Consciousness
by
Ambyrhawke Shadowsinger
Copyright © May 8, 2003
All Rights Reserved
reached a critical mass level. This opened the doors for new thoughts to spring up about oppression, freedom
and equality. Some of these thoughts surface in Robert Darnton's account of The Great Cat Massacre and
Olympe de Gouges's The Rights of Woman. Like stones entering a pond, the new ideas forever changed the
nature of popular consciousness, creating ripple effects still seen in the 21st century.
The Great Cat Massacre of the Rue Saint-Séverin could not have taken place without a change in thinking
among the apprentices of the printing shop. For centuries, the lot of an apprentice was hard labor and bad
treatment. However, this group of young men fought back against their master in the only way they could at
that point in time ? by attacking his cats with his blessing.
The attack upon the master's cats held a deeper meaning than just making him as miserable as the apprentices.
By the 18th century, a long tradition of folktales and superstitions existed connecting cats and their owners to the
point that "to kill a cat was to bring misfortune upon its owner or its house" (Darnton 94). The apprentices
extended this idea by holding a mock trial for the cats. Through his cats, the men put the master on trial and
meted out the punishment of hanging (77). While the master fumed over the loss of production for the day, his
wife correctly read the symbolic language of the trial and realized "a more serious kind of insubordination" had
taken place (77). Furthermore, the tradition of copies ? satirical reenactments of an event - allowed for the
future indictment of the master's behavior through the pantomime of the original cat trial.
The cat massacre highlights a shift in the loyalties of the journeymen from the bourgeoisie to the apprentices.
Before the 18th century, men worked their way through the ranks from apprentice to journeyman to master of
their own shop. However, the industry's structure transformed during the 17th century by replacing small
printing houses with fewer, larger ones (Darnton 79). This contracting size of the master level cut off the
journeymen's hopes of rising through the ranks. At the same time, the masters started filling the lower levels of
the workforce with unskilled alloués (day workers), emphasizing their growing view that laborers were
commodities rather than partners (80).
The growing rift between the masters and the journeymen resulted in the latter siding with the apprentices
rather than the master during the cat massacre. The journeymen were on the rooftops chasing down the cats
just like the lowest ranked apprentices (Darnton 103). Contat states, "All the workers are in league against the
masters. It is enough to speak badly of them [the masters] to be esteemed by the whole assembly of
typographers" (79). This shows how the journeymen and apprentices put aside their group differences in favor
of uniting against their master.
The journeymen siding with the apprentices rather than the masters looks like a full blown class consciousness
of Marxist proportions; however Darnton suggests it was still in an embryonic stage at the time of the cat
massacre. He believes that keeping the insubordination to a symbolic level shows the workers of the printing
house were still subordinate to their bourgeois masters (101). They understood the growing class distinctions
between themselves and the shop owners and acted out accordingly, yet "the printers identified with their craft
rather than their class" (101). In order to posses the type of class consciousness of which Marx writes or even
enough class consciousness to foment the French Revolution, the boundary of craft vs. working class as a
whole still had to be traversed. Though this type of class consciousness had yet to form, the apprentices and
journeymen all recognized that, within their profession, they were the ones doing all of the work.
Just as the cat massacre shows workers noticing their oppression and wanting greater equality, so too does
Olympe de Gouges call for ending the oppression of and increasing the equality of women. In The Rights of
Woman, she asks women, "What advantage have you received from the Revolution?" (Kramnick 614). She
rewrites The Rights of Man into a declaration of female rights. Among these, she lists the right to hold property
and the right to vote (613). It would take another century before any country gave women the right to vote.
Not content to just create a feminist rewrite of an existing document, de Gouges goes on to rethink the
institution of marriage. In place of a marital union, she proposes a "Social Contract Between Man and Woman"
(Kramnick 616). In her contract, people of their own will would "unite [them]selves for the duration of [their]
lives, and for the duration of [their] mutual inclinations" (616). Through the caveat of "mutual inclinations," de
Gouges's very first sentence of the contract creates a way to dissolve it. However, separation does not come
without a price. De Gouges adds to the contract an obligation to divide the wealth upon separation after a
portion has been set aside for any children in the union (616).
These new ways of thinking did not disappear at the close of the 18th century. In addition to banding together
within their particular fields, workers also came together throughout social class as a whole. The cat massacre
found a macabre mirror in the Reign of Terror. In the last century, the communist revolution showed entire
nation-wide social classes uniting. However, not all revolutions in thought went to those extremes. Workers'
unions continue to be a part of life as we know it. Unfortunately the need for these unions exists because the
leaders of industry subscribe to the print shop masters' views that labor is a commodity rather than a partnership
between people. Unlike the cat massacre and social revolutions of the past, union movements in the last few
decades remain peaceful on the part of the oppressed, as exemplified by Cesar Chavez.
Although her radical ideas eventually earned Olympe de Gouges a trip to Madame La Guillotine, the past two
centuries saw the fulfillment of those ideas. In 1893, women gained the right to vote in New Zealand followed
by the United States in 1920 and France in 1944. We regularly hold public offices and have even been elected to
lead nations like Great Britain, India and Israel. Her ideas concerning changing the institution of marriage were
popular in the 1960s. Civil unions and domestic partnerships hold up the rights and responsibilities set out by de
Gouges in her social contract; however they are not necessarily limited to a contract between a man and a
woman. Finally, her ideas on dividing up property and providing for children upon separation exist in today's
community property and child support laws.
