The Great Cat Massacre was written by Robert Darnton, an
American cultural historian, who is a leading expert in knowing about 18th
century of France .
The book, ‘The Great Cat Massacre: And other episodes in French Cultural
history’ was published by Vintage in February 12th, 1985. The Great
Cat Massacre story is viewed as a primary source as Robert Darnton has executed
perfectly about the real situations faced by the people of the late 1730s in France . In this
book, Robert Darnton tells a story of a French print shop, which was run during
the late 1730s, at Rue Saint- Severin, by a master and his wife. With them,
they have apprentice printers working for them. In this story, the author was
trying to show the hardships of the apprentice printers. Jerome and Leville were
two apprentice printers who had trouble times in working with their master. The
mistress adores cats and loves animals. The master and his wife owned 25 cats
and one of the cats named La grise (the gray’) was the favorite cat of the
mistress.
The apprentice workers live in a shack, where they consider
it as their own palace. They work all day long and have no proper food to eat
or sleep. They eat the leftovers of the Master’s or the cat’s plate. They
couldn’t sleep properly because of the cold outside at night as well as the
noise of the cats howling. Leville, with his inborn talent to mimic the sounds
of the cats, made his Master not to sleep several days. Finally, Leville has
successfully made his Master to decide to kill the cats. The apprentice
printers were able to convince that all cats must be killed because they were
the agents of the witchcrafts and that they had to kill mistress’s favorite cat
La grise also. Nicholas Contant, one of the apprentices in the print shop, said
that the funniest event that was ever witnessed during his time was the mass
killing and torturing of several cats.
The Massacre story showed us three pictures- the social
hierarchy, the beliefs of witchcrafts and the social behavior of the
apprentices. Social hierarchy started off in the late 18th century,
where wealth and income are the key indicators to determine people’s position
in the society. Here in this story, the apprentice printers were considered to
be the low class and their Master and his wife as the high class society. The
living condition of the apprentice printers is so poor comparing to the
condition of the cats. Besides, the cats are given proper care by the Master
and his wife and lived better than the apprentice printers. Such irony situation
has showed us and makes us realize the real situation of workers or the low
class people of the 18th century in France . The upper class of the
society were considered to be the most religious and superstitious people.
Because of this, the apprentice printers were able to convince their master to
believe that cats are also the part of the witchcrafts.
Many people believe in witchcrafts in the early modern Europe . Due to the fear of evil spirits, many people were
executed or burned till death, believing that they are the real witches or are
the part of the witchcrafts. In this story, the Master misunderstood that the
cats were the agents of the witchcrafts. Throughout our history, we can see that
different culture has different conception about cats. In France , black
cats are referred to as magician cats. According to them, they believe that the
black cats can bring good luck or charm to owners who treat their cat with
proper care and respect. But in India
and Egypt ,
when a black cat comes across your path, it means that it will bring bad luck
for you. Some people in those days say that a cat’s howl is a connotation of
witchcraft, rape, seduction and murder.
Carnival is said to be a time for young people to cut the
cats and make it as charivaris to mock cuckolds, husbands who got beaten up by
their wives and brides who got married with a person younger than their age and
so on. During carnival, the cats were passed around by young people and cut their
fur to make it howl. This amuses them. Such amusement can be seen in today’s
world like the bullfighting, the cockfighting and the dog fighting. The social
behavior of apprentice workers towards the cats was not normal. The reason as
to why they see the massacre of cats funny is because the apprentice printers
were able to play prank with the Master. The Master had totally believed on
what they had said and this made their Master as their base of the joke.
We live
in the same world and share same stories of the past, yet we have some commonality
on our human nature with the people of the past, and it may or may not be good
for us, once we know the history.
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