Book #9: Marie Antoinette: The Journey by Antonia Fraser

I vividly remember when I picked this book up at the Durham Library annual book sale and bought it on a whim. It was a total judging a book by its cover--I think the pink made it seem like it was less hefty than it was--and it's sat on my bookshelves for the last 3-4 years with me feeling bad about not having read it. One of my goals for this year was to read ten books which I own without having read, though, and so I finally made it through this one. (And now I am planning to go sell a bunch of these books to Half Price Books, including this one, because I don't see myself reading it again--although I enjoyed it.)

This is a very well-researched and interesting biography of Marie Antoinette, starting with her parents and childhood and ending, obviously, with her execution during the French Revolution. The fact of the book--which Fraser starts with on the very first page--is that Marie Antoinette actually DID NOT say, "Let them eat cake" like everyone thinks. That quote was already floating around as some other princess having said it, centuries before Marie Antoinette was in power, so there's no way it was actually from her. The other reason that she never said it was because it would have been totally out of her character, because she was sympathetic to the poor and concerned about their plight (but not enough to cut back on her expenses or lifestyle). Fraser gives a very sympathetic view of Marie Antoinette and shows that she was actually a relatively good, kind person, who ended up in the wrong place at the wrong time, thanks to her mother's (the Empress of Austria) over-reaching ambitions and attempts to use her as a pawn in a treaty between Austria and France through her marriage to Louis XVI. Marie Antoinette was only fourteen when she was shipped off to France as a bride, and she was obviously immature and unfamiliar with the customs of that court and her role there. She was not very smart (it seems) and never truly grasped her role as the go-between Austria and France (as it was intended when her mother shipped her over there) vs. her role as the Queen of France. She was also very expensive, spending millions of livre a year on clothes and re-furnishing apartments--but, as Fraser is always careful to point out, she wasn't any more spendy than any of the other aristocrats of her time. She was actually in between a rock and a hard place, because it was part of her role as the Queen of France that she look and act the part and uphold a lifestyle that the people expected, but they also resented it for her as well. But she was a good and dedicated mother, and she developed a lot of courage and backbone through the years of trial and struggle leading up to her execution. It is obvious through reading about the last few years of her life that she was unfairly mistreated and given no chance to defend herself, that the people were determined to kill her without any evidence. One of the most heart-wrenching things to me was that they took her son away from her and brainwashed him against her to get him to accuse her of incest during her trial--and after everything else she had suffered, that seemed like it was probably the final straw, because she had always cared first and foremost about her children and their well-being. Every single witness to her execution talked about how brave and quiet she was walking to the guillotine.

This book was very interesting, but it was hard to keep track of all the people and there wasn't enough explanation of all the major goings-on of the French government and the Revolution (Fraser expected you to already know what was coming). But it was easy enough to skim along and get the main points. It started to drag once they got arrested, but I really enjoyed the first half of the book and learning about the court of Versailles and their customs and outrageous lifestyle they had there. Overall, definitely a worthwhile read--but it was a hefty book and I don't think I'm going to read it again.