Did Marie-Antoinette really say "Let them eat cake"?

On October 16th, 1793, Marie-Antoinette, the widow of the recently-executed King of France, was taken from her prison cell in Paris and publicly beheaded. She was thirty-seven years-old and the new French republic had declared her a traitor. At the time, many of the republic's enemies considered Marie-Antoinette to have been a martyr and her killers to be little better than sadistic monsters. Within a decade, Catholic postcards in France were showing Marie-Antoinette's soul being received into Heaven by the Virgin Mary herself. But that view of Marie-Antoinette was slowly lost to history and the image most people have of her today is of the ultimate blonde bimbo. In popular culture, Marie-Antoinette is seen as the perfect symbol for upper-class excess and the poster girl for self-indulgent materialism. Even if many people don't think she deserved to die such a terrible and lonely death, most people still see her as a stupid, selfish airhead who partied her life away whilst the vast majority of her husband's subjects lived in poverty.

One story in particular is often quoted to prove how out-of-touch with reality Marie-Antoinette really was. Bread was the main meal of France's poor, in much the same way as the potato was for Ireland's. When there was a bread shortage, the people therefore began to starve and to riot against the government. Hearing of the trouble, the young queen asked why the people were rioting; one of her servants answered that it was because the people had no bread. Marie-Antoinette shrugged and replied, "Then let them eat cake!" Living in a fifteen hundred room palace with over four hundred servants devoted to her every whim, Marie-Antoinette had absolutely no idea what life was like for ordinary people and she was so used to luxury that she just assumed that if poor people couldn't get bread, then they could snack on cake, like she did.

People still debate whether Marie-Antoinette said her cake comment because she was an idiot and thought peasants could afford the treats she could, or because she had a cruel sense of humour that found it funny that she had everything and the poor had nothing. Either way, "let them eat cake" is probably one of the most famous quotes in history and it's repeated hundreds of time every year in the world's media to highlight someone who's perceived as being too rich to function or too selfish to care about people less fortunate than themselves. But did Marie-Antoinette ever actually say it?

Well, it seems very unlikely given what we know of her actual personality. Years of propaganda have painted the Queen as a diamond-loving twit who didn't care about anything but her own amusement. It's true that she was extravagant and that her wardrobe was the stuff of legend (Vogue recently credited Marie-Antoinette's chief dressmaker with inventing the entire concept of haute couture.) But in fact, Marie-Antoinette was a generous patron of charity and other members of the royal family were often embarrassed or irritated by her habit of bursting into tears when she heard of the plight of the suffering poor. There's also a problem with dates. During Louis the Sixteenth's time as king, there was only one case of bread shortages in Paris and that was shortly after his coronation. Marie-Antoinette was eighteen at the time and when she heard about the people's unhappiness at the food situation, she wrote a letter about it back to her mother in Austria, in which she said, "We are more obliged than ever to work for the people's happiness. The King seems to understand this truth; as for myself, I know that in my whole life (even if I live for a hundred years) I shall never forget". Marie-Antoinette's personality therefore seems to have been the exact opposite of someone who would joke about the starving poor. It's also true that there were only severe food shortages once in Louis's reign and they were confined more or less to Paris. 

There is even firmer evidence, however, that not only was Marie-Antoinette not the kind of girl to make a comment like "Let them eat cake," but she actually couldn't have. Not only was there no opportunity for her to do so, there are also some very interesting pieces of evidence from the time that prove she couldn't have said it. The story of a princess joking "let them eat cake" had actually been told many years before Marie-Antoinette ever arrived in France, as a young princess of fourteen in 1770. Her brother-in-law, the Count of Provence, who hated her, later said that he heard the story as a child, long before his brother ever married Marie-Antoinette. The count claimed that the version he heard was that the woman who made the comment had been his great-great-great grandmother, Maria-Teresa of Spain, who advised peasants to eat pie crust (or brioche) during bread shortages. A French socialite, the Countess of Boigne, said she'd heard that it had been Louis the Sixteenth's bitter aunt, Princess Victoria, and the great philosopher, Rousseau, wrote that he had heard the "let them eat cake" story about an anonymous great princess. Rousseau wrote this story in 1737 - eighteen years before Marie-Antoinette was even born!

If Marie-Antoinette didn't make the "joke," then how did it end up being associated with her for 200 years? Some historians think it's because the story had been going around for years, getting attributed to different royal women, but because Marie-Antoinette was the last Queen of France, it stuck with her. After her, there was nobody else to pin the story to. Others think that because the French Revolution was able to dress itself up as the force that brought freedom and equality to Europe, it had to justify its many acts of violence and terror. Executing Marie-Antoinette at the age of thirty-seven and leaving her two children as shivering, heart-broken orphans in the terrifying Temple prison, suggested that the Revolution was a lot more complicated than its supporters like to claim. However, if Marie-Antoinette is painted as stupid, deluded, out-of-touch, spoiled and selfish, then we're likely to feel a lot less pity when it comes to studying her death. If that was the republicans' intention, then they did a very good job. Two hundred years later and the poor woman is still stuck with a terrible reputation, and a catchphrase, that she certainly doesn't deserve.

New Marie-Antoinette casting

A few months ago, I posted the story that French actress Eva Green had been cast in the big screen adaptation of Chantal Thomas's fantastic novel, Farewell My Queen, the story of the relationship between Queen Marie-Antoinette and one of her servants, Agathe, who has a job as a Reader in the Queen's Household. The novel follows Agathe's worshipful respect for the doomed queen and her experiences living in the Palace of Versailles in the final week before the outbreak of the French Revolution. It's a really incredible novel and very atmospheric, capturing perfectly the terror that seized the palace in July 1789, so I can't wait to see the movie.

However, it turns out that since then, the role of Marie-Antoinette has been re-cast and German actress, Diane Kruger (above), will be playing the queen. Diane looks much more like the real Marie-Antoinette and Marie-Antoinette was Austrian, not French; that being said, both are fantastic actresses.

Agathe is being played by Léa Seydoux; Gérard Depardieu and Virginie Ledoyen will also co-star. Having read the novel, my predictions are that Depardieu will either play Captain de la Roche, the royal zoo keeper, or the King's historiographer; and my money's on Virginie Ledoyen playing Gabrielle, Duchesse de Polignac, the beautiful and controversial Versailles socialite.

Having now posted this online, I will almost certainly be proven wrong.

Either way, can't wait to see Farewell my Queen, which is due out later this year.

"Marie Antoinette" (1938)

"Perhaps the great loves come with great tears."

"Marie-Antoinette"

Director: W.S. Van Dyke

Running Time: 2 hours, 29 minutes

Random Fact: The great novelist, F. Scott Fitzgerald, helped with part of the script

Based on the biography Marie-Antoinette by Stefan Zweig (1933)

Cast

Norma Shearer .... Queen Marie-Antoinette (Oscar nominated)

Robert Morley ..... King Louis the Sixteenth (Oscar nominated)

Tyrone Power ..... Count Axel von Fersen

John Barrymore .... King Louis the Fifteenth

Joseph Schildkraut .... The Duke of Orleans

I thought I'd blog a bit about some of my favourite movies and, still suffering from an OCD about such things thanks to two History degrees, I decided to post them in the order in which the movies were produced, beginning with Marie Antoinette from 1938.

Marie Antoinette covers the life of the Austrian princess who married the future King of France from her arranged marriage at the age of fourteen in 1770 until her execution during the French Revolution, twenty-three years later. One of Hollywood's greatest and highest-paid actresses of the 1930s, Norma Shearer, the so-called "Queen of MGM," signed on to play the title role, in a performance which many (included Norma herself) regarded as the greatest of her career. She narrowly, and controversially, lost out on the Oscar to Bette Davis for her performance in Jezebel.

Despite its age, Marie Antoinette is a beautiful movie to look at and it captures the decadence and glamour of upper class life before the Revolution perfectly. When showing Marie-Antoinette's late teens and early twenties, when she was Europe's ultimate socialite, the movie's costume designer, Adrian, spared no expense and no detail to try and accurately bring to life haute couture from the 1770s.

However, unlike the 2006 version of her life, starring Kirsten Dunst, 1938's Marie Antoinette is not simply a fun and colourful look at the life of the original "girl who has everything." It's also a proper, good old-fashioned historical epic and its final quarter, chronicling Marie-Antoinette's imprisonment during the French Revolution, is tough to watch. The scene in which she and her two children have their last meal with her husband, Louis, before he is taken for his execution on the following morning is incredibly moving, mainly because it is so understated. Norma Shearer's face as she watches her on-screen husband say grace before the meal, knowing that tomorrow he will be dead, is a wonderful example of saying more by doing less in one's acting. A warning though, the following scene, in which the queen's eight year-old son, Louis-Charles, is ripped from her arms to be placed in solitary confinement by their republican jailers is absolutely harrowing to watch. Norma Shearer pulls no punches with her performance and her screams as they try to separate her from her child take a long time to forget. It's made all the worse to watch when you know that it's almost word-for-word historically accurate.

Marie Antoinette is also a great example of how a movie can be historically accurate, without being a documentary. No movie or play or novel based on history will ever be truly accurate; it can't be. Nor should it be. It's supposed to entertain and playwrights and authors are supposed to cut the dull, confusing and messy bits out of life. They have to give life a storyline and so in historical movies, I think it's okay for many details (time line, the number of characters, etc.) to be ditched or fudged (within reason), in order to make the production flow together as a story. However, that doesn't mean you have to change or misrepresent the people you're portraying. I'm of the opinion that they were people, too, and if you're making money out of their life story, the least you can do is to try and get their personalities right. Marie Antoinette certainly does this. Yes, it has been criticised for some for being slightly too harsh on her rival, Madame du Barry, and for portraying her husband, King Louis, as much more simplistic than he actually was. However, in fairness, a lot of that comes from the biography the movie is based on and Louis's dignity and honesty is shown in full detail, particularly in the final half of the movie. And with its leading lady, Marie Antoinette gives by far the most accurate and honest dramatisation of Marie-Antoinette yet seen on screen. As a young woman, she is certainly frivolous, extravagant and "terrified of boredom," but she is also warm-hearted, friendly, honest and kind. Most importantly, Marie Antoinette captures what more modern versions of her life have failed to show - that as she grew up, she possessed a dignity and regal self-assurance that even her enemies commented upon. Given that Norma Shearer manages to convincingly play Marie-Antoinette from a naive but well-intentioned teenager to an heroic but heartbroken widow, it's easy to see why so many people praised the performance.

If you enjoy period dramas or anything from "the Golden Age of Hollywood," try and find a copy of Marie Antoinette. Just be warned: prepare to weep. I watched it one night in our student house in Oxford, because my housemate Beth loves old movies and I thought it would cheer her up after the bad day she had. Unfortunately, when I turned the lights on I found that Beth's mascara had reached her chin and tears were pouring off her face. Turns out, she had been quietly sobbing for the last forty-five minutes. 

"Didn't cheer you up... did it?" I asked, nervously.

"Those filthy, murdering bastards!" she roared, before shaking her head and blowing her nose. "Look what they did to her! I'm a lot angrier with the world than we started watching this. Why did you think that would cheer me up? WHY!"

Like the movie says, all the great stories come with great tears!