Marie Antoinette:
The Portrait of a Misunderstood Woman
Melissa Ford
History 299
March 25, 2009
2
From the moment she first arrived at the French Court in 1770 to marry the future French
King, Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette was doomed to become one of the most criticized women of
the eighteenth century. Originally an Archduchess of Austria, Marie Antoinette’s welcome to
France consisted of scorn and ridicule that ultimately resulted in a contorted image of the then
fifteen year old girl. Over time, and through lack of analysis by historians, the biased view of
Marie Antoinette, placed upon her by the French elite, became ingrained in general thought.
Thus, in order to prove Marie Antoinette’s generosity and kindness, the primary documents
written about the Queen have to be placed back into the context from which they were written.
This paper seeks to prove that because of their fear of foreigners, discrimination, and negative
ideas of women in politics, the French Court and the Revolutionaries damaged Marie
Antoinette’s image and reputation to the point that the citizens, as well as many future historians,
and thus, future generations, came to share their opinion.
Though the works produced about Marie Antoinette have consistently reiterated the
belief that she behaved flippantly, recent trends show that historians, particularly female ones,
believe that Marie Antoinette was grossly misinterpreted. Such male historians as Hilaire Belloc
and Andre Castelot, in their respective biographies, Marie Antoinette (1924) and Queen of
France: A Biography of Marie Antoinette (1957) continued a trend of refusing agency to Marie
Antoinette, proclaiming instead that her selfishness and inability to control her own fate led to
her ruin.1 As time progressed, Desmond Seward and Joan Haslip, in their biographies, Marie
Antoinette (1981) and Marie Antoinette (1987) became the first historians to give her back her
Hilaire Belloc, Marie Antoinette (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1924), 527; Andre Castelot, Queen of
France: A Biography of Marie Antoinette, trans. Denise Folliot (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1957), ix.
1
3
agency and take a more personal approach in analyzing the Queen.2 In the last few years,
historians have once again taken a different approach in viewing Marie Antoinette. No longer
caring about her agency, Lynn Hunt, in her article “The Many Bodies of Marie Antoinette:
Political Pornography and the Problem of the Feminine in the French Revolution,” (2006), looks
at Marie Antoinette as a symbol which the Jacobin’s used to destroy any attempts of females to
play a public and political role.3 Thus, in connecting Hunt’s theories to Seward’s and Haslip’s
approach, Marie Antoinette’s misrepresentation is displayed.
The displeasure and fear with which French citizens regarded Austria disadvantaged
Marie Antoinette before she entered France. In 1763, the Seven Years’ War ended in humiliating
defeat for France. The French resented Austria’s claim on resources sorely needed by France to
defend its colonial empire.4 The disgust of the Austrians, brought about in part by the Seven
Years’ War, eventually resulted in the hatred of the family that ruled it. Lavicomterie de SaintSamson, a Jacobin leader, declared, “If there was ever on earth a dynasty fatal to and destructive
of the human race, it was without contradiction the infamous house of Austria.” The French
citizens also bemoaned what they considered as “feminine” techniques in gaining superiority—
that of corruption, gifts, and the marrying of daughters to foreign princes.5 Thus, in this
atmosphere, Marie Antoinette, an Austrian princess of the Habsburg family, entered into union
with the dauphin Louis-Auguste, a move meant to strengthen the Austrian-French alliance.
Desmond Seward, Marie Antoinette (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1981), 12-13; Joan Haslip, Marie
Antoinette (New York: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1987), xi.
2
Lynn Hunt, “The Many Bodies of Marie Antoinette: Political Pornography and the Problem of the
Feminine in the French Revolution,” in The French Revolution: Recent Debates and New Controversies, ed. Gary
Kates (New York: Routledge, 2006), 204-205.
3
4
Thomas E. Kaiser, “From the Austrian Committee to the Foreign Plot: Marie-Antoinette, Austrophobia,
and the Terror,” French Historical Studies 26, no. 4 (Fall 2003): 585-586, http://muse.jhu.edu.ezproxy.umw.edu
:2048/journals/french_historical_studies/v026/26.4kaiser.pdf (accessed 3/31/09).
5
Kaiser, “From the Austrian Committee to the Foreign Plot,” 590.
4
Almost immediately, Marie Antoinette found herself subject to suspicion and prejudice.
Princess Lamballe, a favorite and intimate friend to the Queen, further expressed this hostility in
her journal, Secret Memoirs of Princess Lamballe, revealing, “All the interest by which this
union was supported could not, however, subdue a prejudice against it, not only among many of
the Court, the cabinet, and the nation, but in the Royal Family itself.”6 Alone in a foreign land,
burdened with the hatred of the French Court simply because of her Austrian birth and receiving
no support from the Royal Family, Marie Antoinette immersed herself in the familiar, bringing
Austrian tastes to the court. Whereas previous French queens had attempted to hide their foreign
backgrounds, Marie Antoinette openly expressed her origins, an action that did little to help her
situation.7 Her failure to convert completely into a French noblewoman deepened the suspicions
that surrounded her.
Doubts of Marie Antoinette’s loyalty to France eventually culminated in the belief that
she was trying to influence the King politically. Her enemies in the court claimed she directed
foreign policy to advantage Austria, as well as exported funds from the country for the benefit of
her brother, Joseph II. Around the time of the French Revolution, these treasonous ideals merged
with new ones, mainly that she promoted civil disorder and supported a foreign invasion.8
Circulation of pamphlets by both the Brissotins and her court opponents, including the king’s
aunts, Adelaide and Victoire, that encouraged these thoughts, eventually led to the mythical
Austrian Committee.9 This fabricated committee, supposedly headed by Marie Antoinette and in
6
Secret Memoirs of Princess Lamballe, ed. Catherine Hyde (Washington: M. Walter Dunne, 1901), 18.
7
Kaiser, “From the Austrian Committee to the Foreign Plot,” 586.
8
Kaiser, “From the Austrian Committee to the Foreign Plot,” 587.
9
The Brissotins were a group of republican politicians in France. They were named after their outspoken
leader Jacques Pierre Brissot. For more information on this political party see, Eloise Ellery, Brissot de Warville: A
Study in the History of the French Revolution (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1915).
5
league with Vienna, was a counter-revolutionary faction that organized armed resistance to the
national assembly.10 Initially used by the Brissotins as a case for war against Austria, Marie
Antoinette’s inevitable connection created more difficulties for her, including her imprisonment.
The fear attributed to her connection with the committee, including her plots to mobilize
forces against France led to condemnation. One of many to viciously attack the Queen, the
Popular and Republican Society of Cambrai (a Jacobin society), proclaimed at the time of Marie
Antoinette’s incarceration, “So long as she exists, this Austrian viper, she will conspire from the
bottom of her prison… So long as she exists, she will corrupt our generals… make us lose
battles… [and] slaughter our brothers.”11 The Jacobins, not to be outdone, added their voice,
asking, “How is it that the wife of the tyrant, or rather she who was herself our cruelest and
fiercest tyrant, still pollutes the air of liberty with her impure breath?”12 Both of these sources
reflect the view of Marie Antoinette at the time of the revolution, which the court and
revolutionaries both tried to enforce. They conveyed the portrayal of her as a treasonous tyrant to
the citizens of France, who quickly started attacking her also.
However, accounts of those familiar with the Queen had a different picture of her
loyalties. Louis-Philippe de Ségur, a Count and acquaintance of the King and Queen, believed
that Marie Antoinette showed appropriate devotion to France, writing in his book, The Memoirs
and Anecdotes of the Count de Ségur, “She spoke of the successes of our forces on land and sea
and of the advantages of a glorious peace for France with the pride and sentiment of a queen, and
Gary Savage, “Favier’s Heirs: The French Revolution and the Secret du Roi,” The Historical Journal 41,
no. 1 (March 1998): 241, http://www.jstor.org.ezproxy.umw.edu:2048/stable/pdfplus/2640151.pdf (accessed
3/31/09).
10
11
Kaiser, “From the Austrian Committee to the Foreign Plot,” 597-598.
12
Kaiser, “From the Austrian Committee to the Foreign Plot,” 600.
6
of a French queen at that.”13 Though only mentioned once and briefly, Ségur’s account provides
a differing opinion that did not view her as a foreign woman who cared nothing for France, an
image revealing the Court’s accusations as false. Burdened by her birth alone, Marie Antoinette
never stood a chance in earning the loyalty and respect of the French Court. In fact, the lack of
support from the French Court damaged her reputation to the point that the citizens came to share
the general opinion of the Queen as an unstoppable corrupting force. The fear that the Court held
for her was not the only reason for the extreme dislike they expressed towards the Austrian
princess.
Marie Antoinette brought a wave of reform with her from Austria, a change that many,
especially older nobles, greatly disliked. Recognizing the immediate prejudice against her, Marie
Antoinette proceeded to structure the Court in such a way that she isolated herself from many of
the more powerful families at Court, choosing to associate only with her circle of friends. This
blatant favoritism meant that Marie Antoinette dispensed favors on her friends, leaving the rest
of the court offended. Their hatred of the Queen became so great that they actually shunned
Versailles.14 However, a possible explanation for the Queen’s reluctance to converse with the
rest of the Court, despite their hostility, seems to stem from a lack in confidence. The Princess
Lamballe wrote, “The education of the Dauphiness was circumscribed; though very free in her
manners, she was very deficient in other respects; and hence it was she so much avoided all
society of females who were better informed than herself.”15 Uncomfortable around women
13
Louis-Philippe de Ségur, The Memoirs and Anecdotes of the Count de Ségur, trans. Gerard Shelley (New
York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1928), 152.
14
Daniel L. Wick, “The Court Nobility and the French Revolution: The Example of the Society of Thirty,”
Eighteenth-Century Studies 13, no. 3 (Spring 1980): 268-271, http://www.jstor.org.ezproxy.umw.edu:2048/
stable/pdfplus/2737985.pdf (accessed 3/31/09).
15
Secret Memoirs of Princess Lamballe, 19-20.
7
scrupulous in their etiquette, and acknowledging the disastrous potential of showing weakness,
Marie Antoinette chose to avoid the problem altogether. The loss of support from the nobles was
one of the greatest dangers for the King and Queen because it relayed doubts to the citizens,
making them more apt to believe the rumors they heard from the Court.
The Court accused Marie Antoinette of frivolity and rudeness out of spite because they
did not understand that their discrimination against the Queen produced the reason for her lack of
friendliness towards them. Calling her “Madame Deficit”, Marie Antoinette’s enemies in the
Court charged her with spending the entire nation’s money on her extravagant lifestyle.16
However, the Princess Lamballe revealed that all of the Queen’s expenses came from her own
private purse and the three hundred thousand francs allowance given to her by Louis XVI, was a
sum, the Princess pointed out, less than half what Louis XV had spent on his mistresses.17 The
Court ignored this and instead distributed libelles (political pamphlets meant to disparage public
figures) throughout the country.18 In Princess Lamballe’s own words, “Thus, in the heart of the
Court itself, originated the most atrocious slander, long before it reached the nation, and so much
assisted to destroy Her Majesty’s popularity with a people, who now adored her amiableness, her
general kind-heartedness, and her unbound charity.”19
Though as a close friend and confidant of the Queen, Princess Lamballe classifies as
having bias, another source also provides evidence of the Queen’s charity. Henriette-Lucy
Dillion, a lady-in-waiting to the Queen, revealed in her Memoirs of Madame de La Tour du Pin,
16
Wick, “The Court Nobility and the French Revolution,” 272.
17
Secret Memoirs of Princess Lamballe, 59-60.
18
Wick, “The Court Nobility and the French Revolution,” 272.
19
Secret Memoirs of Princess Lamballe, 106.
8
that the Queen ritually would take up a collection from the nobility to give to the poor.20 The
generosity described by both these ladies does not agree with the slanderous pamphlets that
called the Queen selfish. However, the citizens only saw the negative leaflets distributed by the
Court.
Most of the animosity that the French Court felt for the Queen seemed to come from her
ignorance of French customs. The Court of Versailles, according to the Princess Lamballe,
enjoyed its strict traditions and rigorous etiquette.21 The expectation to uphold decorum was so
strict that, a page at the court during Louis XVI’s reign, Felix D’Hezecques, comments in his
memoir, Recollections of a Page at the Court of Louis XVI, “It was quite a study for any one who
arrived at the Court, and had not been brought up there, to become perfect in the laws of
etiquette.”22 Marie Antoinette, forced into such an environment with little experience and at the
young age of fifteen, immediately found herself ridiculed for her mistakes. The Princess
Lamballe revealed the Court lady’s resentment of Marie Antoinette’s “encroachments upon their
habits.”23 D’Hezecques revealed how her occasional break in etiquette to obtain some innocent
amusement “was magnified into a crime, and was the origin of all the calumnies that were
disseminated about her.”24 Count de Ségur explained that weakening of etiquette under Marie
Antoinette’s reign was a sign of national decadence.25 Dillion recalled an event in which the
20
Henriette-Lucy Dillion, Memoirs of Madame de La Tour du Pin, ed. and trans. Felice Harcourt (New
York: The McCall Publishing Company, 1971), 75.
21
Secret Memoirs of Princess Lamballe, 30.
Felix D’Hezecques, Recollections of a Page at the Court of Louis XVI, ed. Charlotte M. Yonge (London:
Hurst and Blackett, 1873), 165.
22
23
Secret Memoirs of Princess Lamballe, 31.
24
D’Hezecques, Recollections of a Page, 25-26.
25
de Ségur, The Memoirs and Anecdotes of the Count de Ségur, 162.
9
Princess, who inaccurately gauged the importance of an occasion, offended the officers of the
Garde Nationale, who then left the event “in a very bad humour and spread their discontent
throughout Paris, increasing the ill-will which was being stirred up there against the Queen.”26
Only one of many such events, the Queen’s ignorance led to her rising unpopularity, spread by
the Court to the people.
Though the Revolutionaries saw themselves as breaking from the French Court, they both
actually shared quite a few ideas about women, especially over the portrayal of Marie Antoinette.
Her image suffered further blows by the revolutionaries who used her as a symbol of women in
politics, a role that women could not play.27 Count de Ségur documented new political clubs that
started to emerge. Drawing-rooms were transformed into “battling arenas” where the politically
passionate flourished. He rightfully acknowledged that these clubs resulted in the separation of
men and women.28 According to Count de Ségur, women were not suited to politics.29 Many men
during this time, especially the revolutionaries, who closely followed the ideals of Jean-Jacques
Rousseau, agreed.
Rousseau, and the revolutionaries he influenced, believed women must remain confined
to the domestic sphere. In his Émile or Treatise on Education, Rousseau clarified women’s
duties, claiming, “The obedience and fidelity which she owes to her husband, the tenderness and
care which she owes to her children, are such natural and obvious consequences of her condition,
26
Dillion, Memoirs of Madame de La Tour du Pin, 122.
27
Both the Princess Lamballe and Lynn Hunt make references to the fact that women were not allowed, by
law, to rule in France. The Princess Lamballe calls these laws the “Salique Laws”. For an interesting look at the
Salic Laws, see M. de Secondat, The Spirit of Laws, trans. Thomas Nugent (London: George Bell and Sons, 1878).
28
de Ségur, The Memoirs and Anecdotes of the Count de Ségur, 156.
29
de Ségur, The Memoirs and Anecdotes of the Count de Ségur, 277.
10
that she can not, without bad faith, refuse her consent to the inner sense which guides her…”30
Essentially, a woman’s place remained at home, leaving the man free to participate in the public.
Rousseau warned that women in the public sphere, who wanted equality and could not “make
themselves into men”, would then “make us into women”.31 The revolutionaries wanted to keep
these gender roles the same, thus causing them to reject any feminine influence in the public
sphere, including the Queen. Through spite and slander, the revolutionaries turned Marie
Antoinette into a warning to other women entertaining ideas of using popular sovereignty to
influence men the way they thought Marie Antoinette influenced the King through her role as
Queen.32 The revolutionaries believed that Marie Antoinette influenced the king by teaching him
how to dissimulate, or in other words, how to be corruptive and two-faced.33 Yet, when
comparing the revolutionaries’ beliefs with the accounts of those close to the Queen, one
wonders how much influence she actually exercised over Louis XVI.
Accounts regarding Marie Antoinette’s political influence claimed that she did not wish
to participate altogether. D’Hezecques believed Marie Antoinette’s “influence” actually
consisted of her straightforward advice to the King. In fact, he claimed that the King often came
to her for it.34 The Duc de Lauzun, a military commander and peer of France, detailed in his
Memoirs of the Duc de Lauzun an event in which the Queen was told of a plan that would place
M. le Comte d’Artois on the throne of Poland. According to Lauzun, Marie Antoinette,
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Rousseau’s Émile or Treatise on Education, trans. William H. Payne (New York:
D. Appleton and Company, 1895), 279-280.
30
31
Hunt, “The Many Bodies of Marie Antoinette,” 204-205.
32
Hunt, “The Many Bodies of Marie Antoinette,” 215.
33
Hunt, “The Many Bodies of Marie Antoinette,” 202.
34
D’Hezecques, Recollections of a Page, 28.
11
“[L]istened to him with embarrassment and agitation, and answered him coldly that she did not
wish to meddle with affairs of state.”35 His portrayal of Marie Antoinette’s reluctance directly
opposes the accusations that she deliberately corrupted and influenced her husband in political
affairs. The Princess Lamballe reinforces this point, saying, “[S]he never even thought of
entering into State affairs till forced by the King’s neglect.”36 A supporter of women confined to
domestic spheres, the Princess Lamballe identified this forced involvement as the factor that
increased the public feeling from dislike to hatred of the Queen.37
In conclusion, the falsification of Marie Antoinette’s image originated with the biases
held against her by the French Court, as well as the revolutionaries wish to use her as a symbol.
The fear of foreigners, ignorance, and the notion that women should not be politically influential
led to the inaccurate portrayal of Marie Antoinette. The research that has led to this conclusion
has also produced new questions that need answering. Did Maria Theresa (Marie Antoinette’s
mother) have other motives, besides strengthening the Austrian-French alliance, for sending her
daughter to marry Louis XVI? Perhaps Maria Theresa did hope to gain control over France,
which would have made Marie Antoinette a mere pawn, and would provide more support for
why Marie Antoinette received such harsh treatment. Regardless, hopefully readers will come to
understand how Marie Antoinette’s negative image was founded on biased individual’s accounts
of the unfortunate Queen.
35
Memoirs of the Duc de Lauzun, trans. CK Scott Moncrieff (London: George Routledge & Sons, LTD.,
1928), 182.
36
Secret Memoirs of Princess Lamballe, 43.
37
Secret Memoirs of Princess Lamballe, 155-156.
12
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