1 post tagged “history”
Known for her decadent lifestyle and unenviable death rather than
for any great accomplishment, Marie Antoinette seems a frivolous and
unsympathetic figure to read about (much less write a really long blog
entry about), but Antonia Fraser's Marie Antoinette: The Journey
does a nice job of presenting the famous queen as all too human.
Fraser convincingly portrays Marie Antoinette as a woman doomed from the
start by her birth, by political circumstance, and the lack of training
and care she received in her early life to prepare her for what she
would face as an adult and queen. Despite her position and lineage,
Marie Antoinette was never equipped to turn the tide of history. She
and her husband, the indecisive Louis XVI, are a good example of why
monarchies are bad ideas - not that our current political system is
working so well or justly right now.
While Fraser glosses over the the poverty, the hunger, and the political pressures which led to the French Revolution, she points out that it was a system and way of life that was collapsing and not the actions of an individual, even a queen, which brought about the gross inequalities between the nobility and the masses. The excessive and extravagant customs of the ancien regime were a way of life that Marie Antoinette came to as a follower of her new country's customs rather than as a leader. Although the revolutionaries blamed her for a multitude of sins, Fraser provides ample evidence to show that Marie Antoinette was securely locked out of policymaking because of her status as a woman and foreigner (she is a Hapsburg). She is easy to blame for political decisions she never brought about because she is a highly visible foreigner, a daughter of the powerful Empress Maria Teresa, easy to scapegoat as the ultimate Other for the French to demonize.
One quick note: she probably never uttered the words "Let them eat cake!" with regard to the poor during a famine. It was a statement often attributed to various princesses married to the nobility of other countries. The story was used even a century before Marie Antoinette came to France to describe Louis XIV's wife. Marie Antoinette is just the most famous of the accused.
Fraser argues that Marie Antoinette just wanted to please the people around her and to have a family. Because of her birth and her marriage, she was thrust into a political position she was ill-equipped to handle - and what was needed was someone with a politically adept and delicate hand. Granted, anyone labeled a despot would probably be defended along similar lines, but she was locked out politically. French queens, because they were often foreigners from countries with whom France might have only an uneasy alliance with, were in powerful positions because of their access to the king but were actively discouraged from trying to wield political power and also distrusted. Although she spent a lot of money, Marie Antoinette was far from alone in this at that time and the decadence had been typical of the French court for generations. More to the point, the French Revolution was about more than one woman's shopping habits.
Much of the book is filled with the elaborate court life of Versailles, but the barbarous events that punctuated Marie Antoinette's life get their due as well. One of the most horrific stories in the book was the execution of the Princess Lamballe, Marie Antoinette's earliest and one of her most closest confidantes. The Princess Lamballe dies brutally. She is hit with hammers, her corpse (at least one hopes the hammers provided a quick death) violated, beheaded, savagely torn apart, and her various body parts paraded around Paris by an angry and still bloodthirsty mob. Along the way, they drop her head off for a wax molding by the lady who would become Madame Tussaud (and who was a friend of the Princess) and later on to get the head's hair dressed before bringing it to Marie Antoinette so they can demand the queen to bestow a parting kiss to her friend. I shared this story with my husband and since then, he has been faintly discouraging of my reading.
While Fraser glosses over the the poverty, the hunger, and the political pressures which led to the French Revolution, she points out that it was a system and way of life that was collapsing and not the actions of an individual, even a queen, which brought about the gross inequalities between the nobility and the masses. The excessive and extravagant customs of the ancien regime were a way of life that Marie Antoinette came to as a follower of her new country's customs rather than as a leader. Although the revolutionaries blamed her for a multitude of sins, Fraser provides ample evidence to show that Marie Antoinette was securely locked out of policymaking because of her status as a woman and foreigner (she is a Hapsburg). She is easy to blame for political decisions she never brought about because she is a highly visible foreigner, a daughter of the powerful Empress Maria Teresa, easy to scapegoat as the ultimate Other for the French to demonize.
One quick note: she probably never uttered the words "Let them eat cake!" with regard to the poor during a famine. It was a statement often attributed to various princesses married to the nobility of other countries. The story was used even a century before Marie Antoinette came to France to describe Louis XIV's wife. Marie Antoinette is just the most famous of the accused.
Fraser argues that Marie Antoinette just wanted to please the people around her and to have a family. Because of her birth and her marriage, she was thrust into a political position she was ill-equipped to handle - and what was needed was someone with a politically adept and delicate hand. Granted, anyone labeled a despot would probably be defended along similar lines, but she was locked out politically. French queens, because they were often foreigners from countries with whom France might have only an uneasy alliance with, were in powerful positions because of their access to the king but were actively discouraged from trying to wield political power and also distrusted. Although she spent a lot of money, Marie Antoinette was far from alone in this at that time and the decadence had been typical of the French court for generations. More to the point, the French Revolution was about more than one woman's shopping habits.
Much of the book is filled with the elaborate court life of Versailles, but the barbarous events that punctuated Marie Antoinette's life get their due as well. One of the most horrific stories in the book was the execution of the Princess Lamballe, Marie Antoinette's earliest and one of her most closest confidantes. The Princess Lamballe dies brutally. She is hit with hammers, her corpse (at least one hopes the hammers provided a quick death) violated, beheaded, savagely torn apart, and her various body parts paraded around Paris by an angry and still bloodthirsty mob. Along the way, they drop her head off for a wax molding by the lady who would become Madame Tussaud (and who was a friend of the Princess) and later on to get the head's hair dressed before bringing it to Marie Antoinette so they can demand the queen to bestow a parting kiss to her friend. I shared this story with my husband and since then, he has been faintly discouraging of my reading.
In the end, I couldn't help but admire Marie Antoinette a little - don't be silly, not for her style - but for the courage with which she faced the violent years of her later life. While the mobs would several times over the years demand her head or threaten to tear out her intestines (an all too real fate as her friends' deaths made clear), she would consistently place the safety of her family first. She would place her apartments in the more vulnerable and less secure areas of a building - usually the ground floor while her family was above - so that if the mob stormed past the guards, which they did at one point (the guards were ripped to shreds), they would only get her and not have as much a chance to harm her family. When faced with the most savage and brutal fates, Marie Antoinette showed admirable personal courage, and I think how one meets death should hold some weight in measuring a person's character.
