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Marie Antoinette:
Princess of Versailles,
Austria-France, 1769
Written by Kathryn Lasky
To the Discussion Leader
Lavish and sad are words that describe Marie Antoinette's life. In this Royal Diary Kathryn Lasky takes readers inside the palaces to experience what it was like to be a princess and then Queen of France in the 1700s.
Her diary is filled with a young girl's feelings about her arranged marriage. She describes a French Court dominated by intricate rules of etiquette and protocol and excessive attention to fashion and grooming.
While Marie Antoinette and her husband, King Louis XVI, knew little about how to rule a country, they reveled in the excess of their lifestyle. Parties, frivolous gambling, expensive jewels, and elegant gowns were what the royals busied themselves with while outside the gates of the palace hunger and poverty gripped the people of France. Resentment led to revolution, and Marie Antoinette and her husband were executed by guillotine as "enemies of the state."
Evidence of Kathryn Lasky's ability to make history and historical figures come to life can be found on every page of Marie Antoinette: Princess of Versailles. This account of a princess's life can best be summed up in this Lasky comment. "She was so pretty and she was in so many ways so powerless. There was much promise and it all ended in disaster. To me, Marie Antoinette personified all the best and the worst things about being a princess."
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Summary
"I hardly know what I am anymore. Am I a child? Am I a woman? Am I, what am I? I think sometimes I am just an instrument who happens to resemble a human being but serves everyone else's purposes. I do not know what to do or what to be." When Marie Antoinette writes these words in her diary, she is one month shy of her fifteenth birthday.
Katherine Lasky's fictionalized diary of the "Archduchess Maria Antonia Josepha Johanna, daughter of Maria Theresa of Habsburg, Empress of the Holy Roman Empire of the Germanic Nations, and the late Emperor Francis of Lorraine," offers readers insight into the young teen who would someday be France's most famous queen. Hairstyles, fashion, dancing lessons, sledding parties, and horseback riding are the everyday events that fill the pages of Antonia's diary. But her diary also discloses the private, behind-the-scenes secret life of royalty. Glamour and privilege that are conspicuous to the public dissolve rapidly as Antonia confesses her most heart-wrenching secrets to her diary. Readers discover a girl who is not much different from their friends and classmates-or even themselves.
From the beginning of her diary, Antonia anticipates her inevitable marriage to Louis Auguste, the heir to the French throne. But it is only gradually that she-and her readers-realize the monumental changes that marriage will precipitate in her life. Like birds on the windowsill, readers hear French hairdressers complain about Antonia's hairline, watch French dressmakers prepare china dolls to serve as fashion models, observe lessons in the latest dances, and read over the princess's shoulder as she perfects her reading and writing- in French. We realize that when the Empress, whom her children may not see for two weeks at a time, insists that Antonia wears the family's finest precious jewels to the opera, it is not out of love for her daughter but because a stunning Antonia will positively impact the impending merger-by-marriage of the Holy Roman Empire and France.
As the wedding contracts are finalized, Antonia begins to comprehend the drastic losses she will soon experience. More than likely, she will never again see her family. She will be isolated from them by lengthy, dangerous, and seldom undertaken overland expeditions. Her clothing- undergarments, jewels, stockings, shoes- must be left behind when she dashes naked from one room, across the border into a room on the French side, where she will be clothed with new French finery. Even her name will be stripped from her when she signs the marriage agreement: Renamed Marie Antoinette, Antonia will be the French Dauphine or future Queen, as well as a teen, married to a husband she has never met.
What Marie Antoinette discovers in the Palace of Versailles, besides disgusting personal hygiene, is a honeycomb of rules and regulations, a hierarchy of lords and ladies, dukes and duchesses, who gossip and scheme viciously. As they conspire against her, Marie Antoinette perceives that she does have a friend and ally- her new husband. By exploring their hobbies and sharing their interests- locks and keys for Louis Auguste and outdoor activities, such as throwing snowballs, picnicking, and wading in the fountains for Marie Antoinette- these two teens grow to care about each other. With wistful foreshadowing, Marie Antoinette writes in her diary, "I cannot help but think of the fun that Louis Auguste and I could have if we had been born just ordinary people. An ordinary boy and an ordinary girl."
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Thinking About the Book
1. Why is Marie Antoinette's mother so interested in seeing that her daughter becomes the Queen of France?
2. If you, too, lived in the Palace at Versailles, do you think you would want Marie Antoinette as a friend? Why or why not?
3. Why is it so important to the King Louis XV that Marie Antoinette speak to Madame du Barry? Why is it equally important to the Princess that she not address du Barry?
4. Almost every diary entry has Marie Antoinette writing something about the many rules of etiquette, customs, and fashions of the French Court. What surprised you most about how the Princess was expected to look and dress?
5. Would you want Marie Antoinette's mother as your own? Explain.
6. Explain why Marie Antoinette and her husband, King Louis XVI, were executed.
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Student Activities
1. Marie Antoinette was fond of creating lists: things she needed to learn, things she wanted to write about, things her mother wanted to be. Make a list of five words that describe Marie Antoinette and five words that describe her husband Louis. Compare and discuss these lists of words created by each member of your discussion group.
2. There are many French words spread throughout Marie Antoinette's diary. Do some research to find out what each of these words means.
•poupée
•cheveux
•modiste
•friseur
•remise
•La Pauvre
3. Look at the rhyme that was meant to describe Marie Antoinette (September 10, 1770). Create a rhyme that describes another character in this book. Share the rhyme with your discussion group and see if they can figure out the person you have portrayed.
4. Henry David Thoreau, a well-known writer, once said, "Wherever men [or women] have lived there is a story to be told, and it depends chiefly on the story-teller or historian whether it is interesting or not." Do you think that Kathryn Lasky, the writer of Marie Antoinette's diary, succeeded as a story-teller in making the life of the Princess interesting? Explain.
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An Interview with Kathryn Lasky
Richard F. Abrahamson, Ph.D. & Linda M. Pavonetti: What did you find in her character that made her interesting enough for you to want to write about her?
Kathryn Lasky: I was actually very hesitant to write about Marie Antoinette. She seemed at first glance--well, I cannot think of any other term --an airhead of the first degree. Princess Elizabeth certainly outstripped her mentally. She indeed seemed merely a tool for other people's dreams. And her mother! Gads aren't we all glad we don't have mothers like the Empress Maria Theresa. Ironically it turned out that the very things that I considered Marie Antoinette's deficits became most fascinating to me. How did one deal with a mother like that? How did it feel to be used as a diplomatic instrument, to be regarded merely as good bartering material on the royal marriage market? With a lot of research I did find out that Marie Antoinette was known not only for her beauty, but her candor. There were letters from the French diplomats who visited the Hofburg Court during the engagement period and certain French words kept cropping up "ingénue", for candid. Spontaneitite, or spontaneous, mignon, delicate. My own editor used a word about Marie Antoinette which really lit something in my brain. "Sprite." I think she was a sprite, a complete innocent and full of life. So I ultimately found her irresistible and her candor, as a very young bride, did seem to cut through the silliness and pretension of the Court of Versailles.
RFA & LMP: You do a wonderful job sketching the picture of the Court and the ridiculous protocols and rules of etiquette that all seemed bound by. Did you uncover one or two of these rules that struck you as the most ridiculous?
KL: The most ridiculous rules of etiquette of all were those connected with the Grand Levee of the King, or the rising of the King when he got out of bed in the morning. As I recall now, for I do not have all the references handy, first a priest had to come and say a prayer before the King got out of bed. Then a few other people trooped through to inquire as to how he had slept, to present him, I think, with a wash bowl and then finally he was escorted to la chaise percée--the toilet. Now my question always was what if the poor king had to go to the bathroom really bad, did he have to wait for the priest to say those prayers and all these other folks to file by and offer their respects or whatever?
RFA & LMP: After having done so much research on Marie Antoinette and her life, how much of her tragic life can be said to be her mother's fault?
KL: I think a lot can be blamed on Marie Antoinette's mother. The Empress might have been canny about statecraft and making alliances and war, for that matter, but she was utterly clueless about children even though she had so many. That she could even think one could marry off a daughter at the age of fourteen and have her so poorly educated is appalling. Henry VIII certainly didn't think that way about his children. They were all superbly educated.
RFA & LMP: After all your research and reading about Marie Antoinette, would you want to live with her at Versailles?
KL: Never in a million years would I want to live at Versailles with Marie Antoinette or anybody else. I hate to tell you this but I did not even like visiting Versailles. I found it just too ornate. It was like a complete diet of cotton candy, marzipan, and whipped cream. It gave me the mental equivalent of one of those toothaches you get when you bite into something too sweet.
RFA & LMP: In the Author's Note, you say that your French teacher explained that "people could be very rich in material things... but still be very poor in other ways." What do you think are the ways in which Marie Antoinette was "impoverished" and did these lead to her inability to understand the problems of the common people of France?
KL: I think first and foremost Marie Antoinette was intellectually impoverished. She really had never been introduced to the notion of abstract thinking--of thinking at all in any profound way. Her mother was so overbearing and interfering that, except for the most private thoughts about herself, Marie Antoinette did not realize that she was entitled to an intellectual opinion, a belief that was entirely her own after having studied a subject area. Thinking, in particular abstract thinking, which most of us are introduced to through the study of mathematics and literature helps us learn that we can become problem solvers. I do not think that Marie Antoinette ever had a notion of herself as a problem solver. Therefore, it is hard to imagine that she would have gained the ability to understand the problems of the common people of France. On the most basic level she was incapable of even imagining their lives, their poverty. This I believe was primarily an intellectual problem not one of feelings or emotions.
RFA & LMP: What is one question you'd like to ask children after they've finished reading the diary?
KL: I suppose it is rather a simple question, but I would hope that readers might think of how Marie Antoinette's life could have been different? Maybe readers would try to imagine what kind of life Marie Antoinette would have really liked and one in which she would have flourished. Since I have finished writing the book I am obsessed with these questions and oddly enough I think an awfully lot about the late Princess Diana and ask myself the same questions about her.
Discussion Guide written by Richard F. Abrahamson, Ph.D., Professor of Literature for Children and Young Adults, University of Houston, Houston, Texas and Linda M. Pavonetti, Ed.D., Assistant Professor, Oakland University, Department of Reading and Language Arts, Rochester, Michigan.
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