15 October 2014

Abundance, A Book Review

I *finally* finished reading Abundance, A Novel of Marie Antoinette by Sena Jeter Naslund. First of all I must say the book was exceptional! I felt like I was in Marie Antoinette's mind as she traversed Austria to France, childhood to adulthood, giving life to losing her head. The book is broken up into 5 parts all documenting the early stages of her engagement to a young Louis and end with her dying. (That's not a spoiler, Marie Antoinette dies in real life too.) Marie Antoinette is very well known for being flippant and a spendthrift but what many don't know is that she was a very intelligent, caring person who just wanted to do good for her country. She wrote numerous letters to her mother and her dearest friends expressing her great love for France and her husband. She told about the ways she wanted to help her people. She created a little village to feel closer to the French people and even employed those less fortunate than her, taking care of their whole families. She even temporarily adopted a child and after caring for him some time made sure he was taken care of financially for the rest of his life. She was pious and respectable but most know her as the one who said, "Let them eat cake," a saying she never said. She was called an adulterer, a whore, L'Autrichienne, Madame Deficit. The book expels all those notions of the woman you read about and learned about in school. It shows us the loving mother, the devoted wife the caring friend, the kind leader she tried to be and it does so with so much heart that you really pray all the way to the end that history also got her death wrong. I highly recommend reading this book and learning about the bloody French Revolution. Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette may not have been the most capable leaders but they loved their people and they truly tried to do right by them. Had the wealthy upper class not bullied them and rallied against their plans execute taxes on the upper class to reduce taxes on the poor, the revolution may not have ever happened. Had Louis XV not spent all of France's money like a crazed horse and continued to make the people think the king controlled the weather, Marie and Louis XVI may have kept their heads. In the end a tragic king and queen were killed. read the book and learn about her life, her relationships with the Princesse de Lamballe, Duchess of Polignac, the du Barry, her husband and, of course, her friendship with Axel von Fersen. Fersen was a very dear friend that, in another lifetime, could have been her husband. Instead they were in love emotionally but not physically and the book expresses that. He loved the royal family and deeply tried to help them gain freedom and their country back. he often wrote to his sister about his love of Marie Antoinette but he also wrote about how he could never marry since he could not physically have her. Abundance clears her name and tells the story of her tragic fall with so much grace I felt happy at her end, even though it is an utterly sad one. Don't hesitate to learn a little history and read this book! You won't regret it! I give this book 5 stars for excellent writing and imagination.



A young Maria Antonia, before she became French.



The above portrait was incredibly controversial. She wanted to be comfortable and show the people that she didn't always have to wear the expensive materials she typically wore, the nobility did not like that so she had her favorite painter repaint it the way the nobility would like. The painter, Vigée le Brun, is in the book quite often.


Vigée le Brun painted this after the queen had her 4th child. This child died a few months after so the baby was reluctantly painted out of it. Shortly after her daughter Sophie passed, her eldest son, the Dauphin Louis Joseph, died as well.


I took this in Versailles. It is of her little village at the Petit Trianon.

This is the chapel in Versailles where she was wed and often took mass. The Sophia Coppola movie, Marie Antoinette, filmed here.


These two pictures are of her room! How lovely is it!



In the book, Marie Antoinette takes many walks on the grounds of Versailles. There are particular statues and what not that she describes but I kept those for myself. As I read I thought about all the places her and I both walked and saw at Versailles.


This opera house plays a major part in the book. How wonderful to sit on a rooftop across from a place in Paris Marie Antoinette loved so much. She most certainly would have loved the Eiffel Tower!

I belong to a history group online and they made this for me! I was so happy!




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