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Marie Antoinette: The Journey

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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.

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).

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!"

My copy of Lady Antonia Fraser's "Marie-Antoinette, The Journey" (Anchor Books, 2002) sports on its cover the round face of Kirsten Dunst which, as anyone who has studied portraits of Marie-Antoinette knows, is in sharp contrast to the lovely oval countenance of the real queen. I found it annoying, at first. However, while reading the international best seller, I came to see the photo from the Coppola film as suitable for a book which, at times, sacrifices historical exegesis to the demands of political correctness. The Marie-Antoinette of "The Journey" is sexually liberated (Fraser even has her using birth control) and therefore made acceptable to the popular culture. It is a portrait which contradicts evidence, presented in the same book and in other biographies, about the beliefs, sentiments and lifestyle of the true Marie-Antoinette.

Fraser's biography of the doomed queen reads better than any the of the half-dozen novels which have emanated from it. It is a definite page-turner, with the vivid imagery yet understated style we have all come to expect from Lady Antonia. Her weaving together of historical details combines with insightful reflections about the actions of the various personages, creating a compelling "journey" into the past. Unfortunately, mingled with a careful sifting of documentation are occasional but devastating departures from solid scholarship. Romantic, lurid and unsubstantiated claims tell the reader more about contemporary views of life and morality than about Marie-Antoinette's actual situation and temperament. Such grotesque lapses amid otherwise brilliant and witty historical narrative make this book a disappointment. It is not one of the best biographies about the last queen of France.

First, let me describe what I liked and what I learned from "The Journey." Fraser gives numerous details about the charitable works of Marie-Antoinette, showing her efforts to help the unfortunate to be more extensive than I had originally conceived. Her donations and grants permeated her entire reign and indeed her entire life, dating back to childhood gifts for those in need. Generosity was not only part of her upbringing but part of her compassionate nature, of which Fraser gives copious examples.

Fraser skillfully builds a picture of the growing love between the young Louis and Marie-Antoinette. Her depiction of their early years together is not as thorough as that of Vincent Cronin in "Louis and Antoinette," and her discussion of their marital problems falls short of the ingenuous analysis of the great Simone Bertiere in "L'Insoumise." Fraser describes Louis as a fat teenager, which contradicts many contemporary accounts of his appearance, including that of the Duchess of Northumberland, who said of the Dauphin Louis-Auguste at his wedding:"The Dauphin disappointed me much. I expected him to be horrid but I really liked his aspect. He is tall and slender with a 'très intéressant' figure and he seems witty. He has a quite pale complexion and eyes. He has a mass of fair hair very well planted."

It is charming, nevertheless, how Lady Antonia concludes that the Temple of Love in the gardens of Trianon was built by Marie-Antoinette to celebrate the final consummation of her marriage in 1777, and the "bonheur essentiel," the "essential happiness," of which she wrote to her mother about her relationship with Louis XVI. Fraser speaks of an incident in which the king visits his wife at Petit Trianon and stands beneath her window, speaking tender words to her. Fraser herself concludes at the end that, overall, Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette had a good marriage, as royal marriages go.

It is the very moving and sensitive portrayal of the relationship of the royal couple that makes Lady Antonia's insistence upon the queen's mythical affair with Count Fersen a bizarre intrusion. Fraser guesses, based on no evidence but a comment from the courtesan Lady Elizabeth Foster, who was not an intimate friend of the queen's, that a liaison began in 1783 and continued for many years. She also claims that Marie-Antoinette would have slept with Fersen because it is "human nature" to give into passion. Simone Bertiere, however, surmises that the queen's respect for her husband and position alone, as well as the fear of producing illegitimate heirs to the French throne, would have been enough to keep her away from the count, including her high moral standards.

While sleeping with Fersen, Fraser claims that Marie-Antoinette was also sleeping with the king. To be shared by two men is completely at odds with the modest, prudish, innocent image of Marie-Antoinette built by Fraser in earlier chapters and by biographers such as Cronin, Delorme, Webster, and Bertiere. Fraser insists that Louis fathered all of his wife's children because Fersen would have been clever enough to use condoms. And yet she sites an instance when Fersen impregnated one of his mistresses; condoms were not always reliable. That the daughter of one of the most prolific dynasties in Europe, of a family of sixteen children, to whom children were a gift from God, would consent to any contraceptive measure in or out of the marital embrace, surpasses all reason and belief.

Bertiere mentions how Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette refrained from marital relations after the birth of baby Sophie in 1786, probably due to the queen's health and fragile emotional state. Jean Chalon relates what a difficult time it was for her - the year 1786 - Louis-Joseph's health was failing, the baby Sophie was not thriving. Marie-Antoinette, aware of the horrible calumnies being spread about herself in the wake of the Diamond Necklace scandal, declared to Madame Campan in September of 1786, "I want to die!" When Madame Campan brought her orange flower water for her nerves, she said, "No, do not love me, it is better to give me death!" She may have had post-partum depression or even suffering from a nervous breakdown.

Chalon also shows how the queen became more pious following baby Sophie's death; she gave orders that the fasts of the Church be more carefully observed at her table than previously. She began making public devotions and prayers with her household in the royal chapel. Desmond Seward relates this as well. Abstaining from the marriage bed was how practicing Catholics, then as now, spaced pregnancies for reasons of grave necessity. Artificial means of preventing conception were not an option.

Fraser writes that there is no solid evidence of the affair because Fersen was the soul of discretion. She overlooks the fact that queen had no privacy; the ambassadors Mercy and Aranda paid servants to check the royal bed linens and submitted detailed reports to their sovereigns about the private life of Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette. Fersen is not even mentioned. He was not even a concern.

As for a certain night in February 1792, when some biographers think Marie-Antoinette and Fersen may have slept together, Fraser says she "hopes so." It is obvious that to the author a rendez-vous is the panacea of all ills. Needless to say that at the time, the queen was a prisoner, heavily guarded day and night. Any secret nocturnal meetings were with a non-juring priest, so she could licitly confess and receive Communion, as Fraser also relates, once again contradicting her own testimony. Fersen was embroiled in a passionate affair with Eleonore Sullivan. It is unlikely he slept with the queen, in spite of Lady Antonia's hopes.

The most peculiar aspect of "The Journey" is contained in a foot note, in which Fraser speculates about the last Mass and Holy Communion which Marie-Antoinette may have partaken of on the eve of her trial in October, 1793. Lady Antonia writes: "With this pious story, as with the romantic one of Fersen's last love-making in the Tuileries, one cannot help hoping it is true." To place the Holy Eucharist and what it would have meant to Marie-Antoinette at the time, with her husband killed, her little son brutalized, her daughter and sister-in-law threatened with molestation and death, and herself preparing for the ordeal of a trial, on the same level as a sordid affair, pushes romanticism into the realm of blasphemy. Once again, Lady Antonia sees sex as a remedy for unhappiness, on par with the consolations of faith and religion at the hour of death.

I must admit, there is more proof that the queen had an innocent, girlish infatuation with her dear friend Madame de Polignac, than there is that she had any deep feelings for Count Fersen. The aggravating thing about the Fersen legend is that it detracts from the queen's much more interesting relationship with her husband, with her many friends and from her journey of faith.

Antonia Fraser heartrendingly describes the calm composure of the condemned queen, strengthened by a power from beyond herself. One wishes that more attention had been given to her spiritual life in a book which is powerful and mesmerizing enough without condescending to sensational tales of love affairs. I daresay that "The Journey" would have been a best seller without introducing the Fersen legend as an attempt to make Marie-Antoinette into someone to whom modern women can "relate." It drags to mediocrity a biography which would have been among the greatest.

Don't be afraid of this big-boned bio of Marie Antoinette, it has everything you need. It's elegantly paced and beautifully construed. Fraser's work is just the best. She knows when to leave a topic, when to move on. HOW to move on. This is first rate writing from a consistently fine writer. The book is sypathetic toward Marie Antoinette, on occasion even moving; Fraser illuminates from the inside out with her subjects, and we're the winners for that. The book's full of marvelous detail about court life, yet seen through new eyes, perhaps Marie Antoinette's eyes. Fraser lingers on the Queen's Austrian life before Versailles long enough to lead us to new lights about this woman's suffering on account of her extraordinary temperment. It's an altogether admirable effort. If the book seems light on Fersen, look again. His place in Marie Antoinette's life undulates through the narrative like a slow fire. This is one of the few authoritative books about Marie Antoinette that truly witnesses the mystery. Pre-Revolutionary France bleeds through the pages. Fraser writes like an entranced surgeon; her preparation, her immaculate discernment of good sources is unmatched. An essential book about astonishing things.

As in the case of her history of "Mary, Queen of Scots," Antonia Fraser has taken a much mis-understood and maligned Queen and told her story with as much clarity and understanding as possible. Used by her mother, the Empress Maria Theresa of Austria, as a pawn for European politics, Marie Antoinette was thrust into the vicious and decadent French court at an early age and had to endure years of humiliation from all sides because of her seemingly inability to produce an heir to the French throne (the Daulphin's impotence and stupidity notwithstanding). Once an heir was produced, three more children followed of which two died young. Lady Fraser is very adept at balancing Marie Antoinette's faults as well as her virtues in producing a portrait of a woman forced by circumstance to go her own way through French politics - because of this, she created many loyal friends and dangerous enemies. Her long time affair with Count Fersen as well as the diamond necklace fiasco has been told with clarity which finally puts to rest the many distortions and lies which have been handed down by less astute (and bias) historians. The final chapter is heart-rending to say the least, in which one finally glimpses Marie Antoinette's final hours in which she goes to her death serenely and forgives her enemies (the blood of Mary Stuart prevails at the end). Thank you Antonia for a truly unique reading experience.

Marie Antoinette's story is such a sad one..reading Antonia Fraser's book is like watching a video of an accident. You know how it's going to end, but the people in the story don't.

Ms. Fraser inexorably sets up the events leading to the demise of the royal family in the French Revolution. She paints a sympathetic picture of Marie Antoinette, but leaves the reader to decide if she deserved to be as reviled as she was. It is beautifully researched and well written (as are other Fraser biographies, in my opinion).

Thomas Jefferson, in Paris during the events that led up to the beheading of the Queen, said (and this is paraphrased:) "There is no doubt that there would not have been a Revolution if Marie Antoinette had not been the Queen of France." Do you agree? I'm not so sure.

One of the principal themes throughout this book is what little control Marie Antoinette actually had over her own life. Marie Antoinette was a pawn on her mother's dynastic chessboard, reacting to, rather than creating, the circumstances of her tragic life. While Marie Antoinette had her share of personal flaws like the rest of us, she was in no way the Jezebel that legend and libel has made her out to be. Although Antonia Fraser tried to remain objective ("without passion," to use her own words) throughout her biography of Marie Antoinette, the historical facts and probable scenarios she presents to us cannot help but inspire compassion for this maligned woman. Regardless of her personal flaws and lack of preparation for her role as Queen of France, Marie Antoinette did not deserve her brutal fate, i.e., the dehumanizing treatment leading up to the guillotine.

Emperor Francis I was about to leave for a long trip when he suddenly felt the urge to turn back and embrace his youngest daughter, Maria Antonia. He never returned from this trip (I think he died of food poisoning), but it was almost as if he had a premonition of the future Queen of France's cruel fate and looked upon his daughter with sympathy and love (yet with the same powerlessness that marked the life of Marie Antoinette).

Marie Antoinette has been unjustly referred to as unintelligent. I don't think that there was anything lacking in her mental facilities; however, Marie Antoinette's formal education was sporadic and incomplete, in part because her favorite governness was not much of a task master and never required her pupil to concentrate for sustained periods of time. When Marie Antoinette was put on trial (and here we see a kangeroo court if ever there was one), she responded with great mental acumen, to the point where she shocked the courtroom with her wit and self-possession. The only time she was truly fazed was when she was falsely accused of incest. After her initial shock that nothing was sacred to her accusers/no accusation was too low, Marie Antoinette responded, "I speak to all the mothers in the courtroom." This must have really hurt Marie Antoinette as motherhood was something she excelled in. If politics was not her passion or forte, child rearing was.

The real faults of Marie Antoinette were over-spending, gambling, and partying to excess. However, once Marie Antoinette became a mother, the partying winded down. Furthermore, we have to keep in mind that she was a teenager and in her very early twenties when she committed most of her follies. If she was a spendthrift, she was in good company: the whole court of Versailles lived lavishly. Marie Antoinette replaced her gambling habit with a new interest: she starred in private theatrical performances (where she most often played shepardesses or milkmaids, not lofty royals or goddesses). Antonia Fraser argues that Marie Antoinette's over-spending and partying were reactions to her actual lack of power, seven years of an unconsummated marriage, and the extreme rules of etiquette of the French court. As for her reputed licentiousness, Ms. Fraser believes that Marie Antoinette, the product of the rigid Maria Theresa and Roman Catholicism, was comparably chaste.

Antonia Fraser ends her book by tracing the history of scapegoats. From Israel to Versailles, people have wanted a target. In ancient Israel, goats were used, but during the French Revolution, a human being was used to blame for the sins and tribulations of a nation. Marie Antoinette was villified and scapegoated in a horrific way that pushed her beyond her limits. Even her husband was treated with some dignity before meeting his fate at the guillotine.

Oh, if you learn nothing more from reading Ms. Fraser's biography than this--Marie Antoinette never said, "Let them eat cake." Apparently, the etymology of this infamous remark can be traced to a queen who lived 200 years before Marie Antoinette. (And that queen may have never said this callous remark either---that just shows you the disturbing power of propaganda. If Marie Antoinette was the victim of anything, it was bad P.R. and her powerlessness to do anything about it.)

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.

Back on Sept 20, 1975, I read Stefan Zweig's biography of Marie Antoinette and said of it to myself: "Footnotes and bibliography are essential to a real biography." Since time is limited I usually do not read a second biography of a person, but when I saw Antonia Fraser's biography of Marie Antoinette I knew I would have to read it, remembering, as I did, with pleasure her great biographies of Mary Queen of Scots (read Mar 7, 1970) and of Cromwell (read June 18, 2000). This is a biography written as good biography should be written: chronologically, with footnotes and a 12-page bibliography. A touch I appreciated is that the author has visited the sites where Marie Antoinette was and tells what is to be seen there now. She even makes reference to the fantastic apparition supposedly viewed by Charlotte Anne Moberly and Eleanor Jourdain on Aug 10, 1901! This is an immensely satisfying book, and well worth the time spent reading it, IMHO.