When a man is affected with sexual incapacity, he suffers from inhibitions and from irresolution. But when, in the female partner, her readiness to surrender herself to the male does not find its due fulfilment, the inevitable upshot will be irritability and lack of restraint with outbursts of excessive liveliness. By nature, Marie Antoinette was normal enough; a tender, womanly woman, foreordained to motherhood and the old, liberal scale, only waiting, one may suppose, to submit herself to a real man. (...) Her ill-starred destiny decreed that this creature of typically feminine sensibilities should enter into an abnormal union, and should be coupled with a man who was not fully a man.Stefan Zweig, Marie Antoinette: A Portrait of an Average Woman, s. 26
Och precis där slutar jag läsa Zweigs Marie Antoinette-biografi. Jag orkar inte ha överseende med 30-talets könssyn. Men eftersom jag fortfarande vill läsa en välskriven biografi över svunnen drottning, har jag bestämt mig för att vända mig till Antonia Frasers Mary, Queen of Scots istället, och hoppas på bättre lycka (hennes Marie Antoinette-biografi läste jag redan med stor behållning för några år sedan).
