Let Them Eat Cake Analysis

Antoinette Never Said, “Let Them Eat Cake”

Despite popular belief that Marie said the phrase “let them eat cake”, she actually never did say the phrase even though it probably never will be disassociated from Antoinette. In reality it was an author, Rousseau, who wrote the phrase in an autobiographical book in 1765 when Antoinette was still a child in Austria.

Covington, Richard. "Marie Antoinette: the teenage queen." Smithsonian Nov. 2006: 56+. General OneFile. Web. 16 July 2015. Richard Covington is a Paris based writer who covers all sorts of historical and cultural subjects. Covington contributes his writing to The New York Times, Smithsonian, Los Angeles Times, Reader’s Digest, International Herald Tribune, Sunday Times of London, and

Covington then goes on to explain that while Antoinette may have had her faults as a ruler, she never actually did respond to the news of her starving people by saying, “Let them eat cake”. Covington personally believes that Antoinette never actually did utter the famous phrase “let them eat cake”, but instead he attempts to prove to the reader that instead of Antoinette being the first to say the phrase, that it was actually Maria Theresa, one of Louis XIV wives, to be the first who was rumored to say the phrase, and she was married to Louis XIV about a century before Antoinette would ever even step foot in France, making it hard for Antoinette to be the originator of the phrase. Covington also included in his book a quote said by Madame Campan, who was Antoinette’s First Lady of the Bedchamber, remarking that “[Antoinette] was so happy at doing good and hated to miss any opportunity of doing so”, which then makes it even harder to believe that she would have responded to coldly to the news of her people starving if she truly did enjoy doing good or her people any chance that she