Marie Antoinette and the American Frontier

                  The Queen’s Hamlet was built on the grounds of Versailles in 1763 for the use of Marie Antoinette. Inspired by the Enlightenment’s celebration of the simple and pure life of the peasants, the site gave the Queen a chance to escape the rigid society of court and pretend she led an idyllic life in the countryside.  The hamlet included a working model farm, maintained by a staff of gardeners and herdsmen.  While the airy, comfortable gowns the Queen and her guests wore for their afternoon walks were inspired by the dresses worn by Polish shepherdesses, it is not quite fair to say Marie Antoinette was cosplaying as a peasant.  Nevertheless, to the public of the Revolutionary age and generations of critics since then, the whole scene seems hopelessly out of touch and even a bit cruel.  The lives of actual peasants were hard, marked by toil and hunger.

HBO’s series, “Back to the Frontier”, just wrapped up at the end of August 2025. The show depicts three families returning to life on the American frontier in the 1800s. Each week, these modern families were confronted with the harsh realities of life in that time at that place. Lessons were learned, challenges were overcome, and in the end everyone came away inspired.

Well, sort of inspired. As a historian and hardcore fan of TV shows, I watched with great interest but sometimes I hate-watched the series. Entire reddit forums and other commentary sections burst with debates about just how whitewashed and fake the show was. The families got to claim their stakes at the land office and then were delivered to their homesteads. At each site, there was already a cabin, an outhouse, a garden, a shed or barn, and piles of tools and supplies. I mean, at each cabin there were a couple of loose boards to hammer into place, and they had to tidy up their first night. But, every time someone said something along the lines of “I can’t believe the pioneers lived like this!” I had to roll my eyes. No—people who made this journey in the 19^th century got a plain scrap of earth and had to figure out how to actually survive, building from scratch with only what they carried with them or were able to buy in rare encounters with a peddler or outpost.

In one of my favorite episodes, the Hall family was distressed by how little money they had and wondered if they would have enough to survive to winter. Fortunately, they apparently had a huge and well-maintained orchard nearby and were able to gather bushels of magazine-perfect apples. They also happened to have a world-class cider press and dozens of sanitized bottles. They sold it all, along with other products from their meager farm, at the general store for cash and other supplies. I and my buddies on social media guffawed at how silly it was. Wow, frontier life sure was easy. Not to mention how clean everything was—brilliant white linens and dresses, shiny dishes, fires that light easily and don’t smoke you out of the cabin. Like the videos of so many “trad wife” influencers, the show presented what would take days of back-breaking labor and made into a fun afternoon lark.

That’s all fine. I get the appeal, and I enjoyed what I saw. And recently, on one of those social media discussions, someone posed a great question: are those of us who criticize the fakeness of the show really suggesting that we watch the families suffer? Would that be better? More entertaining?

My answer, of course, is no. I do not want to see families suffer. I do not want to see kids forced to labor and go hungry when food is scarce. However, the reality is that families do suffer, now and throughout history. My worry is that, by pretending it’s not so bad, we not only undermine the courage and toil of people in the past we make it easier to ignore the courage and suffering of people today.  It is absolutely inspiring to remember that life on the frontier (or the front lines, or the plantation, or the sea, etc.) was hard, sometimes, horrific, and that many humans managed to survive it and work towards something better. I don’t need to see an entire family shivering through their first night under a tarp, knowing they have to start building a shelter in the morning. . .but I don’t want to forget that families did exactly that. I want to remember what we are truly capable of, what our ancestors lived through, so perhaps we can find the courage to live through hard things right now.

Considering the horrors of Marie Antoinette’s final days, I don’t begrudge her an afternoon of “let’s pretend” before it all fell apart. But I also don’t want to marvel at her little royal play village and convince myself I’ve learned something about peasant life.