Mistress of the Revolution
Catherine Delors
Penguin Group USA
528 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780451225955
Summary
In 1815 England, an exiled Frenchwoman, Gabrielle de Monserrat, begins a memoir of her days before and during the French Revolution. Gabrielle, the youngest daughter of a family of the impoverished nobility, recalls her journey through hardships and betrayals by three men in her life.
A girl of quiet strength and startling beauty, a widow at seventeen with a young daughter, Gabrielle is released into the world of Paris nobility. Determined and inquisitive, with little money and few prospects, she strives to find her own freedom. Around her, the French people attempt to build a utopia based on the ideals of liberty and equality. Differing currents of thought clash over the fate of a nation as the Revolution takes an ever more violent turn. Yet Gabrielle survives, maintaining her humanity and sense of decency. On occasion, she glimpses her first love as he ascends from obscure patriot to one of the most passionate architects of the new order. At last she reaches for him and an impossible happiness.
As Gabrielle writes on, twenty years later, political events again overtake her and she realizes that her tale is far more than an evocation of the past. It is the truth she owes her children. (From the author's website.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1969
• Where—France
• Education—University of Paris, Sorbonne School of Law
• Currently—lives in Los Angeles, California (USA) and Paris,
France
Catherine Delors was born and raised in France. She graduated from the University of Paris-Sorbonne School of Law and became a member of the Bar of Paris at the age of twenty-one.
She moved to the United States after her marriage and passed the California Bar. She worked at a few large law firms, then, after the birth of her son, set up a solo practice. She now splits her time between Los Angeles and Paris.
She has completed her second novel, titled For The King, a historical thriller about a terrorist attack in 1800 Paris, at the beginning of Bonaparte's reign. (From the author's website.)
Book Reviews
Definitely a contender for one of the best reads of the year.
Associated Press
A most impressive literary debut, this outstanding novel of the French Revolution is well worth reading.
Historical Novels Review (Editors' Choice)
Against the backdrop of the leadup to the French Revolution, Delors's mostly successful debut follows the life of Gabrielle de Montserrat, a feisty young woman forced by her meddling brother to forsake her commoner true love and marry the Baron de Peyre, a wealthy, older man. The baron is abusive and cruel, but the short-lived marriage produces a daughter before the baron dies. A widowed Gabrielle travels to Paris and enters the heady world of Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette, where, with a sparse inheritance and the responsibility of a young daughter, Gabrielle becomes the mistress of Count de Villers. Delors shines in her portrayal of the late 18th-century French women's world (she has a rougher time with the men), though the amount of political-historical detail covered overshadows the tragic love story that develops once Gabrielle reunites with her first love, Pierre-André Coffinhal, who is now a lawyer. The appearance of historical figures sometimes comes off awkwardly (as when Gabrielle meets Thomas Jefferson or has a private audience with Robespierre), and the ending is marred by a too-convenient and seemingly tossed-off twist. Nevertheless, the author ably captures the vagaries of French politics during turbulent times and creates a world inhabited by nicely developed and sympathetic characters.
Publishers Weekly
Delors does an admirable job of depicting the tension, confusion, and volatility of an era when one false move could mean the guillotine. —Margaret Flanagan
Booklist
A noblewoman suffers several close brushes with the guillotine during the French Revolution in this debut novel from Delors. Gabrielle, from a noble family in Auvergne, sees her ancestral chateau for the first time at age 11, after she's removed from convent boarding school by her brother, the Marquis de Montserrat. Her mother, whom she hardly knows, is cold and hypercritical, and as Gabrielle matures, her brother makes incestuous overtures to her. While visiting her former wet nurse, a peasant woman, Gabrielle falls in love with Pierre-Andre, a young doctor. The Marquis forbids her to wed Pierre-Andre because he is a commoner. Instead, when she turns 15, her family forces her to marry middle-aged Baron de Peyre, who proves a volatile, brutal husband. When he dies suddenly, leaving Gabrielle a pittance, she flees with daughter Aimee to Paris, where she finds refuge with a distant cousin, a duchess who introduces her to the court of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. Gabrielle becomes the mistress of the Count de Villers, who keeps her in grand style but often displays a cruel streak. When the Revolution begins, and Villers is killed defending the Tuileries Palace, Gabrielle is imprisoned, but acquitted by a peoples' court. Meanwhile, Pierre-Andre, now a lawyer, has become an influential magistrate under the new regime, and remains so throughout the various power shifts of the Revolution, while his contemporaries are losing their heads. Gabrielle seeks his help in procuring identity documents falsifying her aristocratic past, and the two rekindle their romance. Gabrielle is again arrested when her employer, whose advances she spurns, informs on her. Pierre-Andre secures her release and obtains his mentor Robespierre's blessings for the relationship. But a sudden reversal of Robespierre's political fortunes leaves Pierre-Andre and Gabrielle at the mob's mercy. Delors, who was born in France, writes competently in English, but at times her prose reads like a stilted translation. The Revolution's successive upheavals form an engrossing backdrop to Gabrielle's predicament, but she's too timid a protagonist to command center stage.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. In Mistress of the Revolution, Gabrielle often makes difficult choices (when she becomes Villiers's mistress, when she accepts the position of lady-in-waiting, when she goes to work at the Theatre.) In her place, would you have chosen other options?
2. Gabrielle is, for all intents and purposes, abandoned at birth by her mother. How does she cope with it?
3. Do you think Gabrielle is a good mother? How does her relationship with her daughter evolve throughout the book?
4. Do you see Gabrielle's brother, the Marquis de Montserrat, as a villain, or do you feel some sympathy for him?
5. Is Gabrielle passive? Does she accept the limits imposed on women of her class and time, or does she strive to forge her own path?
6. When Gabrielle arrives in Paris as a widow at the age of seventeen, she is not reunited with her former love. Why not?
7. Is the portrait of Queen Marie-Antoinette in Mistress of the Revolution different from what you read in other books or saw in films?
8. How are the stark realities of the Terror foreshadowed in the luxurious lifestyle of the aristocracy before the Revolution?
9. How does Gabrielle's attitude towards religion in general, and her own faith, evolve throughout the novel?
10. Mistress of the Revolution begins as a memoir. How, and why does the tone and purpose of Gabrielle's narrative evolve?
11. Did Mistress of the Revolution change your image of the French Revolution? If yes, how so?
12. Did the conclusion of the novel surprise you? Is it a "happy ending"?
(Questions from the author's website.)
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