you say you want a revolution 2/27/2007

Even her beloved pug Mops was not allowed to accompany her to France.

I finally finished reading Antonia Fraser’s biography of Marie Antoinette (yes, all 500 pages). I really enjoyed it. Fraser takes a decidedly different tack, overwhelmingly sympathetic, which Sofia Coppola obviously picked up on in the film. I enjoyed the film so much I decided to read the biography, and was really surprised at how little Coppola had to invent. The elaborate handing over ceremonies as Marie Antoine of Austria became the Dauphine of France, which involved the above quote, the future Queen snapping “this is ridiculous” as people barge in on her levée, leaving her naked and cold in front of throngs of people, the romance with Swedish nobleman Count Fersen, the problems with consummating her marriage to the heavily built, clumsy, myopic but inoffensive Louis XVI (though nowhere in the biography does it mention her asking him about his hobby of clock-making)—all this, true.

With the rock soundtrack, Coppola was trying to envision Marie Antoinette as a party-girl princess. This is mildly inaccurate (as was Johnny Depp saying pirates were the rock stars of the 18th century) but what Coppola does get right is capturing Marie Antoinette’s teenager-ness. She brings her concerns into a perspective that we can identify with and sympathize this. Poor little rich girl—and yet the angling as she is at the crossroads of Austrian/French political maneuvering, the incessant demand put upon her to produce an heir when her husband just isn’t interested in impregnating her, all of this gearing up for her strength toward the end of her life (which Coppola’s film barely touches).

I think Fraser is almost too determined to have us identify with Marie Antoinette. No, she didn’t say the “let them eat cake” thing, and she never asked for the huge diamond necklace implicated in “the Diamond Necklace Affair.” If she had affairs it was probably only with one man over the course of her life (Fersen), whereas the French precedent was much more profligate, and she probably wasn’t a lesbian either. But particularly in her youth, she was flighty and spent excessively. There is a huge divide between the Austrian princess and the fisherwomen who by custom were let into Versailles to harangue the royal couple. Can Marie Antoinette be held accountable for this divide? For not trying to abolish it?

I didn’t expect to sympathize with M A as much as I did by the end of the book (during which I got teary-eyed; trying going back and forth between this and Recovery and you’re bound to be weepy). Coppola wisely focused her film on M A the princess and early queen, rather than get beyond the storming of Versailles, though her last scene is brilliantly chilling. This is another story entirely, and it makes me think of Richard II’s fall from all he is ever accustomed to (who I sympathize with too). Perhaps M A more than any other royal was victim of bad press. It’s easy to get worked up over the Dauphin who died when he was 7. I think people are less inclined to sympathize with M A’s trip to the guillotine (though I think she suffered a lot more in prison than she did going to her actual death).

Nevertheless, as with most things, I tend to look at things from both sides. I’ve always been fascinated with the French Revolution, and of course the plight of the Third Estate was miserable. Things had to change. I’m fascinated with the personalities of the Revolution—Danton, that bull-like orator, a bit brutal and quite the ladies’ man; Marat, the Gollum of his time, bloodthirsty and his influence already beginning to wane by the time the misguided Corday got to him; Desmoulins and St Just, a bit idealistic and Romantic; and my personal favorite, Robespierre. Now why on Earth you might ask would Robespierre be my favorite? Perhaps more accurately he’s the one who interests me the most and has been since Ronan Vibert portrayed him in The Scarlet Pimpernel. He was so unfussed by killing loads of people. Perhaps I like the contrast of that with the fact he couldn’t see blood without fainting! As fastidious as the nobles he was executing, and a brilliant young lawyer from Arras . . . Anyway, I enjoyed seeing the Revolution from the other side of the coin.

I remember being moved, too, when I saw some of the last things and portraits belonging to the royal family when I visited Paris’ Musée Carnavalet. I recall once I watched Quills with my friends Johanna and Ashleigh, and I was saying “God, I love the French Revolution” just as someone was getting guillotined. It didn’t come out quite like I meant it—I mean as a period it just fascinates me for some reason.