Did Marie Antoinette really utter the infamous words “Let them eat cake”?
The quick answer to this question is a simple ‘no’. Marie Antoinette, the last pre-revolutionary queen of France, did not say “Let them eat cake” when confronted with the news that Parisian farmers were so desperately poor that they could not afford bread. The better question is perhaps: why do we think she said that?
As a background, the quote is slightly exaggerated in its translation from French to English. Originally, Marie Antoinette apparently said, “Qu’ils mangent de la brioche”, or “Let them eat brioche.” Although this sweetened bread is more expensive than an average baguette, it is not exactly the icing-laden holes with many faces that you might think the queen has in mind. That said, this hyperbolic translation does not change the point, at least from a propagandistic point of view; it still indicates that the French queen was arrogant and out of touch with the working class. With callous aristocrats like these, things will never improve for the average French citizen. Long live the revolution!
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But the “brioche” quote is also problematic, as there is no reliable evidence that the queen ever said it. “Marie Antoinette never uttered these words or anything else in this regard,” said Denise Maior-Barron, an assistant professor at Claremont Graduate University in California. His research examines contemporary depictions of Marie Antoinette’s character. “As for Louis, he is present in all the films in which Marie Antoinette appears, but is portrayed as a gentle, pathetic companion. Indeed, another misrepresentation.”
France has not endured any shortage of revolutions. The first, in 1789, ends very badly for Marie Antoinette and her husband, Louis XVI. In the next century, the country flip flop between monarchies and republics, with each side waging a propaganda war alongside armed skirmishes. It was during one of these later revolutions, long after the execution of Marie Antoinette, that the misquotation first occurred.
“It was not wrongly attributed to Marie Antoinette during the 18th century, but during the Third French Republic, beginning in 1870, when a meticulous program for the reconstruction of the historical past took place,” Maior-Barron told WordsSideKick.
In the 1870s, the Republicans, who successfully dethroned Napoleon III after decisively losing a war against Prussia, built on a years-long campaign to undermine Marie Antoinette’s legacy and reputation. “The masterminds of the French Revolution destroyed the French monarchy by constantly attacking its most important symbols, and eventually destroying them: the King and Queen of France,” Maior-Barron said. “For this reason, the type of ‘clichés’ keep eating cake.’
This century-long attempt to slander Marie Antoinette, however, was not merely securing the republican cause; it was also tinted with sexism – after all, her reputation seemed to cost far more than that of her husband, who was actually in charge of France.
“The French Revolution sought to exclude women from political power,” said Robert Gildea, a professor of modern history at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom.
While women were far from liberated when Louis XVI was on the throne, it was theoretically possible for the wives and mistresses of kings or other important officials to hold power – albeit unofficially. However, the revolutionaries tried to further deny women of the national conversation. Marie Antoinette was not the only woman to lose her head during France’s first transition to a republic. “Olympe de Gouges, who wrote the ‘Declaration of the Rights of Women and the Female Citizen’, was also put in guillotine,” Gildea told WordsSideKick.
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In the wake of the French Revolution, Marie Antoinette is accused of exercising too much power over her husband, Gildea explained. In light of this, it is easy to see how propagandists were motivated to enter a character assassination of Marie Antoinette, and the rumor mill around her name certainly flourished during the first revolution while she was still alive. “She is accused of having male and female lovers and even having an incestuous relationship with her son,” Gildea said.
In fact, the “brioche” quote was not even original, and even had a history of being used against noble women. The philosopher and writer Jean-Jacques Rousseau, whose work later influenced the Revolution, was possibly the first person to record the phrase in 1767. “Let them eat brioche” is initially found in one of Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s novels, in which he attributed this rule to one of his fictional characters belonging to the 18th-century French aristocracy, “said Maior-Barron.
In Marie Antoinette’s case, however, the queens of the Queen may be motivated by more than just pure sexism – she also posed a very serious threat to the Republicans. Marie Antoinette was born into the mighty Habsburg Austrian royal family before marrying Louis. When the armed uprising against the French crown began to steam, she wrote to her brothers at home to try to invade them to invade France and save the monarchy. “When these forces invaded France, Marie Antoinette was seen as a traitor,” Gildea said.
Eventually the Habsburgs do not succeed in stopping the revolution, Marie Antoinette is beheaded and the victors are left to write the history books.
Originally published on Live Science.