Marie Antoinette: The Portrait of an Average Woman (Grove Great Lives) [Paperback]

Stefan Zweig (Author), Cedar Paul (Translator), Eden Paul (Translator)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 8, 2002 | Series: Grove Great Lives

Life at the court of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette has long captivated readers, drawn by accounts of the intrigues and pageantry that came to such a sudden and unexpected end. Stefan Zweig's Marie Antoinette: The Portrait of an Average Woman is a dramatic account of the guillotine's most famous victim, from the time when as a fourteen-year-old she took Versailles by storm, to her frustrations with her aloof husband, her passionate love affair with the Swedish Count von Fersen, and ultimately to the chaos of the French Revolution and the savagery of the Terror. An impassioned narrative, Zweig's biography focuses on the human emotions of the participants and victims of the French Revolution, making it both an engrossingly compelling read and a sweeping and informative history.
"Certainly no one can arise unmoved from the reading of this powerful work." -- The New Republic
"Excellent biography." -- The New York Times

Editorial Reviews

Language Notes

Text: English (translation)
Original Language: German

About the Author

Stefan Zweig (born November 28, 1881, Vienna, Austria – died February 22, 1942, Petrópolis, Brazil), was an Austrian novelist, playwright, journalist and biographer was one of the most successful and popular authors of the 20th Century. Although he wrote in German, his works were translated into English and several other languages. Zweig was a prolific writer. In the 1930s he was one of the most widely translated authors in the world. His extensive travels led him to India, Africa, North and Central America, and Russia. Zweig's friends included Maksim Gorky, Rainer Maria Rilke, Auguste Rodin, and Arturo Toscanini. Strangely, at the peak of his popularity and having just completed his autobiography while still working on four other books, Zweig committed suicide in Brazil with his new wife by them both taking poison. In 1939, he had married Charlotte Altmann, his secretary from 1933. She was twenty-seven years his junior. Zweig left a suicide note stating that he had done so because of the Nazi takeover of his country of Austria and because Europe was destroying itself with World War II that was taking place.

Product Details

• Paperback: 496 pages
• Publisher: Grove Press (July 8, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0802139094
• ISBN-13: 978-0802139092
• Product Dimensions: 6 x 1.3 x 9.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #276,122 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #11 in Books > Biographies & Memoirs > People, A-Z > ( A ) > Antoinette, Marie

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

30 of 30 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars surreal and magnificent May 23, 2001

By Pascal Tiscali

Format:Paperback

This book is the perfect introduction to the French revolution. It presents a 'visual guided tour' of the life and death of the tragic queen Marie Antoinette. Written in 1932 by the Viennese Jewish novelist and professional biographer Stephan Zweig, the book dips fairly deeply into psychoanalytical thinking, and sometimes the veneration given to Freudian ideas can seem questionable by today's standards. However, the scholarship is truly masterful, and draws on extensive research into the letters and diaries of the most minor characters, without sacrificing narrative style or readability. Zweig writes books that move swiftly, but are rich in detail, and could repay a second reading.

Married at fifteen, crowned queen at nineteen, and beheaded at thirty-seven, Marie Antoinette went from the heights of heedless frivolity into the depths of isolation and despair. Zweig argues that she converted the arrogance and narcissism of her early years as the "queen of rococo", into a brave and selfless defense of the aristocratic lost cause. Surrounded by the mounting violence and insanity of the revolution, which mirrored the earlier unreason of a decadent aristocracy, she was stripped of her power and prestige, but passionately refused to surrender her honor. In the end the force of her character vindicated the nobility which her years of frivolity had discredited. But it was too late, the damage had been done, and she more than any other was the symbol against which the revolution was fought.

Independent of the historical significance of the topic, this book is magnificently written, it moves at a rapid and exciting pace, and it contains many deep moral lessons. The Freudian prejudices of the author should be borne in mind, but in some ways they add to the phenomenal drama this book evokes.

31 of 34 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars The story of a Woman October 15, 2001

By E. Villarreal

Format:Paperback

Marie Antoinette... many things go through one's mind when thinking of that name. Many say she was cruel, pampered, and spoiled, and that she was the main couse of the French Revolution, yet, she was just a woman, a woman born a princess in the Austrian court, married to a French boy whom she had never met by the age of 15, crowned by 19, and beheaded by 35.

Life went by so fast by Marie Antoinette!!, and never gave her a chance to choose what she wanted out of it.

Stefan Zweig is a marvelous writer, and manages to gives us an intimate portrait of at times very hated, at others very loved and admired woman, an ordinary person who only wished for a normal life with her family, a little place of her own, where she didn't have to adjust and adapt to the many different rules impossed on her.

He describes the life of the French court as only he could, and you feel like you are part of the story, hearing about Versailles, Louvre, the revolution and the people involved, which makes this an excellent book to learn about history, about life in the French court, and about France's last great queen.

So, was she cruel, spoiled, and ignorant? read and decide for yourself....

12 of 14 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars An average woman in exceptional circumstances August 1, 2001

By A. Wells

Format:Textbook Binding

Zweig's biography is so fascinating, I can't believe it's been allowed to go out of print. He does a remarkable job of delineating a light-headed, pleasureseeking woman who was thrust into circumstances she couldn't have anticipated or coped with. Marie Antoinette becomes a real woman, not a figurehead or a scapegoat. No one could ask for anything less.