Let them eat Cake”
Marie Antoinette:
According to popular myth, Queen Marie Antoinette was heard to say: “S’ils n’ont plus de pain, qu’ils mangent de la brioche.” (“If they have no bread, l
et them eat brioche”) – referring to the poor. First of all, even if Queen Marie had made this comment, it would have not had the same meaning as it does today. Laws at the time of her reign meant that bakers who ran out of cheap bread, had to sell their finer bread (such as brioche) at the lower price, in order to protect people from ruthless bakers who would make insufficient quantities of inexpensive bread in order to make a bigger profit. That aside, the Queen did not say these words at all, they were actually written by Jean-Jacques Rousseau in his book “Confessions” – written a number of years before Marie Antoinette became Queen. His exact words:
“I recalled the make-shift of a great princess who was told that the peasants had no bread and who replied: ‘Let them eat brioche’. “The misattribution and perpetuation of this myth is most likely a result of anti-Royal propaganda following the revolution in which she and her husband were murdered.
No comments:
Post a Comment