2006-07-09 09:15:20 · 28 answers · asked by s_wilson2002uk 1 in Education & Reference ➔ Quotations
The quote is often misunderstood. When Marie Antoinette said let them eat cake, she wasn't talking about any rich desert, she was talking about the scrapings from the bread ovens. She was saying that if the people had no bread, they should eat the scrapings from their ovens.
What a b*tch. She got what she deserved.
2006-07-09 09:20:10 · answer #1 · answered by ratboy 7 · 2⤊ 0⤋
Marie Antoinette at the time of the bread riots.
She was so privileged and rich and remote from the people that it is possible that when she was told that the French peasants were rioting because they had no bread to eat that she did not realise that, for them, there was no alternative - apart from starving.
So to her, 'let them eat cake' might have been a reasonable response in the same way as 'Oops we are out of coffee - that's OK we'll have tea instead'.
P.S. I don't think that there is any actual historical evidence that she did say 'let them have cake' but she lost her head whether she said it or not.
2006-07-09 16:29:23 · answer #2 · answered by DogDoc 4 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Marie Antoinette
2006-07-09 16:24:35 · answer #3 · answered by foxface 1 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Marie Antoinette
2006-07-09 16:18:47 · answer #4 · answered by Report Abuse 6 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Marie Antoinette - when she was told that the peasants were rioting because they had no bread to eat. In her rich aristocratic status, she was so far removed from the world of the peasants that when told they had no bread to eat, she thought that simply meant they had "run out" and hadn't "had a chance to get to the store yet" so she thought well, they can eat something else they have lying around, cake for instance. She didn't understand that "no bread to eat" meant they had NOTHING to eat, not even just plain old bread.
2006-07-09 16:23:02 · answer #5 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
All but two of you got this wrong.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau mentions this in his writings, in relation to an incident in 1740 – almost 20 years before Marie A was born! Writer Alphonse Karr in 1843 claimed that the line originated with a certain Duchess of Tuscany in 1760 or earlier, and that radical agitators who were trying to turn the populace against her attributed it to Marie Antoinette in 1789.
2006-07-11 02:51:48 · answer #6 · answered by Polymath72 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Marie Antoinette.
2006-07-09 16:19:56 · answer #7 · answered by girlfriday 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Marie Antoinette.
2006-07-09 16:17:30 · answer #8 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
Marie Antoinette, wife of King Louis XVI, reportedly said it when she was told that the common people of France had no bread to eat. Whether it was out of callousness or ignorance, her offhanded remark encapsulated the royal family's detachment to the suffering of their people. The French Revolution and their overthrow followed. Both Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette went to the guillotine.
2006-07-09 16:34:16 · answer #9 · answered by Linda N 1 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Voltaire but usually accredited to Marie Antoinette
2006-07-09 18:16:35 · answer #10 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋