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A review by jillkt13
Mary Stuart by Stefan Zweig, Cedar Paul, M. Eden Paul
4.0
Bibliophiles love to babble on about the importance of empathy in literature. For them, empathy is both input and output of outstanding books. And normally, bibliophile myself, I toe the party line and agree, because theoretically the argument seems sound and anecdotally I can cite instances of empathy emerging from great works of art. But I'm an inveterate skeptic: are lovers of literature--both producers and consumers--truly more empathetic?
One need look no further than our current landscape in the genre of biography. The explosion of memoir is evidence of egoism, not empathy; most historical biography trends towards hagiography; and celebrity profiles, the peak modern form of the genre, more often mock, or worse, excoriate their subject.
Zweig, however, is an exceptional biographer, and he holds no poison pen. His approach as a biographer is more cheerleader: through all the tribulations of Mary Queen of Scots' life, of which many are arguably of her own devising, he does not cease to believe in and want the best for her. Radical empathy extending centuries backward for a woman of a bygone era, for a woman whom we know ends up on the gallows.
His picture of Mary is drawn truthfully and accurately, beginning with her birth and coronation as Queen of Scotland and the Isles at only 6 days old. Although Mary Stuart's fantastical life, full of murdered husbands, succession disputes, and questionable imprisonment, is easy fodder for any biographer, Zweig brings an effervescent verve to all periods of his subject's life, even those of relative inactivity. This 450-page clunker is an absolute page-turner, which it would certainly not be if written by a less skilled author.
Zweig also manages to evade ahistoricism, a common mistake of biographers. He is careful to ground his assessment of the Queen of Scots in her own epoch. He is particularly successful in doing so when he explains why Mary Stuart's execution by her cousin Elizabeth I of England was so exceptional: as a divinely anointed queen, the philosophical basis of monarchy the late 16th century, she was not accountable to Elizabeth, England, or even the Scottish lords. No matter her guilt or innocence, her right as a queen should have exempted her from any accusations, trials, or punishments, which makes her execution by Queen Elizabeth so remarkable. It blazed the path to more king- and queen-killing in the subsequent centuries, peaking with Marie Antoinette's death two hundred years later.
Unfortunately, Zweig's commitment to historical accuracy leads him to commit his sole crime of the biography. Early on, he describes the decades-long dispute between Mary and Elizabeth as the result of "two women remaining women throughout, unable to vercome the weaknesses inherent in their sex." A few sentences later, he even ventures to describe their simmering animosity as "catty." Zweig is a writer of his time, and although these declarations somewhat marred my enjoyment, he largely avoids letting his essentialist views of womanhood corrupt his depiction of Mary, whom he shows to be a figure of resolve and hardheadedness throughout her life.
Nowadays I'm often dismayed by our culture's propensity to see the worst in people. An example from this past week: a weatherman who makes an unfortunate Spoonerism is decried as a racist instead of someone who simply misspoke. Wouldn't it be wonderful to interact with the world the same way Zweig interacts with his subjects of interest? To observe their flaws, indeed even to study those flaws with a magnifying glass, while never using the character defects as a reason for outright dismissal and denunciation of the person? Under Zweig's steady and rehabilitative hand, Mary Queen of Scots is given new life after the sundry calumnies to her name in the centuries following her death. It is a pleasure to read this book and to see her the way she might have, in her most brutally self-honest moments, seen herself.
One need look no further than our current landscape in the genre of biography. The explosion of memoir is evidence of egoism, not empathy; most historical biography trends towards hagiography; and celebrity profiles, the peak modern form of the genre, more often mock, or worse, excoriate their subject.
Zweig, however, is an exceptional biographer, and he holds no poison pen. His approach as a biographer is more cheerleader: through all the tribulations of Mary Queen of Scots' life, of which many are arguably of her own devising, he does not cease to believe in and want the best for her. Radical empathy extending centuries backward for a woman of a bygone era, for a woman whom we know ends up on the gallows.
His picture of Mary is drawn truthfully and accurately, beginning with her birth and coronation as Queen of Scotland and the Isles at only 6 days old. Although Mary Stuart's fantastical life, full of murdered husbands, succession disputes, and questionable imprisonment, is easy fodder for any biographer, Zweig brings an effervescent verve to all periods of his subject's life, even those of relative inactivity. This 450-page clunker is an absolute page-turner, which it would certainly not be if written by a less skilled author.
Zweig also manages to evade ahistoricism, a common mistake of biographers. He is careful to ground his assessment of the Queen of Scots in her own epoch. He is particularly successful in doing so when he explains why Mary Stuart's execution by her cousin Elizabeth I of England was so exceptional: as a divinely anointed queen, the philosophical basis of monarchy the late 16th century, she was not accountable to Elizabeth, England, or even the Scottish lords. No matter her guilt or innocence, her right as a queen should have exempted her from any accusations, trials, or punishments, which makes her execution by Queen Elizabeth so remarkable. It blazed the path to more king- and queen-killing in the subsequent centuries, peaking with Marie Antoinette's death two hundred years later.
Unfortunately, Zweig's commitment to historical accuracy leads him to commit his sole crime of the biography. Early on, he describes the decades-long dispute between Mary and Elizabeth as the result of "two women remaining women throughout, unable to vercome the weaknesses inherent in their sex." A few sentences later, he even ventures to describe their simmering animosity as "catty." Zweig is a writer of his time, and although these declarations somewhat marred my enjoyment, he largely avoids letting his essentialist views of womanhood corrupt his depiction of Mary, whom he shows to be a figure of resolve and hardheadedness throughout her life.
Nowadays I'm often dismayed by our culture's propensity to see the worst in people. An example from this past week: a weatherman who makes an unfortunate Spoonerism is decried as a racist instead of someone who simply misspoke. Wouldn't it be wonderful to interact with the world the same way Zweig interacts with his subjects of interest? To observe their flaws, indeed even to study those flaws with a magnifying glass, while never using the character defects as a reason for outright dismissal and denunciation of the person? Under Zweig's steady and rehabilitative hand, Mary Queen of Scots is given new life after the sundry calumnies to her name in the centuries following her death. It is a pleasure to read this book and to see her the way she might have, in her most brutally self-honest moments, seen herself.