Marie Antoinette: The Journey FROM OUR EDITORS
The Barnes & Noble Review
Was she a sexual predator, political meddler, wastrel, and traitor? Or was she a scapegoat for a corrupt and bankrupt nation, who went with superb dignity to the guillotine, the victim of a vindictive judicial murder? The tragic life of Marie Antoinette, rich in conflicting detail, remains a biographer's challenge, and Antonia Fraser's richly human yet evenhanded account is a reader's delight.
In 1770, Marie Antoinette, aged 14, wed the awkward 16-year-old who in 1774 became Louis XVI. The marriage was intended to strengthen the Austrian-French alliance and produce sons to continue it. Marie Antoinette was of little use in the first endeavor; she lacked political power. Louis was of only occasional help in the second; he suffered from phimosis, an inhibiting physical condition. While the pair wandered through their doomed lives, fury built up in bankrupt France, exploding in the ferocity of the Revolution.
Everybody criticized Marie, who was known both as l'Autrichienne (the Austrian woman) and l'autruche chienne (the ostrich bitch). She was regarded as extravagant ("Madame Deficit"), pro-Austrian, and childless for too long. But, as Fraser demonstrates, Versailles demanded extravagance, and in politics Marie Antoinette was more pawn than player, pushed by wily Austrian diplomats and blocked by shrewd French ministers.
Fraser draws upon a huge range of sources to present a dazzling cast. Mozart, Gluck, Jefferson, Paine, Franklin and numerous others cross her pages. Fersen, the queen's discreet, devoted Swedish lover, looms large. The author succeeds brilliantly in describing how the once-vibrant Marie and the decent, despised, and irresolute Louis transformed themselves as the Revolution took its murderous course. Love of family gave them courage; love of France gave them nobility.
The horrific fate of Marie Antoinette, physically abused by the canaille, viciously libeled by the blood-soaked false prophets of liberty who condemned her, reminds the reader of just how thin the veneer of civilization is -- and how often revolutionaries are worse than those they condemn. Excellent illustrations and an extensive bibliography add to Fraser's fine book. Enthusiasts hungry for more can try Evelyne Lever's "martyred queen" portrait (Marie Antoinette: A Biography) and Chantal Thomas's analysis (The Wicked Queen), both now available in translation. (Peter Skinner)
Peter Skinner lives in New York City.
ANNOTATION
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 queenﾽs 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.
FROM THE PUBLISHER
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.
Asthese 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 Antoinetteis 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.
SYNOPSIS
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.
FROM THE CRITICS
Romantic Times
Fraser paints a more sympathetic portrait than some and more even-handed than others. She manages to balance Marie's life and the times to this reader's delight. Well-written and scrupulously researched.
Washington Post Book World
In the hands of a vivid writer with a flair for fascinating detail, Versailles comes alive.
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. It's a BOMC, History Book Club, Literary Guild and QPB selection. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.
KLIATT
Vivid prose and exhaustive research make memorable Fraser's biography of the doomed Austrian Archduchesse Maria Antonia Josepha Joanna, known as Antoine to her family and Marie Antoinette to the ages. The 15th child of Marie Theresa, Queen-Empress of Austria, and the youngest of eight sisters, all sharing the name Maria, little Antoine was to make a long and tragic journey from sheltered and ill-tutored child to 14-year-old wife of French Dauphin Louis Auguste, the future Louis XVI, to mother, to reviled and maligned queen, to a prematurely aged woman of 38, bound and shorn, being carted to the guillotine. Fraser dispels some of the more flagrant calumnies directed at the queen, such as her involvement in the affair of the Diamond Necklace, and her purported callous "let them eat cake" statement, which story, Fraser points out, was first told about the Spanish princess who married Louis IV some 100 years earlier. She makes a convincing case for Marie Antoinette's designation by the press, the politicians and Court intrigue as scapegoat not only for the ills of an economically troubled nation, but for the entire French Revolution as well. There are numerous illustrations, both b/w and color plates, genealogical charts, an abridged list of sources (which nevertheless runs to 12 pages), and an exhaustive index. Literally hundreds of books have been written about Marie Antoinette, and Fraser's contribution is a relevant, compassionate and accessible portrait of the woman. A solid as well as entertaining read. KLIATT Codes: SAﾽRecommended for senior high school students, advanced students, and adults. 2001, Random House, Anchor, 511p. illus. notes. bibliog. index., Boatner
Library Journal
Fraser (Mary Queen of Scots) has written an exciting biography of a young Austrian woman named Marie Antoinette, the future bride of a future king of France, during a period of increasing political unrest. This volume moves quickly, but not without the most interesting of historical detail, through the courts of Austria and France. Marie Antoinette was the bride at 14 to Louis Auguste, her senior by just over a year; they both lacked the maturity for marriage, let alone the political leadership to command a European power. Fraser leads us through the daily lives of the two young people constantly before the public eye; from the planned marriage we move into an era of political and social revolution, knowing what the final violent outcome will be yet hoping for a different end. A well-researched biography that may cause one to rethink the role in which history has cast Marie Antoinette, this complements but doesn't replace Evelyne Lever's slightly less sympathetic Marie Antoinette: The Last Queen of France. Highly recommended for academic and public libraries. Bruce H. Webb, Clarion Univ. of Pennsylvania Lib. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.
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