Nope its believed it was said by Louis XIV's queen, Maria Theresa of Spain. And not in those exact words either. (Although there is still speculation no one ever said it at all.) It was just another way to demonize her and blame her for others' failings.
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its orgins also date back a hundred years. to another french queen, whos name i can't remember
Renee
it has been attributed to louis XIV's wife, marie-therese of spain. i don't even know if it's been positively attributed to her. there is the same sort of saying in a lot of other cultures through time as well; in china it has something to do with rice and there being a shortage.
shareIt's proven that she never said that sentence.
It's a so called "Wandering Anecdote" that was told about former queens as well such as Louis XIV's wife.
Aw, thanks for explaining that you guys =] lol
HE liCK'd ME liKE A l0lliP0p
it would have been extremly out of charcter for her to say something like that. Given her acts of charity.such as taking in an orphan and helping an injured man by taking him to her own phycian personally.
Renee
'let them eat cake' does not mean let them eat the things we celebrate birthdays with... it means 'have them eat the overflow when you bake a loaf of bread'... the overflow is this 'caked' gunk stuck on the bottom of your oven.
if anything that is what she meant... since you need FLOUR for regular cake...
OH THANK YOU GOD! THANK YOU SO BLOODY MUCH!!! Basil Fawlty
No. That's just wrong. For one thing, it relies on a homonym in English, and Marie Antoinette didn't speak English. The word she was purported to have said was "brioche," which means ... brioche. Not quite cake (close enough for a rough translation), but fancy bread.
shareThere used to be lots (and lots and lots) of threads on this subject, but IMDB has probably tossed 'em all in the Dumpster.
What she really said was, "Let me eat cake. Oh, never mind, I'll just take some of the frosting with my finger."
Or, in the original French, "Le singe conduit l'autobus."
its funny how people claim that it was proven that she never said that sentence.she could have for all we know.unless someone followed her round listening to every single thing she said her whole life
shareForgive me in advance but I skipped class that day what does that mean anyway?
share"Let Them Eat Cake" refers to the drippings that are left in the oven after baking. That is what the sentence means, literally scrapping off and eating the "cake" from the oven.
Paige is proposing violence agenst the monkey! - Pheobe Halliwell
It's really the idea behing the concept of the quote 'Let them Eat Cake', although I am not sure if it has been disproven that she said that, it's widely questioned. It really shows her attitude as queen towards the country and the people, she had no idea what was going on. 'Let them eat cake' but forgetting that they need bread to make cake?!? It's sort of like when the 1st Bush went into a grocery store and didn't know what the cashier was doing when she was scanning his items because he had been in 'high soceity' for so long, not exposed to real life. (and in the 80s the grocery store scanner was a realitivly new development)
Basically this quote shows her naivte and uselessness as queen.
But did anyone really not like the way they did this quote in the movie with that ridiculous Black lipstick? AND Dunst didn't even say it well.
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I think she said it perfectly She looks over after hearing of the bread shortage, kind of smiles and giggles and says "Let Them Eat Cake!" Like it's the most odvious logical answer in the world and she couldn't be bothered either way. The black lipstic and the hair were ment to represent what the common people thought of the monarchy's decadence and style and how the revolutionary PR propaganda painted her. I personally do not believe she said those words however. ALOT of what was printed about her where over exagerations or bold-faced lies. She really truly was in the wrong place at the wrong time. She was a kind person at heart I think. She is very misunderstood by history. She even apologized to her exocutioner for accidentaly stepping on his foot! How many people today would do that?
I FIRMLY believe that she did NOT deserve to die the way she did...that horrible bloody death. Like I said in another post, they ripped her family apart. I am not saying that she was the most responsible person in the world or that she was perfect...because noone is. But come on, they were a bunch of teen-agers/20 somethings running Versailles and the country. What did they expect?
Paige is proposing violence agenst the monkey! - Pheobe Halliwell
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The story I heard about the line was that Marie was having a party and the food wasn't ready on time. All the guests were getting hungry, so Marie told the servants to go ahead and bring out the dessert cake just so they could have something to snack on while they were waiting for their food.
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I heard it was a joke about her; a made-up story that illustrated how clueless people saw her as being. I know there were endless editorial cartoons made about her in the papers of the day; it might have come from one of those. Eventually it became legend, much like George Washington and his cherry tree (yeah, that's just a story, too).
share"Le singe conduit l'autobus" means the monkey drives a bus.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Let_Them_Eat_Cake
http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/227600.html
http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a2_334.html
the first link says she ascended the throne when she was only ten!
Renee
My very randomness astounds people!
I hate Reality shows, thats not reality!
No, it doesn't...
"Let them eat cake!" is a translation of the French "qu'ils mangent de la brioche." While typically attributed to Marie Antoinette, the original source is not settled among historians. Whoever invented the phrase, it seems implausible that it could have been Marie Antoinette, since before Antoinette ascended to the throne -- when she was only ten years old -- Jean-Jacques Rousseau wrote, "At length I recollected the thoughtless saying of a great princess, who, on being informed that the country people had no bread, replied, 'Then let them eat pastry!'" The princess he is referring to is assumed to be Maria Theresa of Spain.share
According to Bourbon family history, Marie Therese, wife of Louis XIV was the princess who said this originally but she did not mean it as an arrogant slight. Marie Therese was very simple minded--many historians consider her to have been developmentally delayed( her half brother, Charles II of Spain was actually mentally retarded)*. Marie Therese supposedly answered out of real naivete. The official exchange supposedly went like this:
Minister of finance: Majesties, the people are revolting in the Brittany!
Queen Marie Therese: Why?
Minister: Because, Majesty, they are hungry and they have no bread.
Queen Marie Therese: then let them eat cake(pastry).
Supposedly, the family version of the story goes that her husband, Louis XIV, then explained if the people had no flour for bread, they had none for cake, either, to which Marie Therese is said to have replied "oh, I did not know.".
She was said to be so slow she did not learn French properly and could not learn the card games at Versailles well and lost heavily as a result. She led a life of relative retirement with her dwarfs, small pets and chocolate garlic stews as she found life and the repartee too fast paced at the Court. Louis XIV is said to have explained things slowly to her as if to a child at times and sometimes in Spanish as he was fluent(his mother was Marie Therese's aunt and she was also a Spanish Habsburg princess and she taught her children Spanish).
Another famous exchange with Marie Therese:
On her wedding, Louis'cousin, the Grande Madmoiselle, asked Marie Therese: Did you find the men in Spain attractive before you married? Did you have a sweetheart you are leaving?
Marie Therese: No. There was no other king in Spain than my father.
*Marie Therese and her brother were victims of Habsburg inbreeding. Charles II was the product of an uncle-niece mating and Marie Therese's breedng was not much better.
She NEVER said that, she hardly knew what was happening outside her palace and she was so consumed with using the people/s money on her wardrobe of shoes, dresses, jewelry and wigs.
shareyou're right, she never said it.
but, she did have an idea of what was happening outside of versailles and was actively involved in helping the poor. she gave up on on frivolous expenses and took an active interest in the welfare of the people. she was never one for jewelry, actually, and it's ironic that the affair of the necklace did so much damage to her repuation since, of course, she wasn't even involved in the scheme, and that she wasn't big on jewelry. this is especially true after the simpler fashions introduced by the queen started to come into fashion, sweeping away the jeweled and silk finery of earlier decades of the eighteenth century. she also didn't wear wigs; she wore her own hair built up with padding or wire frames adorned with false hair extensions and curls.
Sorry, but that is not strictly accurate. MA definitely liked jewelry in the years prior to the Necklace affair, which is why everyone believed she would buy the necklace in the first place and why the swindle was successful in the first place--MA had bought a lot of jewelry prior to that time which is why the Cardinal Rohan fell for the swindle to start with. Her diamond purchases and other fashion related bills are listed in the national archives in France and scholars can still view them.
MA was fond of diamonds, like all the Bourbons, and she wore the legendary French Blue--ie, the Hope diamond--regularly early in her marriage. At the time of the Necklace affair, though, it was correct that she was wearing less jewelry and was in simpler fashions.
That is not to say that MA was not extravagant--she definitely was and a review of some of her bills, expenses, etc makes that quite clear. One year alone she spent millions in accessories and she bought the palace of Saint Cloud for 6 million at a time when the treasury was very low simply because she "liked the air better" than at Versailles. Her Hameau and the Peitit Trianon were also very expensive. In one of the more controversial moves, MA had flour imported in to Versailles for her powdered hairdos(and those of her favorites) while flour shortages were causing riots throughout France. Some of the shipments were even attacked by the mobs. To say that MA was very cognizant of the financial situation in the rest of France is questionable in light of the fact that she was sending bills for more servants to perfume sheep before she herded them and to wash eggs before she gathered them at her Hameau while dressed as a couture dairy maid by Rose Bertin, who also submitted bills of one million louis for ribbons alone. Meanwhile, the real dairy maids outside Paris were in rags and Parisians were rioting for food. If MA truly was aware of this poverty and yet was still being that extravagant, then it is no surprise that the people of France(and later historians)believed she made the infamous "let them eat cake" comment--she certainly lived some of her life as if that comment might be true. To those who try to make a saint of her, she was no saint, just a woman who married into a monarchy that was unresponsive to its people's needs who then made her own mistakes in that regard and she and her family had to pay the ultimate penalty for the financial mismanagement of the country.
sorry, i didn't mean to say she didn't like jewelry (louis XV made her a gift of several on her arrival in 1770) but her tastes were not as extravagant as those of other ladies at court, such as madame du barry. her love of simplicity, which was manifested through her robes en gaulle, could also be seen in her choices in jewelry, as one can see in portraits as well as textual accounts such as the campan memoirs. clothing-wise, however, she certainly was extravagant, and you're definitely correct in citing the numerous bills for gowns, notions, and other trimmings from the atelier of rose bertin and other modistes.
i would agree that she was not fully cognizant of the fiscal situation. however, she did have somewhat of an idea- for example, at first she was against aiding the american war of independence given the prohibitive cost. she had also been raised with a sense of duty for ones people; the produce raised/grown at trianon was distributed by parish priests around versailles and the yvelines to the poor. relief for the poor was spearheaded by the queen. numerous charitable funds were endowed by her (young and unwed mothers' funds, dowries for poor women), and both she and louis XVI saw the openings of new hospitals, schools, etc. she wasn't the selfish, greedy idiot holed up in her gilded palace that many imagined.
Drouais,
1.all the Bourbons had charities but the money outlays they made to these pale in comparison to their lavish personal spending, so please do not read too much in the fact that MA had charities. All the Bourbons did and this was to be expected but it did not change the basic fact that their enormous fortunes were still mostly dedicated to self aggrandisement. For every Hospital for Invalid soldiers that was built there was a Versailles, a Saint Cloud, a Marly, a Sceaux or a Meudon built at several times the cost of a hospital. As I said before, MA was not a saint nor was she evil but she made plenty of mistakes in a situation that was already a disaster from years past and she and her family ended up paying for the problems of the whole ancien regime system. The systemic problems started in the reign of Louis XIV with the isolation of the nobles at Versailles and the increased taxes and continual wars. France was bankrupt at Louis XIV's death and it really never recovered.*
2.The robes en gaulle and her simpler toilette occured later in her life and the years of extravagance and lavish spending had already taken a toll on the treasury and her reputation by that time. Even the robes en gaulle cost money and were controversial as they were not French silk but were imported Austrian cotton,so even in her quest for simplicity, MA was criticised by the French.
3.did you check out your private messages? I sent you one a while ago and left you a message on a thread where Hollygrrlrose was being unpleasant to you.
*the people of France were so poor and ragged by the time of Louis XIV's death that they danced in the streets and jeered his funeral cortege on its way to Saint Denis. In typical high handed ancien regime fashion, the chamberlain with the coffin was said to have whipped at a crowd of laughing, jeering common people blocking his way and to have shouted "Out of the way! Go and croak you frogs, now that the Sun has set!" This was of course also a Versailles reference as the king's favorite fountain was the fountain of Latona in which the goddess is in the center and grotesque figures of peasants turning into frogs and lizards surround the fountain in a retelling of the myth in which peasants were punished for mocking the mother of Apollo the sun god.
all true regarding the charities. however it is known that marie-antoinette took an active interest in these endeavors, having been inculcated with such an attitude from a very young age. she wasn't just doing them for show. she even continued with them into the revolution when the court was reinstalled at the tuileries.
the robes en gaulle came about ca. 1780, only a decade into marie antoinette's sejour in france. even as early as the late-1770s, she was adopting simpler and simpler fashions that evoked country life.
p.s. j'ai bien recu votre message, merci !
In reality, we have no idea if she said that or not... There is no proof that she said that.
That is what people have to understand. I am sure Marie Antoinette that you need flour to bake cakes. (perhaps she didn't, we will never know)
"Oh Thank you God! Thank you so BLOODY much!" Basil Fawlty
Her simple fashion was just as expensive as traditional court dresses and demanded muslin and linen imported from England and the Empire. They also damaged the French silk industry.
The poufs she wore were also extremely expensive and they required flour to be powdered. Flour that the people were lacking.
It's true she stopped wearing diamonds for a while after Rohan's trial, but she was covered with them at the inauguration ceremy of the Estates and wore them again (with counter-revolutionary colours) after Varennes.
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Everyone is replaceable. Even you.
No, she did not say that! My History teacher pissed me off so much when he told my entire class that she said that!
shareMaybe she wasn't the *first* person to say it, but that doesn't mean she didn't use that at some point. People repeat cliches all the time. So far all the evidence shows is she didn't coin the phrase herself (although she is most famous for it).
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It implied in the film she said it off-handedly but denied it.
shareThat is incorrect. In the film, there is a scene showing an overly made-up caricature of Marie-Antoinette saying the line. This is supposed to show what the people thought of their queen. The movie takes the stance that she did not, in fact, say it.
Well, we can name one Nemo, but I'd like most of them to be Marlin Jr.