There are many reasons not to admire Marie Antoinette. She was the embodiment of the French ancien regime, the monarchy whose lavish lifestyle, embodied by the palace at Versailles, stood in stark contrast to the widespread poverty of the French people in the late eighteenth-century. The attitude of many common French people toward Marie Antoinette is summed up by her (almost certainly apocryphal) response to bread riots of hungry Parisian crowds: "Let them eat cake." Her lavish lifestyle was seen as the epitome of all that was corrupt and decadent about the French Bourbon monarchy.
But there are certainly some things to admire about Marie Antoinette. First, it is important to remember that she was married into the French monarchy at a very young age—just fourteen years old. She struggled to settle into the role of queen after her husband, Louis XVI, became king, but she persisted, eventually becoming an active figure in politics, frequently advising her husband on diplomatic matters.
Perhaps the main thing to admire about Marie Antoinette is the way she responded to the chaos that descended on her life and family during the French Revolution. An almost impossibly haughty woman while queen, she faced one indignity after another beginning in 1789, when she and Louis were forced back to Paris from Versailles by an angry mob. As her situation worsened, she showed the dignity that her position demanded, even after Louis XVI was executed. She faced relentless insults and was accused at her trial (for treason) of having an incestuous affair with her own son. In the face of this treatment, she displayed pride and even humility, going to the guillotine with composure and grace. So while Marie Antoinette did not live the most laudable life, she redeemed herself during her fall from the heights of the Bourbon monarchy. Even some French revolutionaries admired her courage in the face of death.
https://www.biography.com/royalty/marie-antoinette
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/marie-antoinette-134629573/
Wednesday, January 2, 2013
Why admire Marie Antoinette?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Why is the fact that the Americans are helping the Russians important?
In the late author Tom Clancy’s first novel, The Hunt for Red October, the assistance rendered to the Russians by the United States is impor...
-
There are a plethora of rules that Jonas and the other citizens must follow. Again, page numbers will vary given the edition of the book tha...
-
The poem contrasts the nighttime, imaginative world of a child with his daytime, prosaic world. In the first stanza, the child, on going to ...
-
The given two points of the exponential function are (2,24) and (3,144). To determine the exponential function y=ab^x plug-in the given x an...
-
The play Duchess of Malfi is named after the character and real life historical tragic figure of Duchess of Malfi who was the regent of the ...
-
The only example of simile in "The Lottery"—and a particularly weak one at that—is when Mrs. Hutchinson taps Mrs. Delacroix on the...
-
Hello! This expression is already a sum of two numbers, sin(32) and sin(54). Probably you want or express it as a product, or as an expressi...
-
Macbeth is reflecting on the Weird Sisters' prophecy and its astonishing accuracy. The witches were totally correct in predicting that M...
No comments:
Post a Comment