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She is supposed to have said this when she was told that the French populace had no bread to eat. The original French is 'Qu'ils mangent de la brioche', that is, ' Let them eat brioche' (brioche is a form of cake made of flour, butter and eggs). The usual interpretation of the phrase is that Marie-Antoinette understood little about the plight ...
- Was Marie Antoinette Falsely Accused of Saying ‘Let Them Eat Cake?’
- How ‘Let Them Eat Cake’ Came to Be Attached to Marie Antoinette
- Misogyny May Have Contributed to Marie Antoinette’s Legacy
Even before the French queen became associated with the phrase “Let them eat cake,” Marie Antoinette was not viewed favorably by the French people — and her life of excess stood in sharp contrast to the people over whom she ruled. A frivolous spender, the queen was known to gamble and to spend a fortune on clothing, expensive wigs, and jewelry. She...
Why, then, has the misquote carried on for nearly 300 years? “It did not come to be misattributed to Marie Antoinette during the 18th century, but during the Third French Republic starting in 1870, when a careful program of reconstructing the historical past took place,” Denise Maior-Barron, an adjunct professor at Claremont Graduate University in ...
Still, the treatment of Marie Antoinette was far harsher than that of her husband, the man who had actually been France’s ruler. Of course, there is a reason for that, too. “The French Revolution tried to exclude women from political power,” said Robert Gildea, a professor of modern history at University of Oxford. Gildea explained that under the r...
- Austin Harvey
"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 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 quote is taken to ...
A French writer named Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr reported finding the quote “Let Them Eat Cake” in a book from 1760 when Marie-Antoinette was just five years old. Karr hoped this would end the rumor that she was responsible for the famous quote once and for all, but it did not work.
Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. “Let them eat cake” is the most famous quote attributed to Marie-Antoinette, the queen of France during the French Revolution. As the story goes, it was the queen’s response upon being told that her starving peasant subjects had no bread. Because cake is more expensive than bread, the anecdote has been cited ...
Oct 24, 2012 · Lady Antonia Fraser, author of a biography of the French queen, believes the quote would have been highly uncharacteristic of Marie-Antoinette, an intelligent woman who donated generously to ...
Aug 15, 2022 · Brioche is a sweet bread made with eggs and butter, and significantly, is not technically cake. But brioche was a luxury food item back in the 1700s (like la croûte de pâté ), and the phrase “let them eat brioche” doesn’t roll off the tongue quite as well as “let them eat cake.”. So while the translation might be a bit of a stretch ...
