Marie Antonniette: Let them eat cake?

Question

I am not sure if she said it or not...but what is it supposed to mean?

Answer 1

First point, though it's debated who actually said it, it was clearly NOT Marie Antoinette -- the incident appears to have happened before she was even born! The use of the story against HER is said to have occurred during the French Revolution as a means of inciting antagonism to the royal family.

Second, "cake" is not a terribly good translation. The French word --"brioche"-- refers to an egg-based bread... not the simplest bread, but not necessarily "cake".

Third, and usually MISSED in this discussion -- It seems that "Let them eat brioche" need not have been the insensitive or ignorant statement it appears to us to be.

Here's why:
"At the time, French law required bakers to sell fancy breads at the same low price as the plain breads if they ran out of the latter. The goal was to prevent bakers from making very little cheap bread and then profiting off the fancy, expensive bread. Whoever really said "Let them eat brioche" may have meant that the bakery laws should be enforced so the poor could eat the fancy bread if there wasn't enough plain bread to go around."
http://ask.yahoo.com/20021122.html

see also:http://urbanlegends.about.com/library/bl_marie_antoinette.htm

Answer 2

We're not entirely sure who said "Let them eat cake," but we can tell you that it wasn't Marie Antoinette. This flippant phrase about consuming pastry is commonly attributed to the frivolous queen in the days leading up to the French Revolution. Supposedly, she spoke these words upon hearing how the peasantry had no bread to eat. But biographers and historians have found no evidence that Marie uttered these words or anything like them.
Our old pal Cecil Adams of The Straight Dope explains the quotation was first written by French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau in Confessions. Actually, Rousseau wrote "Qu'ils mangent de la brioche," which essentially means "let them eat a type of egg-based bread" (not quite cake, but still a bit extravagant). Rousseau claimed that "a great princess" told the peasants to eat cake/brioche when she heard they had no bread.

But Rousseau wrote this in early 1766, when Marie Antoinette was only 10 years old, still living in her native Austria and not yet married to King Louis XVI. So it's highly unlikely that Marie uttered the pompous phrase. Perhaps Rousseau invented them to illustrate the divide between royalty and the poor -- which is certainly how the phrase has been used ever since.

However, "Let them eat brioche" isn't quite as cold a sentiment as you might imagine. At the time, French law required bakers to sell fancy breads at the same low price as the plain breads if they ran out of the latter. The goal was to prevent bakers from making very little cheap bread and then profiting off the fancy, expensive bread. Whoever really said "Let them eat brioche" may have meant that the bakery laws should be enforced so the poor could eat the fancy bread if there wasn't enough plain bread to go around.

A recent biographer claims that "Let them eat cake" was actually spoken by Marie-Therese, wife of France's Louis XIV, 100 years before Marie Antoinette, but we couldn't find anything online to corroborate this. Ultimately, we will probably never know who uttered this infamous phrase.

Answer 3

That line is a myth. Marie Antoinette did not say it. The line comes from a novel about a princess written by Rousseau.
By all accounts, Marie Antoinette was courteous even to her executioners.
The line means that if the peasants are too poor to afford bread, then they should have cake instead; it is supposed to reflect a haughty disdain for people who are starving.

Answer 4

Marie Antoinette was not ready to run a country. She and her husband were very sheltered their entire life and did not understand her people. When she said "Let them eat cake", she did not understand how people could be hungry. She did not know how the common people live, for no one bothered to inform her or her husband about the people. She might of really wanted to help them by giving them cake. She just did not understand the needs of a country.

Answer 5

She never said it. Marie Antoinette technically was an Austrian and a Habsburg. The french didn't like the austrians all that much at the time, and they were fed up with the monarchy as well. The concept was that she was living lavishly (as well as the rest of the nobility, but again, she was austrian), while the majority of the country starved. It was really just bad propaganda.

Answer 6

you raised an excellent question. bravo. now -- as to the facts -- historians make the facts from different sources -- hearsay, written documents, people around Marie-Antoinette etc. etc. to my best knowledge the statement represents the facts as known to historians. now the meaning -- we give it a meaning to-day on the threshold of the 21 century...not -- like during the times when Antoinette lived. to-day it is understood to mean that Marie-Antoinette did not have a clue -- that people "eat bread alone" and have nothing else to eat. while for "Antoinette" ( i believe she had no schooling) bread was one substance and "cake" was another substance...and she had not clue that the second one was not affordable to the peasants. enough said -- yes, the revolution guillotined her -- and it was not "her person" but her regime that was cut off....and this is important to understand. she symbolized that regime of king, queens, rich etc.
hope you get the picture. lovely question thanks again.

Answer 7

it's supposed to meanwhen she was told the villager's and people didn't have bread and they were starving she said "let them eat cake" but I read the book that inspired the movie and they dont believe that she said it they said that they think and earlier queen before she was even alive said it and that the saying got passed down through the queens and thats how people described them, but if she did say that they think she said it because she was so isolated that she didnt know i mean she didnt go outside when she shopped the clothes were brought to her thats how isolated she was, so she didnt know she thought "I like cake so let the people have some"

Answer 8

Because she was standing up for the peasants and the Queen didn't want to include the lowly peasants in her party. So when Marie said ;let them eat cake, the Queen said off with her head which is what happened. She went strait to the guillotine.

Answer 9

It means if they can not eat bread since they are so poor, let them eat cake (like she got to do as the Queen). It was a major insensitive put down to the starving people of Paris.

Answer 10

She never actually said it. Here's the meaning: The poor people of France were starving while the wealthy had every luxury. This lie is that when someone told her that the poor were begging for bread, she said, "Let them eat cake." That would have been terribly cruel and it never happened.