The famous phrase, “Let them eat cake,” is one of the most commonly used expressions in history. The story goes that when the 1700s French queen, Marie Antoinette, was told that her citizens had no bread to eat, she responded with “Qu’ils mangent de la brioche,” which translates roughly to the phrase we use today of  “Let them eat cake.” This simple saying highlighted the ignorance of the rich in understanding the problems of the poor. It was used by French revolutionists at the time to show how terrible the French Monarchy was, and even helped to fuel the revolution. However, she never actually said this. People have been falsely attributing this quote to her for 300 years, and even though some of you likely knew she didn’t say it, not many of you probably know where this phrase actually comes from.  

  First off, Marie Antoinette was not the ignorant, stuck-up rich person she was often assumed to be. She actually participated in many charitable causes, adopted poor children, and even sold some of her valuable possessions to buy food for people during a famine. The often misconstrued assumption that she did not care for the poor comes from part of the propaganda that the French revolutionists used to try to stir people up against the French monarchy. This did, of course, work, as she was eventually beheaded in 1793. On top of this, Marie Antoinette, being a woman in the 1700s, was not even the one running the government. Her husband was the one who ruled the country the way those revolutionists hated. So it is safe to assume that Marie Antoinette never said this horribly shocking phrase. 

Then where does this phrase even come from? “Let them eat cake” was used long before Marie Antoinette was ever blamed for saying it. It was even contributed to many different members of the French Monarchy. It was used to convince people that the French royals should not be running the government. The first person that might have come up with it was the French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, in the year 1766 when he used the term in one of his books, in which a fictional character says it. For perspective, Marie Antoinette was only 10 years old at the time of his writings. It is also important to note that the term they used, “Qu’ils mangent de la brioche,” does not exactly translate to “Let them eat cake” as we know it. Brioche is not actually a cake but a type of sweet bread. Using cake instead of brioche is an overexaggeration that just makes the phrase seem all the more cold-hearted. 

So the next time you come across someone “quoting” Marie Antoinette, just remember the saying’s true origins. Blaming her for saying something so vilely shocking is just unfair. While this misquoting may seem simple or even harmless, it demonstrates how easily misinformation can be spread, and its dangerous impact. In Marie’s case, she literally lost her head.