History 101: Family, Community, and Class
Spring 2002
Mr. Schwartz

  

 

•Syllabus
 •Course Compact
 •Information Form
•Reading for
    Efficiency
• Abstracts
•Assignments
•Discussion Forum
•Student work
•My Father's Life
•Happy Families
•Historical Rituals
•History & Statistics
•Previous Student
    Papers
•Burgundian Villages
•Census Records
•Exploratory
     Analysis
   & Interpretation
•Review: Main     Themes

•My Father's Life (La     vie de mon père):     selection in     French
•Notes for the QR     Paper

 

 

 

 

The Rural Wedding in George Sand’s The Devil’s Pool (1846): An Example of Historical Ritual
 (for longer version click here)

What is a ritual?

  • a collective, repetitive, and standardized social activity that serves as a model or a mirror of social life
  • their meanings are numerous and ambiguous.[1]

As a model:

  • sets forth standards of proper conduct or “a simplified miniature” of proper social relations--what ought to be. 

As a mirror:

  • a statement about something that “is” or exists.

A Marriage as an example of model and mirror:

  • it presents a man and woman as husband and wife--mirror of what is.
  • the vows profess the standards of conduct that are to govern the union--a model of what should be.

Further Perspectives:

·        Public rituals are intended to achieve group cohesion and solidarity. 

·        Rituals also permit people to enact stories about their own experiences, experiences that do not reflect or create social solidarity. 

·        Rituals evoke the emotions of those that share them, and through repetition rituals establish memories of previously experienced emotions. 

The Wedding in George Sand's rustic novel, The Devil's Pool.

 Here Sand recorded practices that were current in the Black Valley in the 1840s and that she observed herself.  Although story of Germain and Marie is idealized fiction, the description of the wedding reflects actual beliefs and practices.

Questions for Study

  • In what ways was the wedding of Germain and Marie a family matter?
    In what was it a communal ritual?
    In what ways did it affirm communal solidarity?
    Differences of gender?
    The village social structure?

  • What can we say about the dialogue between the hemp-dresser and the grave digger?

    It evoked, among other things, a tradition of hospitality harkening back to the Middle Ages: travelers on a holy pilgrimage seek shelter and sustenance.  The request for aid and the obligation to provide it was a custom upheld by the church as a way of facilitating an act of faith –the pilgrimage to a holy site—and of fostering the ideal that charity was to reign among all Christians.  This custom was known as “hospitality,” which is the origin of the word we continue to associate with the offering of food and or shelter to travelers or strangers—as well as friends.
  • What about the songs? If this was “story people tell about themselves,” what was the tale about?  What do you think the battle and capitulation was meant to signify?
  • On the third day of the wedding, a morality play is performed for the village in order to affirm various Christian virtues that were deemed necessary for a successful marriage.  The performance, the roles, the symbols, and the sequence of scenes offer many opportunities for historical and anthropological analysis.  Here are some questions to explore.
    What responsibilities and expectations were assigned to the husband? To the wife? 
    What emotions do you think were evoked by the ritual?
    Who was to blame if the wife were unfaithful?
    What did the cabbage signify?
    Overall, what aspects of peasant morality did this ritual affirm or “model”? What emotions were invoked to drive the point home?

 

[1] Edward Muir, Ritual in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997): p. 6.  These thoughts draw on his very useful introduction.