Madame Tussauds wax museums are known around the world starting with the original one in London, England built in 1843. Over one hundred and fifty years later and Madame Tussauds has been franchised to include wax museums across America (New York City, Hollywood, Washington DC), Europe (Berlin, Amsterdam, Vienna), Asia (Hong Kong, Bangkok, Tokyo), and in Sydney, Australia. Although Tussaud’s museums have thrived throughout the 20 th and 21 st centuries, most visitors to the galleries know almost nothing about the woman who turned wax modeling into a commercial enterprise and a form of fine art.
Michelle Moran educates audiences about the woman whom Robespierre and his fellow Parisians dubbed, “The angel of death” during the Reign of Terror. Born Marie Grosholtz and becoming Madame Tussaud after marrying Francois Tussaud in 1795, she is assigned to make death masks of the people who have been guillotined. Sometimes she is ordered to make full bodied wax figures of the participants of the French Revolution, which included the ringleaders of the revolution such as Robespierre, Jean-Paul Marat, the Comte de Mirabeau, the Duc d’Orleans, and Camille Desmoulins.
Michelle Moran fashions the life story of Madame Tussaud in her book, Madame Tussaud: A Novel about the French Revolution. She bases the story on historical notes she gathered as well as memoirs penned by the wax modeler and the people who knew her and spoke about her in print. Moran’s book exceeds the reader’s expectations as her account contains vivid descriptions which evoke readers to step back in time and live in history through her narration. Moran puts such details into her account that readers will gasp at the horrors perpetrated by the actions of the Parisian mobs.
Moran has a talent for filling in gaps left in history as she provides astute observations, estimations, and presumptions about how critical events unfolded such as the murder of pro-revolutionary/patriot Jean-Paul Marat. Many people may have seen Jacques Louis David’s painting of Marat’s death scene as he bled in his bathtub from knife wounds. Moran suggests the painting is based on sketches made by Tussaud who is asked by David in the story to make the scrolls. It’s a presumption that has no basis in recorded history but it makes sense and is congruent with the events and storyline.
Moran retraces the wax modeler’s steps from honing her talent to being labeled a traitor and sent to Carnes prison in 1794 where she awaited a near certain death by the guillotine. Moran took advantage of the fact that Josephine Rose de Beauharnais, Napoleon Bonaparte’s future wife, was also held in Carnes prison and presupposes that the two women forged a bond.
Though at the time of the Reign of Terror, Madame Tussaud was not a world traveler, but her life was consumed with action and never knowing uncertainty of when her last breath would be taken amidst the turmoil of the French Revolution and the subsequent Reign of Terror. Moran writes from the point of view of this anxiety making Madame Tussaud’s backstory as indelible as her wax museums have become over the centuries.
