introduction to American audiences. She will come over from England for a five-city tour, and with widespreand favorable reviews, this should have no trouble making the bestseller lists. It's a BOMC, History Book Club, Literary Guild and QPB selection.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 544 pages
• Publisher: Doubleday (September 18, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 038548948X
• ISBN-13: 978-0385489485
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 5.9 x 1.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (148 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,390,664 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #43 in Books > Biographies & Memoirs > People, A-Z > ( A ) > Antoinette, Marie

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

197 of 203 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Thoroughly engrossing biography November 25, 2001

By Matthew Spady

Format:Paperback

True or false? 1) Marie Antoinette was a frivolous princess who became a clever, manipulative queen 2) She ruled France through her weak husband 3) She said of the bread-less French, "Let them eat cake." 4) In her spare time, she enjoyed dressing as a milk maid and wandering around a fake farm she had built at Versailles. If you answered "true" to any of these questions, you will want to read Antonia Fraser's detailed, engrossing biography of Marie Antoinette. Fraser's work is well-documented and scholarly, but it is neither dry nor slow reading. She provides sufficient background information to put the historical events in context, but does not allow the facts to hinder the flow of the story. Her writing has an immediacy that pulls the reader so deeply into the story, it is easy to forget that we already know the ending of this historical life. (When the royal family attempts to escape their French captors, Fraser allows us to think-to hope-they might get away.) Through Fraser's eyes, we first sympathize, and then empathize with the princess who only became queen by accident. In addition, Frazer gives us a thorough education in the social order at Versailles, the complex bureaucracy (and attendant jobs) of the French court, and the political infighting that ultimately was the downfall of the entire system. This is a thoroughly engrossing biography-a keeper.

117 of 123 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A First-Rate Historical Biography! June 13, 2002

By Tiggah

Format:Paperback

This is only the second book that I've read by Antonia Fraser, the other one being her last, Faith and Treason. Although I enjoyed that book well enough (for Fraser is a very capable writer, able to both capture and hold the reader's attention), I was more than a little uncomfortable with the obvious bias that shone through an otherwise excellent treatment of England's Gunpowder Plot. I was hesitant, therefore, about purchasing this one; but as it turned out, I thoroughly enjoyed this 488-page hardcover (with 429 pages of actual text). I found it to be enthralling, captivating, eye-opening, informative, and insightful, making it a joy to read and a book that I could not wait to get back to. Additionally, it is amply illustrated (48 pages, mostly colour), and I found Fraser's treatment to be fairly thorough (though perhaps not quite so thorough as I've come to expect with Alison Weir's books). Most importantly, I came away from the book with not only a greater knowledge and understanding of (not to mention sympathy for) one of the most famous women in history, but a much deeper understanding of the French Revolution and of the various factors leading up to it.

Fraser does write in a manner that is sympathetic to Antoinette. I do feel authors of historical subjects ought to be as objective as possible; perhaps, though, it is as Fraser says: "[I]s [looking without passion] really possible with regard to the career and character of Marie Antoinette?" (p. 422). This was a woman who, in her lifetime, was either greatly admired or vehemently loathed (sentiments which don't seem to have softened much with the passage of time). More significantly, however, this was a woman who was clearly maligned. Like the rest of us, she had her faults (which are certainly not glossed over by Fraser), but surely no one who has even an ounce of compassion (whether he or she be detractor or admirer) could think that this woman deserved the callous treatment she received and the abject humiliations to which she was subjected.

Antoinette appears, in spite of her faults, to have been primarily a compassionate and kind-hearted (if not overly intelligent) woman. Nevertheless, she had the misfortune of being by accident of birth of royal blood (and Austrian blood at that) and, by the machinations of a domineering mother, queen consort to the king of France at a time when the French court was, in essence, an opulent fish bowl. As a result, Antoinette had the additional misfortune of being at the mercy of libelists intent on her destruction (at a time when there were obviously no libel laws). With reference to Louis XVI, Fraser makes a comment equally applicable to Antoinette: She was hated, not for what she did, but for who she was (ie. a foreigner and a representative of the old order). Any legitimate faults she may have had were, it would seem, merely surplus to requirement for a woman who already had more than enough black marks against her.

Those who think that horror and tragedy are the domain of novelists would be well advised to think again. Just as fiction can scarcely approach the horror of recent world events, there is nothing in the realm of fiction that can even come close to the attitudes, injustices, abominations, and humiliations that occurred during the French Revolution to humankind in general and French royalty in particular. If you've steered clear of history books before for fear that they must, by necessity, be dry and boring, I can't recommend this book highly enough. And if you've enjoyed it, I strongly recommend Stephen Coote's highly-readable Royal Survivor (on the life of England's Charles II) or anything by Alison Weir. For me, this book has awakened a hunger to learn more about late 18th century Europe and some of Antoinette's more colourful contemporaries (such as England`s George III and Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire).

43 of 47 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Daughter, Wife, Mother; Queen, Pawn...Scapegoat January 24, 2003

By Bruce Loveitt

Format:Paperback

With "Marie Antoinette", Lady Antonia Fraser has written one of the more memorable biographies of recent years. She has taken a woman who had been turned into a caricature, a "poster-child" for a "typical" example of reactionary, frivolous royalty, and turned her into a real, and sympathetic, human being. And, if Lady Antonia has perhaps stacked the deck a bit too much in favor of her subject- playing up her positive qualities and playing down her negative ones- by the time you reach the end of the book your gut feeling is that you really can't blame her. For this was a woman who, before she was physically destroyed by the forces of revolution, had been emotionally worn down by years of abuse at the hands of her political enemies. This was a woman who had very high moral standards, yet was constantly being accused in the pamphlets of the time of being heterosexually and homosexually promiscuous; a generous, sensitive and intelligent woman accused of being selfish, heartless and stupid; a woman who wasn't a political animal- who wanted to do "good works" and to be a good wife and mother- but was subjected to pressure right after her marriage (by her mother Maria Teresa) to do what was best for Austria rather than what was best for France. Even if Antoinette had been politically inclined, her influence was never very great- Louis XVI, despite what the pamphlets said about him, was far from being a fool. His main interest may have been hunting, but he was intelligent, well-read, and he had a mind of his own. (And he had been warned in his youth to be wary of wily Austrian women!) But after years of anti-Antoinette and "fool Louis" propaganda, the people were primed to mistrust and hate "The Austrian Woman". As the saying goes, if you say something loudly enough and often enough people will start to believe it. When conditions in France got bad enough, the people knew who to blame. Louis and Antoinette could easily have been exiled. But the intellectuals in charge of the revolution had the precedent of the execution of Charles I of England. And, as intellectuals sometimes do, they gave more weight to abstract ideas and ideals than to acting in a humane manner. (They thought that Antoinette's death would "unite them in blood"- whatever that was supposed to mean.) In an eerie precursor to the Stalinist show trials of the 20th century, Marie was put on trial. The outcome was decided ahead of time, and so was never in doubt. She was not allowed to prepare a proper defense. Unsubstantiated accusations were made and hearsay was accepted as evidence. Just to be sure, the 8 year old Dauphin, one of whose testicles had been damaged while playing, was brainwashed by his jailers into making allegations of sexual abuse against his own mother. The allegations weren't true but, due to the corrosive influence of the pamphleteers over the course of many years, the people were ready to believe anything. Despite being ill and suffering from sleep deprivation, Antoinette defended herself with intelligence and dignity. Once the inevitable verdict was reached, she met her death with undiminished courage. (Indeed, at this point, after 4 years of her and her family being terrorized and abused, and after the execution of her husband, she welcomed death.) This book should be required reading, not only because it gives Marie Antoinette "the day in court" that she never really had in her lifetime but because it never lets us forget her humanity. It also shows us the disturbing power of propaganda, which is something just as relevant today as it was 200 years ago. For, despite the best efforts of Lady Antonia Fraser, I'm afraid that Marie Antoinette will always be known for something she never said and, considering her concern for the French people, something she never would have said...."Let them eat cake!"