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The writings of Stefan Zweig, who died over 70 years ago, are now enjoying a sort of resurgence as they are being published again and are being introduced to new generations of readers. Personally, I have now read four of his works this year including this biography, his autobiography, The World of Yesterday, and two works of fiction, Chess Story and Fantastic Night & Other Stories. In all these works, Zweig proves himself to be an excellent storyteller. He can write well and he has made the life of Marie Antoinette very interesting to one who is not at all expert in French history.

The early years of her life as Queen are not dealt with kindly but then it does not appear that there was much to be kind about. Noblesse oblige ruled the day with the royalty of France and MA certainly participated in that rule.


She liked to buzz hither and thither, to be always
beginning some new task which she would never finish, to
be continually occupied without any serious exertion; she
loved to feel that time was not standing still with her,
or that she was out-running time. To be quick at her meals,
content perhaps with eating a sweetmeat or two; to sleep
only for a short time, never to think long, to be perpetually
on the go, frittering away her days---such were her desires.
the twenty years, or rather less, during which Marie
Antoinette was Queen were characterized by an unceasing
movement in an orbit around her own ego. Since, outside
this orbit, she had no goal, nor any inward conviction of
an an aim, from the human and political standpoint she was
circling in the void. (p 81)


As for the contrast between the king and queen:


He was heavy, she was light; he was inert, she was mobile;
he was dull, she was sparkling; his nerves were obtuse, hers
were sensitive....He was irresolute, she was quick to make
up her mind;...he was strictly religious, she was in love
with things of this world; he was modest and unassuming, she
was coquettishly self-assertive; he was pedantic, she was
frivolous; he was thrifty, she was extravagant....
(pp 82-83)


These character points would eventually come home to haunt the Queen, though she likely did not understand why. There are amazing descriptions of her spending excesses, all paid for by the people of France who were suffering.

Only twenty years later, after the maternal warnings of Maria Theresa in writing from Vienna or through her helpers went unheeded, did MA change when the Revolution forced change upon her.


"Tribulation first makes one realize what one is"---
this touching phrase, a sign that the writer had been
profoundly shaken, now appeared in one of her letters.
For two decades no warnings, not those of her mother nor
those of her friends, had any effect upon this defiant
spirit. Sorrow and suffering were her first teachers,
the only possible ones for a woman otherwise unteachable.
(p 270)


Unlike modern biographies and histories, there are no footnotes to this text nor is there a bibliography. Zweig does provide an endnote as to how he made the decision as to which letters to consider valid and which to consider fraudulent. Zweig also spends considerable time and effort on analyzing the psychology of the times and persons involved. He did live in the the time of, and was acquainted with, Freud. Whether this influenced his text is left to the reader to decide.

As for myself, I have decided that I shall label Zweig's work an "interpretive" biography. He does build on sources that cannot be checked but he also provides an extremely readable history of the French Revolution from the royals' point of view, culminating with the death of Marie Antoinette. I recommend it with the caveat that it be combined with other historical works.