<Articles>Faith and Profession: The World of the Davidées, Women Teachers during the Interwar Period in France (Special Issue : Gender)

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  • <論説>信仰と職業 --両大戦間期フランスにおける女性教師「ダビデ」の世界-- (特集 : ジェンダー)
  • 信仰と職業 : 両大戦間期フランスにおける女性教師「ダビデ」の世界
  • シンコウ ト ショクギョウ : リョウ タイセン カンキ フランス ニ オケル ジョセイ キョウシ 「 ダビデ 」 ノ セカイ

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Abstract

This article considers the ideas and activities of the Davidées, a group of Catholic female teachers who worked in public schools. This is firstly an attempt to clarify the daily lives of female teachers in rural France during the Interwar period, and secondly an effort to present one case to help us understand how pious individuals adapted to the modern nation state that promoted laïcité as a national principle. The historical sources employed in this study are chiefly letters written by Marie Silve and Marthe Lagarde, who were leading members of the Davidées, records of the interviews of Marie Silve by the Catholic intellectuals Jean Guitton and Emmanuel Mounier, and the monthly Aux Davidées, published by the group itself. The Davidées were created in 1916 in the sanctuary of Notre-Dame du Laus, located in the Southern Alps, where six female teachers, who were newly graduated from the teacher-training college in Digne, met with the veteran teacher Mélanie Thivolle. These women were fervent Catholics, but at the time in the sphere of elementary educators there was, on the one hand, a powerful leftist teachersʼ union that would not recognize the teachersʼ faith, and, on the other hand, the Catholic church that condemned public schools as “schools of the devil” and encouraged the faithful to join private schools. Given these circumstances, the women founded the Davidées in order to fulfill their duties as public school teachers and at the same time to keep and even enhance their faith. The Davidées network, which valued their occupation and faith equally, gradually spread throughout the nation via their periodicals, library system and pilgrimages, and by the end of the 1920s they had attracted to their ranks approximately 10% of the female elementary teachers working in public schools. Carrying on their faith while fulfilling their mission as public school teachers for the Republic was for the Davidées something that could not only coexist, but in fact be complementary. Furthermore, both the Republic and Catholicism provided them intimate links to various people and gave them the means to advocate for and protect themselves. This article attempts to throw new light on the previous understanding of teachers in the time of the Third Republic from the viewpoints of religion and gender.

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  • 史林

    史林 104 (1), 155-187, 2021-01-31

    THE SHIGAKU KENKYUKAI (The Society of Historical Research), Kyoto University

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