Review of Becoming Marie Antoinette, Juliet Grey

This first of three projected novels about Marie Antoinette is getting a good deal of buzz among readers and reviewers of historical fiction for its detailed portrayal of the period and its in-depth characterization of the future French Queen. In interviews Juliet Grey has pointed out that with this series she is interested in redeeming a much maligned historical figure, who, while usually portrayed as “heedless to headless” was, in fact, a much more sympathetic character. As Grey points out, the history of Marie Antoinette was written by her enemies, the victors of the French Revolution. Now there’s a new version, and it’s worth reading.

Grey begins with the ten-year-old Archduchess Maria Antonia of Austria on the day her mother, the Empress of Austria, began negotiations for the marriage of her youngest daughter to the Dauphin of France. She opens with a charming scene outdoors between “Toinette” (her family nickname), Charlotte (her favorite sister) and their governess, who is attempting to teach them French, but the girls are more interested in chasing butterflies and painting their governess’s face with their watercolors when she falls asleep in the sun. The scene has the difficult job of connecting us to a child enough so that we care about what happens to her and will read on. In this, Grey succeeds. She makes an excellent beginning in her opening sentence, “My mother liked to boast that her numerous daughters were ‘sacrices to politics.’” Other chilling details about the girls’ future roles and their mother’s demanding and distant treatment of them create a sharp contrast to the two mischievous girls whom we get to know quite intimately. They seem ordinary in their desire to distract their teacher and in the carefree way they get mud and grass stains on their silk gowns. That Toinette is clearly terrible at her lessons and can’t learn much of anything is another detail that hooks us in. How on earth is this little girl going to become a queen? Grey succeeds both in making us like this child and in causing us to worry about her.

Marie Antointette’s journey to the French throne turns out to be complicated and full of pitfalls. While this is a work of fiction, Grey has based her characterization in history while allowing herself the liberty to imagine what went on both behind closed doors and within the minds of her characters. She has written nonfiction about this period and queen, and listening to her discuss her research, I’m willing to trust that she’s constructed a legitimate “read” of this famous woman, although I’m sure the debate will continue in scholarly and historical fiction circles. Certainly Grey’s version of Marie Antoinette is engaging.

For me the strength of this book lies in Marie Antoinette’s richly developed inner world—how hard she tried to fulfill her mother’s demands, how vulnerable and unprepared she was for the gossipy, infighting French court, how much she yearned to be loved but mostly wasn’t, the bizarre but sweet relationship she shared eventually with her husband. For many people the elaborate detail about clothing, hairstyles, etiquette and court customs will be among the most delightful aspects. I have to confess that sometimes I got bogged down in the repeated dressing and hair-do scenes. Part of the point of them was to show that the young woman herself found them too much, so they served a purpose within the novel, but I sometimes wished for more plot less fashion. Marie Antoinette’s training in the Austrian court to prepare her to be an acceptable bride for the Dauphin was particularly detailed: dance steps, parlor games, walking styles, even, most astonishingly to me, braces made of gold to straighten her teeth. The reader does feel for this poor girl whose every moment seems calculated to point out her deficiencies and improve them.

We are left with a vivid portrayal of a young woman who had no control over the path her life took, having been the pawn of her mother and many French and Austrian men as they tightened and manipulated ties between the two countries. Her efforts to define her own place and role are all the more interesting against this backdrop. That she succeeds at all in “becoming Marie Antoinette” is quite remarkable, and it’s worth going along on the journey.