Sena Jeter Naslund has done due diligence in researching “Abundance,” a work of historical fiction centered on the life of Marie Antoinette. Not a character treated kindly by popular history, the unfortunate queen is most clearly associated with a line she almost certainly never uttered: “If the people have no bread, let them eat cake.”
Using Lady Antonia Frasier’s definitive biography, “Marie Antoinette: The Journey,” as a starting point, Naslund has crafted a richly imagined work of fiction that portrays its central character as a real woman, both strong and flawed.
In a recent interview, conducted when Naslund stopped in Denver on book tour, she said her interest in Marie Antoinette’s story began when she was a child. “Her story seemed to me to be a reverse fairy tale. I had been told stories of people like Cinderella, who were good, poor, deserving young women who got to be princesses. This story starts with a person who was born to be a princess. And her story is one that goes downhill instead of uphill. To me, as a child, it meant how vulnerable we all are, that there is no safe place,” she said. “Since we’re all vulnerable – all of us, we’re all in the same boat – we should be kind to each other.”
“Abundance” shares some characteristics with Naslund’s previous best sellers, “Ahab’s Wife” and “The Four Spirits.”
“In all three of these novels, there is an affirmation of the preciousness of every life, whether you are an unknown African-American child in Alabama during the Civil Rights era … or whether you are the queen of France,” she said.
Naslund’s interest in Marie Antoinette as a subject for a novel was sparked while touring for “Ahab’s Wife,” when she ran across a 1933 biography written by Stefan Zweig.
“I was intrigued by the story of Marie Antoinette – an exciting story. … But also I rebelled against his attitude in general and toward Marie Antoinette in particular. The subtitle of this biography is ‘Portrait of an Average Woman.’ It was clear he thought very little of average women. And he also thought that Marie Antoinette was an example of an average woman, characterized by self-centeredness, being materialistic, non-intellectual, feather-headed and selfish.”
Condemned for lack of heir
That attitude led Naslund to consider the character behind the woman whom history has demonized, and she wondered whether Marie Antoinette had been “a strong, important woman who has been made into someone monstrous.” In digging into history, she found a good deal of complexity.
The union between Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette was formed as a political alliance. “There were many people in Austria and France, including in the court, who were opposed to the alliance. That’s the real beginning of the hostility toward Marie Antoinette. She was adored by the populace of France for the first few years of her stay there. They saw in her, and the Dauphin, the future of France, the people who were young, beautiful and innocent, a great contrast to Louis XV, who was a person of many mistresses,” said Naslund. “He was despised for his lack of morals. So here come these fresh young people, people who were Princess Diana and Prince Charles. And they promised a brighter future. So they were loved, for a while.”
But Marie Antoinette did not quickly produce an heir to the throne; it took 7 1/2 years to consummate the marriage. And as the economy worsened, Naslund said, animosity became an engulfing hatred. “One of the things that sullied her reputation was that there were a great many pornographic, libelous pamphlets printed about her. This came out of her not getting pregnant. They began to say, ‘Well, she has other lovers,’ or ‘She’s dancing all night,’ or ‘She’s gambling all night,’ and she did dance and gamble during this time,” said Naslund. It was, she said, a masking of an inward frustration and despair.
Marie Antoinette’s thoughts and reactions are central to the story told in “Abundance,” Naslund said.
“The key to getting to her interior life was to read letters that she herself had actually written, mostly letters to her mother. And by reading those letters, I got a sense of what her voice was like, and what her sensibility was like. And I tried to make the transition between her letters and her thoughts seamless.”
A lesson of courage
Naslund said she hopes readers will draw from “Abundance” an appreciation of Marie Antoinette’s gifts as well as her mistakes. “Because we live in an age of terrorism, if not in the reign of terror, I think that she has lessons of courage to offer to all of us who face devastating acts of violence,” she said. “And I would hope that readers would learn along with Marie Antoinette what’s valuable about being alive. And to understand how kindness – one human being to another – can be found in even the most difficult of circumstances.”
Robin Vidimos is a freelance writer who reviews books for The Denver Post and Buzz in the ‘Burbs.
