Les
Tricoteuses: The plain and purl of solidarity and protest.
Emily Sparkes' Freak (Minturnae) and The Blood of les
Tricoteuses[beaucoup moins que]Le manque de couturieres et de
tricoteuses a fait que les merceries n'arrivent plus a faire vivre leurs proprietaires et ce ne sont pas les generations montantes qui vont prendre la releve pour perpetuer ce metier[beaucoup plus grand que], s'est plaint ce vendeur.
(60.) Dominique Godineau, Citoyennes
tricoteuses (Paris: Editions Perrin, 2004).
In her husband's self-defence, in the same magazine's issue of March 19, 2007, he characterized his detractors as "braying, hideous
tricoteuses," casting himself as a hapless aristo losing his head while the citoyens of the French Revolution did their ominous knitting.
Godineau, Citoyennes
tricoteuses: Les femmes du peuple a Paris pendant la Revolution francaise (Aix-en-provence, 1988), pp.
Watt identifies the multiplicity of historical and literary associations pervading the scene in the anteroom, two of which are "the French
tricoteuses callously knitting at the guillotine, and the Roman crowds to whom the gladiators address their scornful farewell."(43) The historical parallels may seem disproportionate and faintly comic for the situation at hand, ostensibly one of unconcerned secretaries functioning as part of an impersonal bureaucracy.
The knitting outsider, a threatening presence in her observant post at the edges of the group is reminiscent of the
tricoteuses of the French Revolution and thus represents women who venture outside the domestic sphere; and the mother with her inanimate bundle evokes either postpartum psychosis or infanticide, two forms of dysfunctional maternal behavior.(28)
Knitting incessantly while watching the daily executions at the guillotine, she is a perfect example of the
tricoteuses.
Les
tricoteuses qui realisaient des merveilles grace a leur savoir-faire ont vraisemblablement d'autres preoccupations ou ont opte pour d'autres activites.