Marie Antoinette: The Journey

“As one analyses the internal dynamics of the Habsburgs, the idyllic picture that was promoted by Maria Teresa, which Marie Antoinette obediently remembered, takes on a very different aspect. Even the female submission that the Empress preached contrasted rather oddly with much of her own perceivable behaviour.”

Marie Antoinette’s mother, Empress Maria Theresa, was one of the most formidable women monarchs in European history. Fraser uses her to emphasize the contradictory messages about The Power of Women at Court: While women were expected to be overtly obedient to their husbands, they were expected to be subtle political operators in their own right.

“Everyone knew that a glorious future beckoned for the youngest daughter of the Empress, for as in a fairy story, hers was to be the most splendid establishment of all. Or as Maria Teresa told Marie Antoinette: ‘If one is to consider only the greatness of your position, you are the happiest of your sisters and all princesses.’”

The phrase “fairy story” emphasizes the ironic distance between the expectations of Marie Antoinette’s life and its reality. This reference to folkloric princesses whose stories have happy endings contrasts with the tragic and grim ending of Marie Antoinette’s life.

“The full panoply of Versailles was now loosed upon a central figure who, in the words of one observer, was so small and slender in her white brocade dress inflated with its vast hoops on either side that she looked ‘not above twelve.’ Yet the dignity of Marie Antoinette who had ‘the bearing of an archduchess’—the result of that rigorous grooming of her childhood, which had been the most efficient part of her education—was universally commended. And this was a place where style and grace of self-presentation were of paramount importance.”

Fraser details a key aspect of the power of women at court: appearances. It was of “paramount importance” that female courtiers, especially the dauphine, embody their titles. Not fulfilling these expectations meant being the subject of criticism from the court and public alike.

“Louis XV’s sensual romps in his private apartments with Du Barry might be devoid of spectators, but very little else in the life of Versailles went without witnesses.”

This comment alludes to contrasts between The Public and Private Lives of Royals. Life at the French court was lived in public; every day was punctuated by ceremonies that the French public was welcome to observe. However, despite this celebrity, French royals still managed to carve out private lives for themselves. For example, Madame Du Barry may have been King Louis XV’s official mistress, but their actual sexual encounters were conducted behind closed doors.

“At the heart of Marie Antoinette’s personal failure—as the Empress saw it—was her inability to inspire sexual passion in her husband. In her marriage to the heir to the throne, she represented the future, including future preferments for courtiers, as well as the present. Or did she? Nothing was quite certain about her position until the final physical act was performed that was intended to crown the Franco-Austrian alliance.”

In addition to looking and acting regal, the Dauphine Marie Antoinette had a crucial responsibility: providing the French monarchy with an heir. Her mother, Empress Maria Theresa, admonished her daughter for not doing her duty. That the blame for infertility fell on Marie Antoinette rather than her husband, Louis XVI, is indicative of the misogynistic and patriarchal culture of the time.

“Before finally retiring, the royal couple, again unusually, acknowledged the crowd by waving to them, ‘which gave great pleasure.’ Marie Antoinette reflected: ‘How fortunate we are, given our rank, to have gained the love of a whole people with such ease.’ At seventeen, it was easy for Marie Antoinette to believe that it would be a lifelong love affair.”

It is commonly believed that Marie Antoinette was immediately and universally disliked by the French public from the time of her arrival in France due to her Austrian background. However, as this passage shows, Marie Antoinette was still beloved by the public three years after her arrival.

“Suddenly the young couple, Louis Auguste and Marie Antoinette, waiting anxiously together in the dauphine’s apartments and still ignorant of what happened, heard ‘a terrible noise, exactly like thunder.’ It was the sound of rushing feet. The crowd of courtiers hanging around the antechambers of the royal deathbed had instantly deserted them when the news of the King’s decease was broken. All ran towards the rising sun, every man and woman intent on being the first to pay compliments to the new monarch and his wife.”

This passage illustrates the strange reality of life in the French court; as soon as King Louis XV died, Louis Auguste was hailed as the new king of France. Fraser characterizes him as “the rising sun,” implying that everything at the French court revolved around the king, who was the sun of the solar system of the court. The phrase also alludes to his great-grandfather Louis XIV, the “Sun King” who built the chateau at Versailles.

“Now, if at all, during the period of the Flour War, was the occasion when Marie Antoinette might have uttered the notorious phrase: ‘Let them eat cake’ (Qu’ils mangent de la brioche). Instead, she indulged to her mother in a piece of reflection on the duties of royalty. Its tenor was the exact opposite of that phrase, at once callous and ignorant, so often ascribed to her. ‘It is quite certain,’ she wrote, ‘that in seeing the people who treat us so well despite their own misfortune, we are more obliged than ever to work hard for their happiness.’”

Fraser quotes Marie Antoinette’s letters to illustrate the queen’s sympathy for the challenges the people of France faced and her understanding of the immense responsibility of her role. This is persuasive primary documentary evidence that Marie Antoinette was not as callous and cruel as the myth of the “notorious phrase” would suggest.

“What the Emperor called ‘the great work’ was accomplished shortly before the King’s twenty-third birthday. On 30 August, no longer an unhappy woman, an ecstatic Queen was able to write to her mother about her feelings of joy—‘the most essential happiness of my entire life’—beginning eight days ago. This ‘proof’ of the King’s love had now been repeated and ‘even more completely than the first time.’”

As noted elsewhere, Marie Antoinette’s primary responsibility as queen consort was to provide an heir to the French throne. The prospect of fulfilling this duty once King Louis XVI had accomplished “the great work”—learning to ejaculate inside her vagina so as to cause pregnancy—filled her with “joy.” The frankness with which Marie Antoinette communicated with her mother about her sex life is understandable in the context of the geopolitical matters that depended on it.

“Her first reported words on the subject were touching in their unconscious reflection on the fate of a princess in a patriarchal society: ‘Poor little girl, you are not what was desired, but you are no less dear to me on that account. A son would have been the property of the state. You shall be mine; you shall have my undivided care; you will share all my happinesses and you will alleviate my sufferings.’”

This account of Marie Antoinette’s first words about the birth of her eldest daughter, Marie Thérèse, is likely apocryphal or at least highly stylized. Fraser gives as a source the contemporaneous journal of the Duc of Croÿ and the memoir of a chamber maid. However, the sentiment expressed accurately reflects the relative unimportance of women in the French court and the undesirability of princesses compared to princes. It also reflects Marie Antoinette’s well-documented love for and devotion to her children.

“For like the rest of Europe, royalties not excepted, Marie Antoinette had a growing belief in the right to some kind of personal privacy. The contrast between the magnificent state rooms and the network of poky little cabinets or private rooms behind them (which is so striking to the modern visitor to Versailles) represented a chasm between two worlds.”

The museum at Versailles offers visitors a physical representation of the public and private lives of royals. The rooms where public ceremonies were held are large and sumptuously decorated, while private rooms are small and relatively modest. The façade of wealth hid the financial challenges facing the country.

“Where the Queen scored small victories, it was because these ministers had decided to avoid unnecessary confrontation. Significantly, Mercy still complained of the Queen’s lack of a really intelligent commitment to politics. Her general, rather vague, benevolent attitude to patronage led her rather to please those she liked than think the matter through.”

Despite her overall sympathetic portrait of Marie Antoinette, Fraser notes periodically that, like King Louis XIV, Marie Antoinette lacked political acumen, seeking instead to please—an assertion here undergirded by the writings of the Austrian ambassador, the Comte de Mercy. However, more contemporary scholarship, such as John Hardman’s Marie Antoinette: The Making of a French Queen (2020), suggests that Marie Antoinette had more political acumen than generally assumed.

“Inside, the Queen herself was still unaware of the sex of her baby, and imagined from the profound silence around her that it must be another girl. It was the King himself who broke the news. These were his words, as he wrote them down: ‘Madame, you have fulfilled our wishes and those of France, you are the mother of a Dauphin.’”

After a decade of being the wife of Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette finally fulfills her key duty: She gives birth to an heir to the French throne. For a queen, the birth of a child was not only a moment of personal joy, but also had public ramifications—as Louis points out when he notes that she has specifically fulfilled the wishes of “France” as a whole.

“In time his sweetness, his lively winning ways and, above all, robust physique which gave such promise for the future, would make Louis Charles the chief source of pleasure in Marie Antoinette’s life. His very presence would later remind her of the days when Yolande had been his Governess and they had all been happy together.”

Fraser foreshadows the tragedy that would soon befall Marie Antoinette and her family. Noting how happy Marie Antoinette’s son Louis Charles made her, she indicates that soon Marie Antionette’s close friend and his governess, Yolande, would be sent away due to the violence of the French Revolution. This construction makes the passage bittersweet.

“This indignation based on genuine ignorance, these raised passions, felt by both sides, were present in the Diamond Necklace Affair from the beginning and were to have a devastating effect on its course. The enormous gap between their two perceptions of reality, Queen and Cardinal, might indeed have made the whole matter material for a farce—except that in both cases, it turned out to be a tragedy.”

In most contemporary accounts, the Diamond Necklace Affair is indeed described as a “farce.” Fraser counters this approach by arguing that it was a “tragedy” that furthered the negative public opinion of Marie Antoinette.

“Marie Antoinette was now being hissed at the Opera by the people of Paris. Once Gluck’s line, ‘Let us sing, let us celebrate our Queen’ had been interrupted by popular enthusiasm; it was now the terrible invocation in Racine’s Athalie—‘Confound this cruel Queen…’—that received the wild applause.”

Racine was a noted 17th-century French playwright. His 1691 play Athalie tells the Old Testament story of Queen Athaliah, who killed all of the prospective heirs to the throne. The audience’s association of Marie Antoinette with this filicidal figure indicates how much public opinion had turned against the queen.

“Marie Antoinette was beginning to feel ill-fated, even doomed. She could no longer maintain that elegant, studied indifference to the insults dealt out to her both in print and when she appeared in public. The Queen was forced to appreciate the horrible malign power of such things. The contrast between the wicked Messalina of the public imagination and the benevolent mother-figure of her own was becoming too painful to be ignored.”

Messalina, the wife of an ancient Roman Emperor Claudius, was known both for her promiscuity and for conspiring against her husband. As Messalina was put to death for these alleged wrongdoings, she is an apt historical analogy for Marie Antoinette, who faced similar public charges and had a similarly deadly fate.

“Henceforward Versailles, the chateau out of whose windows eager spectators had watched the arrival of the young Dauphine nearly twenty years ago, would have the desolate air of a place fallen under a spell.”

Fraser occasionally uses figurative language to depict historical events. Here, she describes the abandoned chateau of Versailles as a fairy tale castle that had the “air of a place fallen under a spell.” This allusion to folkloric magic recalls the earlier comparison of Marie Antoinette’s life to a “fairy story” (39).

“If these assaults on the Queen were nothing new, those on the King marked a distinct, and distinctly disagreeable, development in his relationship with those ‘children,’ his subjects. Whatever the provocation, whatever the fudging, Louis XVI had tried to deceive the nation—and had been found out.”

Following King Louis XVI’s attempt to flee France, opinion turned against him. Previously, public ire had been focused on Marie Antoinette. Now, the people interpreted his actions as an attempt to abandon his country and his responsibilities—a betrayal as serious as that of a father abandoning his “children.”

“In fact Marie Antoinette understood Austria to be embarking on a mission to rescue the French royal family, not as a war of aggression to add territory to the Austrian Empire at France’s expense. The latter project was unacceptable: she told the Dauphin’s valet Hüe firmly, for her ‘the interests of France’ came first—‘before everything.’”

This passage subtly illustrates Marie Antoinette’s terrible political instincts and understanding. She thought, naively, that her family in Austria was doing whatever they could to rescue her, despite all indications that this was not the case. Further, she thought that Austria’s invasion of France was for her sake, when in fact it was merely a reprisal of the French-Habsburg rivalry that had endured for centuries.

“Paris became one huge abattoir, its gutters filled with the corpses of the Swiss, stripped naked and often mutilated. Traumatized wayfarers saw men kneeling in the streets and pleading for mercy before being beaten to death.”

Fraser writes vividly, if briefly, about the spectacular violence of the French Revolution. Although she is not interested in dwelling on the lurid details of the gory proceedings, she here uses hyperbolic language to drive home the point that the mob was an almost indiscriminate killing machine by describing Paris as “one huge abattoir,” or slaughterhouse.

“A new pamphlet, Le Ménage royal en déroute, whose subtitle was ‘Open war between Louis XVI and his wife,’ had the drunken King beating up his wife, that ‘sacrée’ bitch.”

A key element of The Revolution’s Impact on the Royal Family was the proliferation of libelles, precursors to tabloids, which contained scandalous exaggerated stories about the royal family. This passage shows the crudity and cruelty of the language and images of libelles, which thrived on sensationalizing events and portraying “The Royal Household in Disarray.”

“So the head of Antoinette, desired by Hébert, was cut off cleanly at twelve-fifteen on Wednesday, 16 October 1793, and exhibited to a joyous public. An unhinged man, who got under the scaffold and tried to bathe his handkerchief in the royal blood, was quickly taken away by the gendarmes.”

Fraser describes in vivid terms Marie Antoinette’s death. Although Fraser characterizes the man attempting to dip his handkerchief in Marie Antoinette’s blood as “unhinged,” this was relatively common practice at public executions during the French Revolution, especially those of the nobility.