Let Them Eat Cake

It matters immensely. The slightest sound matters. The most momentary
rhythm matters. You can do as you please, yet everything matters.
—Wallace Stevens

I'm a pretty linear thinker, most of the time. Except for when I think about calendars. In my mind the year is round, like a clock, with February on the 2 and October on the 10. But words, they're linear—even chronological. If you say The boy threw the ball, my image will be linear, left to right, of the boy, then his throwing arm, then finally the ball leaving his hand.

So it doesn't surprise me that one particular idiom has vexed me most of my life: You want to have your cake and eat it, too. My mother often used this phrase. Usually lightheartedly. Usually when I expressed a wish for two mutually exclusive things—like getting good grades without doing homework, or driving the family car without pumping the gas, or learning to play the piano without practicing.

I knew what my mom meant. I couldn't have it both ways. I could never have both sides of my two-sided wishes—it would be impossible. But I have to confess, the usage of the phrase never made any sense to me. Linearly, the sequence of the sentence is completely logical: first to have cake and then to eat cake. Of course a person ought to be able to have her cake and eat it, too. What would be the point of having cake if not to eat it? That's what cake is for! Whenever anyone said, "You want to have your cake and eat it, too," I've always wanted to respond with an impassioned, "Of course I do! It only makes sense!"

But recently I was enlightened by some very old writings of some very dead white guys:
Would yee both eat your cake and have your cake?(John Heywood 1497-1580)
You cannot eat your cake and have your cake.
(Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra 1547-1616)
Wouldst thou both eat thy cake and have it?
(George Herbert 1593-1633)

Did you notice the change in word order? That reversal from have your cake and eat it to eat your cake and have it was like a revelation. An angel-singing, sunlight-streaming, Sword-in-the-Stone-imitating revelation. Suddenly this pesky idiom made sense! It does indeed ask the impossible—to first eat your cake and then have your cake; in the eating, the cake is gone, and so it can no more be had. Which all seems a much more sensible (and linearly accurate) way to express the idea that you can't have it both ways. Perhaps if my mother had said, "You want to eat your cake and have it, too," I wouldn't have wanted to shout "Of course I do!" I might instead have been inclined to respond with a calm and thoughtful "Ahh, I see your point."

Mmmmm. Now I want some cake.

Did you know this idom helped identify the Unabomber? Apparently he used the more archaic word order (to eat your cake and have your cake) in his Manifesto. According to the NY Times, "His brother David Kazynski was able to identify Ted after reading the Manifesto. Ted and their mother both used the more accurate but older and less popular use of the phrase."