My one tip with this biography is that I might have found it a little hard to follow if I didn’t know the basics of the history of the French Revolution. A warning that is very pertinent to the Duchess of Cambridge as Mantel suggested. It also shows the power and the danger of being a fashion-plate in the public eye. It allows the reader to make up their own mind. This biography shows both a vain and silly Queen, but also a doomed, sad woman, trapped in circumstances beyond her control and struggling for freedom in the only way she knew how. This speaks to me of extreme blindness and stupidity and putting narcissism and vanity above your and your family’s personal safety.
This raises suspicions in a minor seamstress and her tip-off was one of the factors in the failure of their escape. It was, of course, an expediency and as they planned to escape, the Queen ordered new dresses in the royal white, blacks, purples and yellows, anticipating wearing them abroad after an escape. At that time, she was wearing the colours of the revolution, blue, white and red to try to show her sympathy for the cause. The particular episode that completely eroded my sympathy for her was, in planning to escape from Paris at the beginning of the revolution, Marie Antoinette foiled her own escape in many ways. However, at other times I also felt extreme frustration. Marie Antoinette en chemise (in her simple Gaulle) by Elisabeth Vigee-Lebrun 1783 She could not win and at times, I felt huge sympathy for this tragic woman as I read the biography. Yet, when she turned to less formal styles like the gaulle, she was attacked for ruining the French silk industry. The luxury and ostentation of her court dresses and hairstyles as befitting her royal status were resented by a starving public for the waste of money and even flour (used to powder her hair). However, it was this politicisation of her dress that Marie Antoinette got so wrong. What she wore was also one of the few ways Marie Antoinette could be political in a patriarchal regime.
She was completely constrained by her circumstances in the highly formal court of Versailles and Weber charts her rebellions such as a refusal to wear a corset, her use of male riding clothes, her enormous hairstyle, the pouf, and her adoption of the unstructured dress, the gaulle. What she wore was one of the few things in her life that Marie Antoinette could control. It tells the story of Marie Antoinette, the hated Austrian Queen of France from her childhood in Vienna to her execution in Paris, through the lens of her dresses. It is a hugely original biography and an outstanding piece of work.
It was published sometime ago in 2007 and yet is one of those books that will endure I think as it’s lessons are timeless. Marie Antoinette, Queen of France by Jean-Baptiste Gautier Dagoty 1775
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