When God Said let them eat cake what did he really mean.?

Answer 1

I'm at a loss for words. I'm actually afraid someone might answer this.

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

Definitely not God but not Marie Antoinette either it seems.

Marie Antoinette never said "Let them eat cake." We have that on the authority of biographer Lady Antonia Fraser, who spoke on the subject at the 2002 Edinburgh Book Fair.

Historians have known better all along, actually, but it is still popularly believed that Marie, wife of Louis XVI and queen of France on the eve of the French Revolution, uttered the insensitive remark upon hearing peasants' complaints that there wasn't enough bread to go around. Not true. "It was said 100 years before her by Marie-Therese, the wife of Louis XIV," Fraser explains. "It was a callous and ignorant statement and she [Marie Antoinette] was neither."

The attribution is doubly erroneous in English, truth be known, because the word "cake" is a mistranslation. In the original French the alleged quote reads, "Qu'ils mangent de la brioche," which means, literally, "Let them eat rich, expensive, funny-shaped, yellow, eggy buns."


Another reference also denies that Marie Antoinette said those words:

While Marie Antoinette was certainly enough of a bubblehead to have said the phrase in question, there is no evidence that she actually did so, and in any case she did not originate it. The peasants-have-no-bread story was in common currency at least since the 1760s as an illustration of the decadence of the aristocracy. The political philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau mentions it in his Confessions in connection with an incident that occurred in 1740. (He stole wine while working as a tutor in Lyons and then had problems trying to scrounge up something to eat along with it.) He concludes thusly: "Finally I remembered the way out suggested by a great princess when told that the peasants had no bread: 'Well, let them eat cake.'"

Now, J.-J. may have been embroidering this yarn with a line he had really heard many years later. But even so, at the time he was writing--early 1766--Marie Antoinette was only ten years old and still four years away from her marriage to the future Louis XVI. Writer Alphonse Karr in 1843 claimed that the line originated with a certain Duchess of Tuscany in 1760 or earlier, and that it was attributed to Marie Antoinette in 1789 by radical agitators who were trying to turn the populace against her.

Answer 4

Lorenzo Steed saved me a lot of time and effort!!!! That is the most correct answer. The statement attributed to Marie Antoinette has been wrongly accepted by many due to the propaganda of those leaders of the French Revolution which claimed her statement and to rally the masses against the aristocracy and royals.

Ain't history great? The person who asked this question also believes Oliver Stone movies are historical fact. Or as Blutarsky said in Animal House, "Did we give up when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor?"

Answer 5

Did God put those words into Marie Antoinettes mouth? I never knew that. Perhaps there was lots of cake left over in the bakers shop, and all the bread had been sold

Answer 6

I'm not sure if you're saying that God said that in order to be funny or if you didn't know that Marie-Antoinette was the one who said, "Let them eat Cake." She said that because a represenative came up to her and informed her that the people of France had no bread to eat. Her reply was "let them eat cake."

Answer 7

God didnt say it! Marioe Antoinette said it because she was told the poor were starving and she said "let them eat cake" because she was so ignorant that poor people didnt have any money for any food...let alone cake!

Answer 8

God Said let there be light
Marie Antoinette said let them eat cake
note the difference

Answer 9

It was said by Marie-Therese, the wife of Louis XIV but wrongly attributed to Marie-Antoinette.

Answer 10

Hhaahahahhhahah! Question of the Night award goes to Mr History Mix, nice one!

Answer 11

That was Marie Antoinette. She said that because she was ignorant of how difficult it was for the French peasants to even get bread.