Ambition and Desire: The Dangerous Life of Josephine Bonaparte by Kate Williams
My rating: 3/5 cats
She chose the symbol of the swan, graceful on the surface but scrabbling hard underwater.
this is pretty much just a straight-up biography of josephine bonaparte. i don’t read a lot of biographies, but sometimes i have to read things outside of my comfort zone, and this is what happens. it’s not at all bad, but i never thought i would be reading one on josephine, and the things i knew about her life before i read this are as follows:
she was french
she was married to napoleon
they had a tempestuous relationship with bunches of sex
turns out, she was actually from martinique, and was not the gorgeous and glamorous sexpot “they” usually depict her as being; in fact, she was a little odd-looking but she could eventually afford wonderful artists to depict her more charitably. and she knew very well the fine female art of sartorial camouflage – buying 900 gowns a year during the height of her wealth and power.
but she came from much more humble beginnings, growing up on a sugar plantation that was destroyed by a hurricane, compromising her family’s wealth and her prospects. she got pushed into a loveless, arranged marriage to alexandre de beauharnais at sixteen, after her 12-year-old sister, and first choice, died.
and then – BOOM – reign of terror hits – her husband’s head is cut off, and she’s imprisoned.
she’s released, and here’s where it gets interesting. apparently, there was a great romantic allure to those who had been imprisoned. the french, right???
this is where i discovered the baron de frenilly, who is the kind of guy i would want to hang out with, all glib and offhand observations
“It was the height of good manners to be ruined, to have been suspected, persecuted, and, above all, imprisoned.”
and
“People greatly regretted that they had not been guillotined.
and
“It is impossible to die of hunger with more gaiety.”
were i the kind of person who could be bothered reading books on the computer, i would read his memoirs, but alas, i am not.
so josephine finds herself in demand, with all the glamor her imprisonment has bestowed, and suddenly she’s having all these wild parties – let’s call them elegant orgies – where she meets napoleon and he becomes sexually obsessed with her, and eventually, they get married.
it’s not a romance of the ages – they both take lovers – her first affair occurs during the first year of their marriage – they’re both erratic and ambitious, but they keep circling each other and winding up in the bedroom, despite napoleon’s family’s disgust and the fact that although she managed two children with her beheaded husband (before he was beheaded), josephine never gives napoleon the son he needs.
and then this:
Marie was the first of Napoleon’s mistresses whom he was sure had been entirely faithful to him. Unlike Eleonore Denuelle, she truly loved him; there had been no gentlemen callers in his absences. Napoleon was now certain that he could father a child. Marie’s pregnancy secured his lasting affection for her and meant the end of her three-year period as his mistress.”Naturally I would prefer to have my mistress crowned, but I must be allied with sovereigns.” He left Vienna resolved to divorce his wife and find a royal to marry.
hooray! now that he knows his juice is potent, it’s away with the wife and the first women who has ever been faithful to him because – HEIR!!! see ya, suckers!
napoleon is such a dick.
but so is she, and this isn’t the story of a woman wronged, this is the story of what happened when two kind of shitty and ambitious people met, had great sex, clung to each other in some prototypical new adult romance relationship, grew to unprecedented power together and one time almost got blown up.
i love how devoted she was to her beloved chateau de malmaison, and her roses, and that she had animals running everywhere, like an orangutan and swans, and i kind of didn’t love that napoleon would shoot them when he was in a mood.
if you’re interested in josephine at all, this seems to be a pretty comprehensive biography, although i am certianly no authority on what makes a good biography.
