Imagine you’re in late 18th-century France. You haven’t eaten anything in three days, you have every disease imaginable from living in filth, and you’re sleeping in sewer water with rats. Less than 100 feet away from you is a pristine gate separating you from the Palace of Versailles, whose inhabitants’ teeth are also rotting, but from excess sugar.
Inside that luxurious commodity reigns the royal family, who, when told that you and your family are dying from hunger, say, “Let them eat cake!”
I, personally, would have a serious issue with them. To know that they’re basking in elegance while I’m withering away and selling my teeth and hair for a loaf of moldy bread, is a bit of a slap in the face.
However, the phrase “Let them eat cake!” is often taken literally, and attributed to one specific monarch: Marie Antoinette. While conceptualizing this article, I researched a lot about the late queen. Why was she so hated back then? Why is she so loved currently?
Throughout my research, I couldn’t come to a specific conclusion. In fact, I was convinced that I’d be completely against the modern-day appreciation for her. However, after much examination, I realized the complexity of the situation is attributed to the fact that it’s not just about her. It’s about the aristocracy she represented, and how we view it through today’s lens.
Contextualizing Marie Antoinette’s France
According to a BBC article by Deborah Nicholls-Lee, “Why ‘the most controversial queen in history’ was so hated,” Marie Antoinette was viewed as “an empty-headed libertine, a conspirator and a reckless spendthrift.” Being the face of the palace also placed a red target on her head for the revolutionaries. Still, why was the luxury-oriented queen the breaking point for the French?
The PBS article, “The French Revolution,” states that many factors led to the overthrow of the monarchy, with economic ones being front battalions: “A severe winter in 1788 resulted in famine and widespread starvation in the countryside. Rising prices in Paris brought bread riots. By 1789, France was broke. The nobility refused to pay more taxes, and the peasants simply couldn’t.”
Meanwhile, Marie Antoinette, on clothing alone, spent “about $3.6 million in current spending power, in some years, more than double,” as stated in The New Yorker.
Did King Louis XVI also spend copious amounts of money on hobbies and horses? Of course! But when have women and men ever been judged equally?
The queen was hated for being glamorous through beauty. Sexism was, of course, the main driving force behind the intense hatred toward her, but her lavish ballgowns and jewels fueled their anger and tipped the French over, understandably so.
Nonetheless, some state that the hate towards her was also a product of sexist propaganda from the era. According to the article “No Joke” by Pratiksha Thangam Menon, Marie Antoinette “received a disproportionate amount of gendered propaganda and vilification, especially compared to what her husband endured. A fair amount of it consisted of sexualized caricatures. She was portrayed, says scholar Pierre Saint-Amand, as an amalgam of ‘assembled monsters, hybrid creatures, and a whole procession of deformed beings’.” In the end, both claims can be true. While she did buy 300 gowns a year while her people starved, her faults were also reduced to being because she was a woman who spent too much on feminine things and not for being a monarch who took advantage of her country, regardless of gender.
What about now?
Marie Antoinette’s downfall became her very same elixir. She has become one of the most prominent figures in modern times, precisely due to her extravagant wardrobe and taste. Examples of this can be seen in how the famous 2006 biofilm of her by Sofia Coppola won an Academy Award for Best Costume and aesthetics have developed around her.
The movie, according to “Marie Antoinette – extravagant French queen has long been a symbol of female excess” by Madeleine Pelling, “is based on a relatively sympathetic biography of the real-life queen by British historian Antonia Fraser. Certainly, the filmic rendition of her focuses on her humanity rather than infamy.”
Even then, the film allowed for “a visual amalgamation of innumerable pop and art history references — proved to be fertile ground for social media users and content creators.” And, if we want to further analyze, we even see this fertile ground birthing modern day “coquette” and famous retelling of monarchy like in the Bridgerton series.
The romanticized idea of Marie Antoinette was also cemented with late 20th century music videos. Pelling also states that “the queen was invoked in Madonna’s famous 1990 MTV Awards performance of her hit song ‘Vogue’. In a wonderfully camp performance, Madonna used Antoinette’s likeness to invoke the lavish ballrooms of 18th-century France to draw connections between the rich queer culture that voguing was born into.”
Regardless of her aesthetic, many state she was misunderstood, and actually a kind person. She donated to charity, adopted a child, and was a good mother. Her husband, who had more power than her, did less and received less scrutiny in modern times than her.
And while her spending isn’t explained exaggeratedly, her villainy might just be. According to “The Human Side of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette” by Joe McGasko, the queen “established a home for unwed mothers; patronized the Maison Philanthropique, a society for the aged, widowed, and blind; and made frequent visits to poor families, giving them food and money. During the famine of 1787, she sold the royal flatware to provide grain for struggling families, and the royal family ate cheaper grain so there would be more food to go around.”
The question of whether it’s good to idolize her now doesn’t have a definitive answer. Was she kind, deserving of a more respectful death, and a victim of sexist oppression? Of course. Was she also a beneficiary of incomprehensible wealth, out of touch with her starving country, and complicit in the death of many? Also yes.
There will never be a concrete answer as to whether she was a good person or not. Yes, she was a victim of sexism in the monarchy, but so were many of the poor women, on top of also being victims of her excess wealth.
In the end, as a feminist, I believe that, when talking about the former queen, it’s necessary to provide the full context of who she was in order to judge her fairly. Not only what she did wrong, but also what she might have done well. As women, we suffer the same fate as Marie Antoinette of being more scrutinized for our faults than men are and it is important to change that narrative. While she deserves grace, she also deserves to be held accountable; except we have to make sure it’s not for simply being a woman, but for being an ignorant, rich person.