Review: Athénaïs, Lisa Hilton

Title: Athénaïs: The Life of Louis XIV's Mistress, the Real Queen of France
Author: Lisa Hilton
Date Begun: May 25, 2007
Date Completed: May 29, 2007

Look, I don't have any problem with revisionist historians. Unpopular historical characters are some of my favorite people. So it's easy to understand the desire to rehabilitate such characters, and Hilton wants to do that here. The problem with the book is that Hilton goes much too far in her quest. Instead of recognizing the flaws in her subject, Hilton ignores all of them in order to make Montespan into the goddess her name implies.

Really, this is the bitchiest, cattiest biography I've ever read. It's like Regina George wrote it. Except then it would have been funny. And on one level it is plenty of fun, but really it's simply exasperating. Life isn't high school. The role of mistress is not synonymous with prom queen. There is more to it than looks or popularity - just as there is more to the role of queen.

I don't understand why Hilton is only interested in such a shallow analysis. Obviously beauty was important and Athénaïs was quite amazingly lovely - but it was not the end all and be all of women's political involvement, even in the seventeenth century. Nor was beauty the entirety of a courtier's life. But Hilton equates stupidity and unattractiveness. Maria Theresa was unattractive, so she wasn't worthy to be the queen of France. OBVIOUSLY. I wonder what Hilton would have done if she'd tried to write about Catherine de Medici (and for a book about that unattractive and politicall able Queen of France, I recommend Leonie Frieda's biography).

Athénaïs left me with a bad taste in my mouth. Between Hilton's overly credulous discussion of the Affair of the Poisons - seventeenth century superstition made Satanism/witchcraft a bit more complex than I think Hilton treats the matter - and the hero worship she heaps on Montespan, I just want my five bucks back. And you know, I didn't have high expectations to begin with.

(Points to Hilton, though, for citing Anthony Blunt and Nancy Mitford.)