where did the expression let them eat cake come from
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
title: Let them eat cake text: Let them eat cake "Let them eat cake" is the traditional translation of the French phrase ""Qu'ils mangent de la brioche"", supposedly spoken by "a great princess" upon learning that the peasants had no bread. Since brioche was a luxury bread enriched with butter and eggs, the quotation would reflect the princess's disregard for the peasants, or her poor understanding of their situation. While the phrase is commonly attributed to Queen Marie Antoinette, there is no record of her having said it. It appears in book six of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's "Confessions", his autobiography (whose first six books were written in title: Let them eat cake text: a 7th-century chronicle of the Chinese Jin Dynasty, reports that when Emperor Hui (259–307) of Western Jin was told that his people were starving because there was no rice, he said, "Why don't they eat (ground) meat?" (何不食肉糜), showing his incompetence. Let them eat cake "Let them eat cake" is the traditional translation of the French phrase ""Qu'ils mangent de la brioche"", supposedly spoken by "a great princess" upon learning that the peasants had no bread. Since brioche was a luxury bread enriched with butter and eggs, the quotation would reflect the princess's disregard for the peasants, or her poor title: Let them eat cake text: possible that a discontented individual fabricated the scenario and put the words into the mouth of Marie Antoinette. Another hypothesis is that after the revolution, the phrase was attributed to various princesses of the French royal family, and that the legend stuck on Marie Antoinette because she was, in effect, the last "great princess" of Versailles. The myth had, for example, been previously attributed to two of Louis XV's daughters: Madame Sophie and Madame Victoire. In his novel "Ange Pitou" (1853), Alexandre Dumas attributes the quote to one of Marie Antoinette's favourites, the Duchess of Polignac. The "Book of Jin", title: Let them eat cake text: and the working class was bread, absorbing 50 percent of their income, as opposed to 5 percent on fuel; the whole topic of bread was therefore the result of obsessional national interest." However, there is no evidence that Queen Marie Antoinette ever uttered this phrase. It was first attributed to her by Alphonse Karr in "Les Guêpes" of March 1843. Other objections to the legend of Marie Antoinette and the cake/brioche comment centre on arguments concerning the queen's personality, internal evidence from members of the French royal family and the date of the saying's origin. For example, the Queen's English-language title: Let them eat cake text: 1765, when Marie Antoinette was nine years of age, and published in 1782). The context of Rousseau's account was his desire to have some bread to accompany some wine he had stolen; however, feeling he was too elegantly dressed to go into an ordinary bakery, he recalled the words of a "great princess": Rousseau does not name the "great princess" and he may have invented the anecdote, as "Confessions" cannot be read as strictly factual. The quotation, first attributed to Marie Antoinette in 1843, was claimed to have been uttered during one of the famines that occurred in France during