Let them eat cake
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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"Let them eat cake" is the traditional translation of the French phrase "Qu'ils mangent de la brioche", said to have been spoken in the 17th or 18th century by "a great princess" upon being told that the peasants had no bread. The French phrase mentions brioche, a bread enriched with butter and eggs, considered a luxury food. The quotation is taken to reflect either the princess's frivolous disregard for the starving peasants or her poor understanding of their plight.
While the phrase is commonly attributed to Marie Antoinette, she did not originate it and she probably never said it.
Attribution
The phrase was supposedly said by Marie Antoinette in 1789, during one of the famines in France during the reign of her husband, King Louis XVI. But it was not attributed to her until half a century later. Although anti-monarchists never cited the anecdote during the French Revolution, it acquired great symbolic importance in subsequent historical accounts when pro-revolutionary commentators employed the phrase to denounce the upper classes of the Ancien Régime as oblivious and rapacious. As one biographer of the Queen notes, it was a particularly powerful phrase because "the staple food of the French peasantry and the working class was bread, absorbing 50 percent of their income, as opposed to 5 percent on fuel; the whole topic of bread was therefore the result of obsessional national interest."
The phrase appears in book six of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Confessions, whose first six books were written in 1765, when Marie Antoinette was nine years of age, and published in 1782. In the book, Rousseau recounts an episode in which he was seeking bread to accompany some wine he had stolen. Feeling too elegantly dressed to go into an ordinary bakery, he recalled the words of a "great princess":
- "At length I remembered the last resort of a great princess who, when told that the peasants had no bread, replied: "Then let them eat brioches." --Jean-Jacques Rousseau | Confessions
Rousseau does not name the "great princess", and he may have invented the anecdote, as the Confessions is not considered entirely factual.
The phrase was attributed to Marie Antoinette by Alphonse Karr in Les Guêpes of March 1843. Objections to the legend of Marie Antoinette and the comment centre on arguments concerning the Queen's personality, internal evidence from members of the French royal family and the date of the saying's origin. Her English-language biographer wrote in 2002:
Fraser instead attributes the phrase to the wife of Louis XIV, Maria Theresa of Spain, citing the memoirs of Louis XVIII, who was only fourteen when Rousseau's Confessions were written and whose own memoirs were published much later. Louis XVIII does not mention Marie Antoinette in his account, but says that the story was an old legend and that the family always believed that Maria Theresa had originated the phrase. However, Louis XVIII is as likely as others to have had his recollection affected by the quick spreading and distorting of Rousseau's original remark.
Fraser also points out in her biography that Marie Antoinette was a generous patron of charity and moved by the plight of the poor when it was brought to her attention, thus making the statement out-of-character for her. This makes it even more unlikely that Marie Antoinette ever said the phrase.
A second consideration is that there were no actual famines during the reign of King Louis XVI and only two incidents of serious bread shortages, the first in April–May 1775, a few weeks before the king's coronation on 11 June 1775, and the second in 1788, the year before the French Revolution. The 1775 shortages led to a series of riots that took place in northern, eastern and western France, known at the time as the Flour War (guerre des farines). Letters from Marie Antoinette to her family in Austria at this time reveal an attitude largely contrary to the spirit of Let them eat brioche:
- "It is quite certain that in seeing the people who treat us so well despite their own misfortune, we are more obliged than ever to work hard for their happiness. The King seems to understand this truth. | Marie Antoinette"
Another problem with the dates surrounding the attribution is that when the phrase first appeared, Marie Antoinette was not only too young to have said it, but living outside France as well. Although published in 1782, Rousseau's Confessions were finished thirteen years prior in 1769. Marie Antoinette, only fourteen years old at the time, would not arrive at Versailles from Austria until 1770. Since she was completely unknown to him at the time of writing, she could not have possibly been the "great princess" he mentioned.
Pages linking in
Après moi, le déluge, Billionaires for Wealthcare, Brioche, Champagne socialist, Confessions (Rousseau), Cultural depictions of Marie Antoinette, Duck Dodgers and the Return of the 24½th Century, Eat cake (redirect page), French fashion, Imperative mood, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Killer Queen, Kyrsten Sinema, Let Them Eat Jellybeans!, Liberal elite, Linda Evangelista, List of common misconceptions, List of programs broadcast by BBC America, Lucky duckies, Maggie Steed, Marie Antoinette, Monument to Blessed Giuseppe Dusmet, Catania, Rocco Rossi, Romanian Revolution, Ronald Reagan in music, Sanja Musić Milanović, Spellemannprisen
See also
