La Sainte Catherine, culture festive dans l'entreprise

Folklore, April, 2001 by David Hopkin

La Sainte Catherine, culture festive dans l'entreprise. By Anne Monjaret Le Regard de l'ethnologue, no. 8. Paris: Comite des travaux historiques et scientifiques, 1997. 240 pp. Illus. FF120.00. ISBN 2-7355-0363-1

The Feast of Saint Catherine of Alexandria is still celebrated every 25 November in many French businesses. Anne Monjaret has entered garment factories, Paris fashion houses, and service-sector offices to discover how the work forces fete their Catherinettes--unmarried female colleagues whose twenty-fifth birthday falls during that year. Monjaret is the most recent in a series of excellent women ethnologists whose particular expertise lies in unravelling the meanings of everyday rituals. But unlike her predecessors, who have been scholars of rural France, Monjaret's is largely an urban ethnology, and whereas her colleagues have tended to concentrate on a particular moment or location, Monjaret follows Saint Catherine from the mid-nineteenth to the end of the twentieth century, and from the country to the city.

The symbolic language of Saint Catherine's day, as celebrated by the Parisian midinettes (young dressmakers and milliners), had its origins in the festive calendar of rural France. Here, in the nineteenth century, she was honoured as the protector of women between first communion and marriage. Saint Catherine was, above all, a matchmaker, the object of private rituals to secure a husband. This was also the period in which young women were apprenticed to seamstresses, to prepare their trousseau and be initiated into the skills of seduction. As part of their training, the young women would, on 25 November, dress the statue of Saint Catherine in the bonnet of female modesty. This is one of several possible derivations for the phrase "coiffer Sainte Catherine"--"to be left on the shelf." Saint Catherine died a virgin, and so was also associated with old maids.

It is not clear when Saint Catherine took on the role of patroness of fashion, but she probably migrated to the city with the displaced peasantry who came looking for work. For women, this meant the needle trades, but whereas married women tended to work from home, the unmarried congregated in workshops and factories. Monjaret highlights three aspects of the celebration in this new venue: the personal, the professional and the corporate. At the centre of the celebration is the Catherinette. Whereas in rural areas the occasion was group-oriented, involving all those who dressed the Saint, in the more individualistic urban ceremony, the key moment is when the Catherinette's (usually male) boss crowns her with an elaborate bonnet prepared in secret by her colleagues. Thus, she is as much the object as an actor in the rite: she is being transformed from a young woman into something else. One cannot say that she immediately becomes an old maid, for Saint Catherine can still work her magic. At the dances held in their honour, the Catherinettes' bonnets signal their "availability." Indeed, Monjaret suggests that the ritual was designed to ward off the fate of the spinster. The form of the ceremony, with its toasts, buffets, dancing and presents, echoes a wedding and intimates that a real one may be in the offing. Not surprisingly, attitudes among Catherinettes to "their day" vary: some, rejecting the implication that they have been passed over, avoid taking part; others actually delay their weddings until after they have been "bonneted." As it was customary for women, until the 1960s, to leave work on marriage, some used the occasion to assert their identity as a worker. More recently, as pre-marital cohabitation has become commonplace, a Catherinette can choose to mark a mutation from a girl into a more serious woman with thoughts of settling down. Yet, because issues of female sexuality remain central, some feminists have derided the ritual as patriarchal. Although not directly addressed, an underlying theme of this book is the current dispute between French and American academics over feminism. For the French, being feminine is as important as being feminist.

Saint Catherine's is also the dressmakers' holiday. In the 1920s, the midinettes took to the streets of Paris in fancy dress, borrowing liberally from the language of carnival as they mocked passers-by, chased men and made rough music. The rowdiness of these occasions led to the involvement of the press and the Church. Monjaret highlights the role of the press in shaping the collective memory of Saint Catherine, particularly in the 1920s and 1930s when newspapers organised races, dances and competitions for Catherinettes. The Church too tried to reclaim the day, with special masses and processions throughout the fashion districts, which proved popular until the War. However, for all that she originated in a religious cult, Saint Catherine was never really under the control of the clergy. She was rooted in the workplace, the symbol of professional solidarity among seamstresses. Their carnival could easily turn into a class revolt, at least of a festive kind. In the 1970s, crisis years in the fashion industry, Saint Catherine again took to the streets, as workers used the occasion to protest against redundancies.