I’ve alluded to my relatively traumatic educational path in previous posts, a path that has residual effects to this day. There was my first day of school spent standing in the hallway, the time I made my French teacher cry, and the shock of learning that the class participation part of the grade required actually speaking up in class. But one of the most embarrassing was the infamous “let them eat cake” incident.
Whereas most high school teachers were closer to the age of my fellow students than retirement, Mrs. Lovely (and yes, that was her real name) was an older woman who had been teaching for forty years. She lived for the joy of stimulating the minds of impressionable adolescents.
In my sophomore year I had Mrs. Lovely for a course called “Contemporary Best Sellers.” Essentially the class was about reading. We were required to read something on the order of 15 to 20 books, which we could choose from a list she provided. Most were in fact contemporary, including a few by John Updike, a town resident at the time (I played soccer with his son), best known for his double-Pulitzer winning “Rabbit” series of books. Besides reading Updike and J.D. Salinger (who also had a salacious connection to the town), we could pick from many dozens of books, all of which were available in the library.
Being more than a little introverted (Translation: “had no social life”), I was quite the bookworm. I blew through the 15 required books and started racking up extra credit. Mrs. Lovely, ecstatic to find someone who enjoyed reading, started feeding me more and more books, enticing me like a drug dealer feeding an addict. Quickly running out of available contemporary volumes, she began suggesting obscure (and slightly more risqué) writers such as Mary Renault. I zipped through the depths of at least three of her historical fiction/Greek mythology based novels, then moved on to plenty of other authors I hadn’t heard of before Mrs. Lovely introduced them to me.
By semester’s end I had read 56 books.
Ah, but we couldn’t just read the books. For each one we had to write a short summary, replete with specific details that proved we had actually read and understood the book. These weren’t onerous – it had to fit on a standard 3″ x 5″ index card – but likely is why I still keep track of all the books I read and write reviews for many of them.
Here is where the difficulty came in. In addition to reading and writing the summaries, we would spend much of class time discussing the books being read. Students would be randomly (or perhaps arbitrarily) selected and had to be prepared to offer insight. Often Mrs. Lovely would pose a question to stimulate discussion.
“Can anyone tell us what Marie Antoinette said when the peasants rioted, complaining they didn’t have enough bread to eat?”
Yes, I know this, fist-pumping in my head. My hand shot up.
“Yes, Mr. Kent, what did she say?” The smile broadened on her face. Her star student was about to speak.
“Let them eat bread!” I exclaimed cheerfully, then immediately realized I had screwed it up.
“Well, close. She actually said ‘Let them eat cake!’ Thank you Mr. Kent.” The smile disappeared as she moved on to the next question. Snickers from around the room screamed decibels in my brain.
This watershed incident kept me silent the rest of high school, college, and into graduate school [See “B+ for A Work“] It was at this moment that I willed myself into invisibility. As the class returned its attention to Mrs. Lovely, I mentally pummeled myself from my seat along the windowed wall of the class, wondering if I would survive the fall (or if I wanted to survive the fall) should I decide to escape my ignominy. How could I have belted out the wrong phrase? Am I really that stupid? No, I knew the correct answer. I had “let them eat cake” on the tip of my tongue. Why did “bread” come out instead of “cake”? What is wrong with me? [This self-interrogation went on for the rest of the class, and probably for the rest of the day and week; in any case, long after the rest of the students had forgotten my existence.]
Only many years later did I come to understand how this had happened, and the reason seemed to explain many of the other issues I had had along my educational path. More on that in a later post.
P.S. Technically, there is no record of Marie Antoinette actually saying “Let them eat cake!” In fact, the original suggestion (likely untrue to begin with) was instead of “cake” she had said “brioche,” which is a luxury bread enriched with butter and eggs. In either case, the idea was that she was horribly out of touch with the plight of the masses, which might explain how she ended up being executed by guillotine along with her husband, the late Louis XVI. Which, ironically, led to the widespread use of a Shakespearean phrase, “Off with their heads!”
David J. Kent is a science traveler and the author of Lincoln: The Man Who Saved America, in Barnes and Noble stores now. His previous books include Tesla: The Wizard of Electricity (2013) and Edison: The Inventor of the Modern World (2016) and two e-books: Nikola Tesla: Renewable Energy Ahead of Its Time and Abraham Lincoln and Nikola Tesla: Connected by Fate.
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Stephanie Barr said:
Just as long as we’re clear that Shakespeare wasn’t inspired by Marie and Louis, just his words, written several centuries earlier, pulled out to be used.
Wait, I don’t want to add to trauma. I’m sure you knew that. Sigh. What a pain in the butt I am.
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davidjkentwriter said:
I think you meant Marie and Louis weren’t inspired by Shakespeare since he predated them. I suspect Marie and Louis, and quite a few others, weren’t too crazy about the while guillotining idea.
BTW, I just finished reading Ron Chernow’s book on Alexander Hamilton (which I should have read before seeing the musical, not after). Jefferson and company were Francophiles and bent over backwards to excuse the reign of terror that occurred after the French Revolution. Hamilton, was like, WTF…What is wrong with these people?
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estebang said:
Eating cake reminds me of Wilbur Ross’ opinions on income replacement loans. But perhaps he thinks of that statement as a small mistake.
I am intrigued by the way that situations persist in our memories and get recalled, suffered through, reinterpreted, rationalized, and enjoyed.
I remember 9th grade Latin II. I did not like it. We were supposed to “sing” declensions and conjugations out loud. But, at odd moments even today, I find myself singing some of those. It does not thrill me, but doesn’t bother me too much either.
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davidjkentwriter said:
The sentiment expressed by the “cake” quote does seem to be a common problem for the ultrarich, especially those who inherited their wealth (like, most of them).
Never heard of singing Latin, but I suppose why not. It seems connecting the factoid or incident with some kind of strong emotional reaction (or, apparently, music) helps set the fact into long-term memory. In my case, the trauma did it. [And yes, “trauma” is a relative term; we’re not talking child abuse or anything here.]
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Lightness Traveling said:
For some reason this reminds me of a junior or senior year (most of high school is a haze) class presentation of Solzhenitsyn’s, “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich”. At the start, I gave everyone a small scrap of dry, expired sourdough roll and then asked that they all please not fight over the pieces or steal from one another while I was presenting.
A warm chocolate brioche would likely have inspired more admiration… or unruly behavior. But my French teacher wouldn’t likely have shed any tears at my departure. 😉
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davidjkentwriter said:
Hmmm, not a bad prop. Assuming they “got it.” Interesting topic for a high school class. I don’t recall offhand what I might have written/presented about in high school. There’s an off-chance I have a list somewhere.
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Lightness Traveling said:
As I recall, the class was actually on contemporary teen lit. But I was with a small group that were also reading Russian novels for some kind of AP thing that the teacher had set up. It made for an interesting audience. I had the whole class stand in line and wait for the point during my Anna Akhmatova presentation.
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davidjkentwriter said:
I give you tremendous credit for being bold and innovative in your presentation approach (although that seems in line with what little I know about you). Putting students into a different perspective sounds like a great way to put them into the action, so to speak. Kudos!
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