The great cat massacre and other episodes in French cultural history Robert Darnton

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The great cat massacre and other episodes in
French cultural history Robert Darnton
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Chapter 2 - Workers revolt The great massacre
of the Rue Saint-Séverin

• Analysis of an account given by the apprentice
  printer Nicholas Contat, working in a print shop
  on the Rue Saint-Séverin in Paris during the
  1730s. Stating that the funniest event that was
  ever witnessed during his time there was the mass
  killing and torturing of several cats.
• The purpose of Darntons commentary is to explain
  why and how this occurred.
• Why was it funny? Why Cats?

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Background

• Pre-Industrial Europe. French print shop.
• Social Hierarchy and order within the print shop
  starting with the apprentice at the bottom
  training to become a journeyman, which were
  next up followed by a foreman and then the
  master or bourgeois at the top. The master lived
  in luxury and the apprentices lived in squalor.
• The master and apprentice were constantly
  divided. Apprentices were fed scraps in the
  kitchen. (Actually fed cat food.)
• Almost impossible to advance in the craft. Only
  way was to marry a masters widow. The status of
  master passed on.
• Masters often hired cheap unqualified labour
  known as alloues (à louer for hire) which
  caused more tension among workers. Shift from
  labour as a partnership to labour as a commodity.

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Background Cont.

• Due to the hardships of living and working in the
  print shop, laughter was very important to the
  workers.
• The workers would re-enact different amusing
  scenarios that had taken place, in a
  carnival-like fashion in order to humiliate
  another persons peculiarities. The subject of
  the joke would be taunted by what was known as
  rough music. Meaning they would beat on various
  objects they could find and bleat like goats
  hence the phrase gets your goat.
• These re-enactments were known as copies.

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The Folklore Surrounding Cats

• Cruelty to cats has appeared throughout history.
  For example...
• During carnival periods social norms are
  reversed. In Burgundy cats were passed around the
  youth and their fur torn out to make it howl.
• At the cycle of Saint John the Baptist, cats were
  thrown into bonfires, suspended from ropes or
  burnt at the stake.
• In England, a protestant crowd shaved a cat to
  look like a priest and hung it up on the gallows.
• Cruelty to cats throughout history was not
  unusual.

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• A cat suggested witchcraft. After coming in
  contact with a cat it was thought that the only
  way to protect yourself from any kind of sorcery
  was to maim it, cut its tail, clip its ears,
  smash one of its legs, tear or burn its fur,
  which would disable it from attending a Sabbath
  or cast spells.
• Cats thought of as cures for ailments. For
  example
• Cure for pneumonia drinking blood from a cats
  ear in red wine.
• To make yourself invisible eat the brain of a
  freshly killed cat...providing it was still hot!

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• By killing a cat it was thought to bring
  misfortune on the cats owner and their house.
• Sexual symbolism surrounding cats
• A cat symbolised fertility.
• By petting a cat, it could lead to success in
  courting woman.
• A cats howl at night carried connotations of
  witchcraft, rape, seduction and murder.
• Darnton explains that this folklore would not
  have failed to impose itself upon the men working
  in the print shop.

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The Great Cat Massacre

• Due to the tension between master and worker and
  the unfair conditions the workers had to live in
  compared to the master. The workers decided to
  restore the balance. They climbed onto the roof
  above the masters bedroom and mimicked the
  howling of a cat, for several nights depriving
  the master and his wife of sleep.
• The upper class thought of as religious,
  superstitious people.
• Also kept cats as pets, with one known to own up
  to 25 cats.
• The masters wife owned a cat called La grise,
  meaning the gray, which she was extremely fond
  of.

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• Due to the masters religiosity it was decided
  that after several sleepless night that the cats
  must be guilty of witchcraft. However due to
  superstition and the fondness of the wifes
  favourite pet, they decided against exorcism. So
  they ordered the men to kill every cat, providing
  they do not touch la grise.
• They killed as many cats as possible, starting
  with the wifes favourite cat, and staged mock
  trials, with guards and executioner etc.
• The men denied knowledge of the wifes cat.
• They had too much respect for the house to do
  such a thing.
• The men were left unpunished, much to their
  delight.

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Why was the cat massacre so funny?

• The humour came from the symbolism and the
  folklore that was described before. From this the
  workers were able to humiliate the master without
  the master even knowing that he was the butt of
  the joke, or that there was even a joke to begin
  with. For example
• The men manipulated the masters superstition to
  get him to give the order to kill the cats.
  Without him knowing it was them imitating the
  cats howl after all.
• Mock-trials condemnation of the house, accusing
  the master of being guilty of neglecting the
  workplace
• Possibly mocking the social and legal order.

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• Sexual symbolism of cats manipulated, in order to
  humiliate the masters wife.
• Killing La grise the men had ravished her
  symbolically
• The masters wife was his most treasured
  possession and the cat was her most treasured
  possession. The men had violated the most
  treasured objects of the household physically and
  then in turn in accordance with folklore,
  attacked them symbolically.
• All without being found out or punished.
• These events were then re-enacted in the form of
  copies, explained previously, which invoked
  laughter for days following.

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Summary

• The joke worked well because the men were able
  to attach meaning to the themes and folklores of
  the culture. The incident played on class,
  folklore, religion, superstition, history and
  symbolism.
• The folklore surrounding cats was manipulated by
  men who set it up for a different class of
  people, who they knew would fall for it.
• The symbolism provided a way of hiding the joke,
  with it only being funny to the people who were
  in on it. This in turn enabled them to get away
  with it without being punished.
• Laughter was a necessary ingredient for surviving
  in the harsh working and living conditions.
• Darntons commentary is a necessary one given the
  double meanings behind the humour and the
  historical detail needed to understand the joke
  and therefore attribute meaning to the culture
  that existed at that time.

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