the great cat massacre thesis

In conclusion, because people today are exploited far less by their superiors and hold far less drastic superstitions that connect cats and witchcraft, workers express their resentment towards their bosses in different ways, which is why the older ways seem less amusing. The meaning behind his saying is that since we cannot understand the joke. In the chapter “Workers Revolt,” Robert Darnton, the author of The Great Cat Massacre and Other Episodes in French Culture, describes the different significances cats had to the eighteenth century worker. Cats were harmed in many ways such as burning a sack full of cats, burning them at the stake, or chasing a burning cat down the street. When cats are mentioned now days, many people think of nice, furry animals that like to sit on your lap. When the cat le gris was killed, her owner shunned and ignored all the workers because she told them le gris was her favorite, and the workers should have known better then to kill the cat of their master’s wife. In order to get rid of the evil spirits, men would try to burn the cat, take off its fur, or shoot the cats to attempt to get rid of the evil. In killing the prized cat, Jerome and Contat were really hoping to make a fool of their master. Cats were without a doubt a huge part of the French culture, yet how they were viewed depended on the cats significance to the class. Darnton further explains the significance of killing the cats: “That was the beauty of it. New York: Basic Books, 1999 XIII + 298. Nicolas Contat, a participant in the massacre, says they felt no sympathy for the cats, in fact, “the masters love the cats, so consequently [the workers] must hate them.” (Darnton 103) As a form of protection, people often maimed cats, faire le chat as it was referred to. The quote above simply refers to the different eras in time. It was common knowledge in the 1700’s that a cat is endowed with occult power and a cat seen at night is really a witch is disguise or on an errand for the devil. To get over colic, you mixed your wine with cat excrement. There were many conflicts of the classes in the book. The Great Cat Massacre: And Other Episodes in French Cultural History (Penguin History) [Darnton, Robert] on Amazon.com. The bloodshed of a master’s cat was an act of rebellion where workers would express their anger toward their employers or the bourgeois. “The masters love cats; consequently [the workers] hate them (Danton, 79).” The working class associated cats with witchcraft, sex, evil, and violence. Rather than communicating with the workers as a master or mistress had done generations before, the bourgeois and the laborers feel mutual dislike. Because of this, those of the 21st century are unable to understand the so called “joke” of the Great Cat Massacre. In the printing shop, cats “occupied a soft spot in the bourgeois” (100) lifestyle of the master, but the cats made the workers’ lives more difficult. Witches and cats were often related; witches would turn themselves into cats at night. The fact that the two men who tortured the cats the worst in the article, Contat and Jerome, killed their master’s cat after the master deliberately told them not to shows that they did not just want to slaughter the cats. When a cat crossed one’s path, the townsperson’s only hope was in hurting the animal. Finally, throughout time, the worker-to-boss wealth ratio has always remained low, and like Tom said, unions hadn’t formed until the 19th century, so he makes a good point that the master could live a life of luxury while the workers live in poverty. He makes this statement in reference to the “joke” that is the great cat massacre; to the average 21st-century person, this was a horrible, gruesome event. When Darton comments, “Our own inability to get the joke is an indication of the distance that separates us from the workers of preindustrial Europe,” he is referring to the discrepancy between eighteenth century France and twenty-first century America. In The Great Cat Massacre cats symbolize the wife’s promiscuous sexuality, the masters as a cuckold, and the suggestion that the wife is a witch. “They could prevent bread from rising if they entered bakeries in Anjou. Fourth, the fact that the mistress is so attached to la grise gives even more reason for the workers to hate their masters; while a cat is given a seat at the dinner table, the workers are only fed cat food. This humor reveals an ongoing class conflict, in which the lower class, the peasants, was jealous of the privileged upper classes. And the list when on and on, all the more reason to eliminate this ‘possessed’ species. Symbolically, the workers raped the mistress, both “delivering the supreme insult to their master,…[violating] the most intimate treasure of the bourgeois household” all the while “[escaping] unharmed” (Darnton 99). As previously stated absolutism although effective, to an extent, also possesses its flaws of “religious” gerrymandering and hypocrisy, Poe’s focus of the cat’s eye in The Black Cat was to show the insanity of the husband. It is interesting how it is not funny now because people’s lives have changed, cultures are different. For example, it was said to recover from a bad fall one should “[suck] the blood out of a freshly amputated tail of a tomcat” (Darnton 94). This made it impossible for the average journeyman to ever eventually be promoted to master. The killing of the cats was the only way for the workers to rebel against this great conflict with the bourgeois. In Robert Danton’s The Great Cat Massacre he explains that cats were not always domestic household creatures, but were viewed as taboo objects with a certain “je ne saus quoi” or mystery behind them. And finally cats were in a way the enemy of the working class as their masters often treated the cats better than their actual human employees which is where the real conflict lies. For peasants, cats were used in witchcraft, in producing remedies, and in sexuality. Anyone that hurt the cat was symbolically raping the mistress. During Mardi Gras, charivaris, called Katzenmusik in Germany, were held to torture and kill cats. When Darnton states, “Our own inability to get the joke is an indication of the distance that separates us from the workers of preindustrial Europe”, he is displaying how much the industrial revolution and society has advanced since pre-industrialized Europe. He selected details, ordered events, and framed the story in such a way as to bring out what was meaningful for him. Most people in modern society view cats as household pets that can be domesticated to live with humans. As Darnton describes, the incident would have been viewed as both an attack and an amusing joke. If a woman were to eat a cat, she was believed to become pregnant. During a celebration occurring around the time of the summer solstice, objects with magical powers were thrown into fires to “obtain good fortune during the rest of the year.”(83) The most popular objects were cats. One day Léveille, The Cat and his Master Cats held significance on varying levels to the print shop workers. Class conflicts are differences in basic rights and the viewing of one another as the cats were more important than the apprentices because they were an importance to the owners and left the scraps and lower quality food to the lower class rather than the upper class’s cats. The injustice seemed especially flagrant in the case of the apprentices, who were treated like animals while the animals were promoted over their heads to the position the boys should have occupied, the place at the master’s table” (79). Remedies such as “drinking blood from a cat’s ear in red wine,” was used to get over pneumonia. The Great Cat Massacre: And Other Episodes in French Cultural History. Boston Massacre. Cats held many different meanings such as lust, witchcraft, sorcery, and torture. In “The Great Cat Massacre” by Robert Darnton, the cats play a significant role to the workers, and were associated with the bourgeois. Our culture is very different from the pre industrial European culture, and we don’t think the same way. An apprentice at Jacques Vincent’s printing shop on Rue Saint-Séverin, Nicholas Contat was one of the key instigators of the great cat massacre. Life as an apprentice was hard, he explained. It was believed that “if a man loved cats he would love women and vice versa,” (Darnton, 95) and that a man who takes care of cats would “have a pretty wife,” (Darnton, 95). It wouldn’t be fair to judge the working class for what they did, since it’s hard to say whether or not we would have behaved in a similar matter. From all of this evidence and historical background, Darnton constructs a re-imagining of the story of the cat massacre with respect to the beliefs that were commonly associated with cats in the time period. Today we lack the superstition and the connotation about cats. What Darnton means is that our inability to “ get the joke” clouds our ability to understand how the workers lived. Cats held many different levels of meaning during the eighteenth century to the working class. To come upon a black cat at night was a sign of the devil. The most prominent feature cats represented was witchcraft. The bourgeois overworked and underfed the workers, treating them like they didn’t matter. The master’s wife was also cheating on her husband. Not only through the folktales, where the lower class always succeeds in making their superiors look ridiculous as a recurring theme, but also in real life situation. For Jerome and Leveille, this meant finally getting revenge on the bourgeois class with the massacre of cats in rue Saint-Severin. The “killing of the cats expressed a hatred for the bourgeois” (79). Another complication was that large printing shops were backed by the government, reducing the amount of small shops, therefore decreasing the amount of shop masters and increasing the amount of men in need of work. At carnivals, people no longer decide to rip cats to shreds or watch them smolder in flames because witchcraft and now-strange superstitions are no longer so prominent in society. Today we find any harmful actions towards animals to be appalling and the least bit amusing because we can’t put it in the same context as the French apprentices. Why? The 18th century was a dangerous, cruel, unfair time, shrouded in superstition. During modern times, this separation is less common. An example would be how the workers were supposed to be able to eat their masters leftovers, but instead the cook sold those and the workers had to eat rotten cat food. I agree that one needs an “in-depth understanding of the time period and event which the joke was based on.” In fact, if we could travel time and tell them that their massacring of cats was cruel and evil, they would completely wonder what we were talking about. In chapter two, “Workers Revolt; The Great Cat Massacre of Rue Saint- Severin” Robert Darnton talks about how the various levels of significance of the cats depends on the different classes of the people. It was an attack on the owner of the shop because it symbolized poor leadership and management. Overview. If a woman was bruised, it might mean that she was a witch. The tribe was strong, courageous, and hostile. Specifically, with The Great Cat Massacre, On The Social Order and Absolute Monarchy, by Jean Domat, and Trew Law of Free Monarchies, King James VI & I. It is saddled with a moral which implies that through hard work and ingenuity one can rise above his station. The workers were treated very poorly; even the masters’ cats were cared for better. Society is now centered around caring. Back then, people would laugh at the killing of cats, but today, we find killing innocent animals cruel and immoral. Class conflict is presented in many ways as a major problem during this time. Women bear children bear children one mistress of the upper class, cats portrayed wealth and were frequently fired of... With witches and cats were considered “ cures ” to many maladies problems! 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