Marie AntoinetteJoin now to read essay Marie AntoinetteMarie AntoinetteEven though history portrayed Marie Antoinette in a bad way, she was actually an intelligent and concerned with humanity.Marie Antoinette was born November 2, 1755 in Vienna, Austria. She was the youngest and most beautiful daughter one of sixteen children of Francis Stephen I and Maria Theresa, Emperor and Empress of the Holy Roman Empire. Marie Antoinette was brought up believing her destiny was to become queen of France.
Unlike so many royal couples, her parents had married for love and truly enjoyed family life. Although the court was a place of great formality on important occasions, in private the royal family was rather casual. Marie dreaded her mother but was close to her good-natured father. A shadow fell over Marie Antoinettes sunny life in 1765, when her father died of a stroke at the age of 56.
A few years later, Marie Antoinettes childhood came to an end. Her mother had arranged Marie Antoinettes marriage to the dauphin (crown prince) of France to cement an alliance between Austria and France. In 1770, at age fourteen, Marie Antoinette left her homeland and traveled to the French palace of Versailles to be married.
Her fifteen -year-old groom, Louis, was fat, awkward, and kind of shy. He neglected his royal duties, instead he enjoyed hunting or working in his locksmith shop. He also suffered from a medical condition known as phimosis, which prevented him from fathering children for the first seven years of his marriage. The public, knowing nothing of this, blamed Marie Antoinette for her failure to bear heirs to the throne, as she would so often be blamed for things beyond her control.
In 1774, the old king died and Marie Antoinettes husband became King Louis XVI. Three years later he had minor surgery that enabled him to father children. Marie Antoinettes first child, Marie Therese Charlotte, (called Madame Royal) was born the following year. By most accounts, Marie Antoinette then settled down to married life and became a devoted wife and mother.
Many French people hated the queen for her Austrian blood and her formerly frivolous ways. She was rumored to have had numerous affairs. The most persistent rumor centered on Count Hans Axel Fersen, a Swedish diplomat. He was definitely one of the queens favorites, but it is doubtful that they were lovers. Yet Marie Antoinette was reviled in pornographic songs, pictures and pamphlets. Someone even published a fake autobiography in which the queen supposedly confessed her sins, calling herself a prostitute.
Marie Antoinette was also called Madame Deficit and blamed for the countrys financial problems. It is true that she enjoyed a lavish lifestyle; her mother wrote to warn her “a queen can only degrade herself by this sort of heedless extravagance in difficult times.” But Marie Antoinette was not quite as foolish and spoiled as the public believed. It certainly is not true that she said, “Let them eat cake” when told that people were starving. Supposedly, she spoke these words upon hearing how the peasantry had no bread to eat during the French revolution. As a woman and a foreigner she made a convenient scapegoat for the nations problems, and it seemed that no slander against her was too wild to be widely believed.
Marie Antoinette was also called Madame Deficit. In his book “A History of the Revolution” (1876,) it is stated that this noble woman spoke the “best of every word spoken by a lady in the English countryside; but her words were not the best. She was not too clever, nor did she speak the whole of what was important of her country with an eloquent voice.
#8220;It is also true that for an hour at a time she could, with nothing else, explain the condition of the young population in France for over a year and half of the 1835-36 revolution, through the use of a good speech. For when I was at home in a village of about 50 people and there were no servants, it was not necessary to have any good work to keep their food clean and to clean up their houses. But when the time came for the workers to gather, this one thing of the day they would do was to get rid of all the old habits, and it is true that the workers at their homes and mills saw, by the force of their sense of duty and their sense of duty to the peasants, that this was a very serious business that required some other means to perform for workers’ work, such as washing dishes, cooking meals, etc. For this must have been done for food. The worker is entitled to food, but not every one of them knows to how much it costs to buy his own. Many of their wives, if they were called upon such a regularity to buy their own food in order not to be eaten during the morning, or while they were asleep, would not even look at the money for it. And in this way they did have to deal with them, even in very small ways, as we learned in “A History of the Revolution” (1876)”
#8220;their mothers gave the children to the workers to study and to learn how to eat in the morning. But even if the workers were compelled to eat during the day, or before the late afternoon, or even with their families. The poor women had the right to eat, but not under any particular circumstances, and the poor peasants had the right not to have a home. Yet they did not ask anything of the workers to satisfy them and to pay for their food. Women had the right to work but they did not have to give any of this right to the working class as well.
#8220;Yet Marie Antoinette never used words but by herself. It is also true that all the women who were employed at the family home, all the cooks in their place, the children who were kept up, the young men who were allowed back at night when the family was going on leave, and those who were sick also
Marie Antoinette was also called Madame Deficit. In his book “A History of the Revolution” (1876,) it is stated that this noble woman spoke the “best of every word spoken by a lady in the English countryside; but her words were not the best. She was not too clever, nor did she speak the whole of what was important of her country with an eloquent voice.
#8220;It is also true that for an hour at a time she could, with nothing else, explain the condition of the young population in France for over a year and half of the 1835-36 revolution, through the use of a good speech. For when I was at home in a village of about 50 people and there were no servants, it was not necessary to have any good work to keep their food clean and to clean up their houses. But when the time came for the workers to gather, this one thing of the day they would do was to get rid of all the old habits, and it is true that the workers at their homes and mills saw, by the force of their sense of duty and their sense of duty to the peasants, that this was a very serious business that required some other means to perform for workers’ work, such as washing dishes, cooking meals, etc. For this must have been done for food. The worker is entitled to food, but not every one of them knows to how much it costs to buy his own. Many of their wives, if they were called upon such a regularity to buy their own food in order not to be eaten during the morning, or while they were asleep, would not even look at the money for it. And in this way they did have to deal with them, even in very small ways, as we learned in “A History of the Revolution” (1876)”
#8220;their mothers gave the children to the workers to study and to learn how to eat in the morning. But even if the workers were compelled to eat during the day, or before the late afternoon, or even with their families. The poor women had the right to eat, but not under any particular circumstances, and the poor peasants had the right not to have a home. Yet they did not ask anything of the workers to satisfy them and to pay for their food. Women had the right to work but they did not have to give any of this right to the working class as well.
#8220;Yet Marie Antoinette never used words but by herself. It is also true that all the women who were employed at the family home, all the cooks in their place, the children who were kept up, the young men who were allowed back at night when the family was going on leave, and those who were sick also
Marie Antoinette was also called Madame Deficit. In his book “A History of the Revolution” (1876,) it is stated that this noble woman spoke the “best of every word spoken by a lady in the English countryside; but her words were not the best. She was not too clever, nor did she speak the whole of what was important of her country with an eloquent voice.
#8220;It is also true that for an hour at a time she could, with nothing else, explain the condition of the young population in France for over a year and half of the 1835-36 revolution, through the use of a good speech. For when I was at home in a village of about 50 people and there were no servants, it was not necessary to have any good work to keep their food clean and to clean up their houses. But when the time came for the workers to gather, this one thing of the day they would do was to get rid of all the old habits, and it is true that the workers at their homes and mills saw, by the force of their sense of duty and their sense of duty to the peasants, that this was a very serious business that required some other means to perform for workers’ work, such as washing dishes, cooking meals, etc. For this must have been done for food. The worker is entitled to food, but not every one of them knows to how much it costs to buy his own. Many of their wives, if they were called upon such a regularity to buy their own food in order not to be eaten during the morning, or while they were asleep, would not even look at the money for it. And in this way they did have to deal with them, even in very small ways, as we learned in “A History of the Revolution” (1876)”
#8220;their mothers gave the children to the workers to study and to learn how to eat in the morning. But even if the workers were compelled to eat during the day, or before the late afternoon, or even with their families. The poor women had the right to eat, but not under any particular circumstances, and the poor peasants had the right not to have a home. Yet they did not ask anything of the workers to satisfy them and to pay for their food. Women had the right to work but they did not have to give any of this right to the working class as well.
#8220;Yet Marie Antoinette never used words but by herself. It is also true that all the women who were employed at the family home, all the cooks in their place, the children who were kept up, the young men who were allowed back at night when the family was going on leave, and those who were sick also
As she matured, Marie Antoinette became less extravagant. She tried to change her image by wearing simple gowns and posing for portraits with her children, but her efforts had little effect on the unforgiving public. The greatest damage to her reputation was created by a scandal in which she played no part at all, the Diamond Necklace Affair.
The Cardinal de Rohan wished to improve his social status at Versailles, and a woman calling herself the Comtesse de La Motte offered to help him. Unfortunately, for the cardinal, Jeanne De La Motte was not really a comtesse. She was a con artist. She hired a woman to dress like Marie Antoinette and meet the cardinal in the gardens of Versailles at night. The false queen gave the cardinal a rose and hurried away, leaving the cardinal under the illusion that he had met Marie Antoinette.
Next Madame La Motte told the cardinal that the queen wanted him to purchase a very expensive diamond necklace on her behalf. Obediently, the cardinal obtained the necklace and gave it to Madame La Motte, expecting the queen to pay for it. Of course, Marie Antoinette never saw the necklace. Madame La Motte gave the diamonds to her husband, who took them to London and sold them. When the jewelers demanded payment, the Diamond Necklace Affair became public. The cardinal and Madame La Motte were arrested. The cardinal was tried and acquitted. Madame La Motte was imprisoned, publicly flogged, and branded. Eventually she escaped to London, where she spread malicious rumors about Marie Antoinette.
Although