Let Them Eat Cake!

Let them eat cake!

MARIE ANTOINETTE
Austrian archduchess and last queen of France
1755—1793

Marie or Not Marie? That is the Question!

To answer the question: Not Marie.

First, there’s the questionable translation of what was a quote attributed to a variety of royals long before Marie Antoinette ascended to the throne: Qu’ils mangent de la brioche! Throw this phrase into your language translation software and it will likely spit out “Let them eat cake!” when the literal phrase should actually read, “Let them eat brioche!”—Qu’ils mangent de la gâteau! would be the most accurate wording if cake were the tasty treat in question.

While the sentiment might be the same (brioche being the buttery brother to the more common bread of the day), it ain’t cake! Just another example of edibles lost in translation.

Then There’s Telephone

How did this happen?

Some of us may remember that grade-school teacher who attempted to demonstrate how a phrase can be butchered with repetition as it passes from person to person with the game of telephone. A simple message written by the teacher is given to a student who then starts a chain that extends to every classmate who, one-by-one, whispers the phrase to successive students until it’s passed to everyone in the room. When the last student shares the transmuted phrase with the teacher, we all discover how mangled the message gets.

History is pretty much the same. Add gossip and sarcasm to the mix—misattribution and mistakes are made much more than most people would suspect.

Consider the Times

Thanks to the writings of people like Genevan-Swiss Enlightenment philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau revolution was in the air. This was most notably true in those pesky British colonies in the Americas and among the French folks who were not included among the classes of the clergy or the nobles. Less political than personal among his works was Rousseau’s autobiographical Confessions. Anyone who’s a fan of the genre knows that “accuracy” and “autobiography” are often not synonymous. Such was the case with a questionable tale recounted by the author in which Rousseau recalls accompanying an unnamed, princess who, when told that the peasants had no bread, replied: “Then let them eat brioche”

Chronologically, Marie Antoinette would, at best, have only been a child when this story allegedly transpired—not only too young to be the princess in question, but the future queen would also have still been living in her native Austria. Plus, there is no historical evidence to suggest the royal and the philosopher had ever met.

Further adding to the distortion, the phrase was not attributed to Marie Antoinette until 1843—Fifty years after the queen literally lost her head at the guillotine.

Why the Dubious Distinction?

Why the does this queen get the credit? Consider it the historical variation of another childhood game—hot potato. Because Marie Antoinette was the last in a long line of French royals before the French Revolution killed the monarchy, the infamous phrase has been permanently pinned to her metaphorical social media account—misattribution, mistranslation, and all.

Portions of this article were excerpted from Ian Makay’s Food for Thought: The Pleasures of the Table: Primi Piatti.

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