Marie Antoinnette / Let them eat cake

Cecil's Columns/Staff Reports
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Commenting on column Did Marie Antoinette really say “let them eat cake”? - The Straight Dope

Recently I read that, in addition to Marie Antoinnette’s never having spoken the words (or at least, not having originated them), the phrase was not intended to be flip or uncaring toward the peasants, but was in support of the peasants.

The comment I read claimed that in the 1700s, there were often wheat and flour shortages, and often bakers would stop baking cheap breads in order to bake more expensive brioches (“cakes”). Eventually a law was passed (decreed?) that forced the bakers to sell brioches at the same price as plain breads, if they ran out of the plain breads in their bakeries. Thus, when the “great princess” of JJR’s anecdote said, “Let them eat cake”, she was actually saying, “enforce the law and protect the poor, and let the bakers take the loss if they only bake brioches” and the anti-royalty JJR twisted it to make it look like she was being a typical rich jerk.

Is there any truth to this?

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I have no factual info, but I’ve heard this before and I think it’s just an ex post facto game to try to turn a saying on its head. It sounds totally implausible to me.

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I’ve also heard the story before, and think it makes absolutely perfect sense. Which probably means it’s not true.

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Your BS detector probably needs a recalibration then. It doesn’t make sense because, 1) there’s no reason for Antoinnette to make such a point so indirectly, and 2) the comment wouldn’t have been much use to her enemies for propaganda if she had.

But since the statement was fabricated anyway the whole debate about what Antoinnette “meant” is moot.

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Brioche is pretty nice stuff, something like a rich croissant but a different shape. There is a version that says the princess first said it in a story by Voltaire meaning that she was too ignorant to understand the idea of poverty, like saying “If you can’t afford where you are why don’t you just move to another country?”