Possession on the Borders: The "Mal de Morzine" in Nineteenth-Century France Author(s): Ruth Harris Source: The Journal of Modern

History, Vol. 69, No. 3 (Sep., 1997), pp. 451-478 Published by: The University of Chicago Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2953593 Accessed: 30/05/2010 00:44
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=ucpress. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

The University of Chicago Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Journal of Modern History.

http://www.jstor.org

Possession on the Borders:The "Malde Morzine"in Nineteenth-Century France*

Ruth Harris
New College, Oxford A few Parisianphysicianswill soon stretchincredulityto the point of claiming that the possessed and witches are nothingbut frauds. That is going too far. The majorityare sick under the sway of an illusion.(J. MICHELET, La Sorciere, 1862)

In 1857, a series of psychic tormentsand bodily seizures eruptedin Morzine, a Savoyardcommune of some two thousand migrant masons and seasonal workersin the high countryof the Chablais.The crisis began when young and adolescent girls claimed to see the Virgin Mary, but this transitoryinteraction with the Mother of God had neitherthe beatific nor the awesome qualities normallyassociatedwith contemporary visionaryexperience.Ratherthan heavenly smiles and bodily rapture,they instead had alarmingconvulsive attacks, had no message to relay,and relishedblasphemingthe Eucharistduring their seizures. The women believed themselves possessed as a result of a mal throughmagic, magdonne, a witch'scurse, and they sought to counterattack netism, and pilgrimage,going far from their village world in search of relief. Their errantlife began when they felt abandonedby their parishpriest:Abbe Pinguetand his minions had willingly exorcised them beginningin 1857, convinced such expedientswould rid the communityof the "devils," but the situation changeddramatically in 1860 when FranceannexedSavoyandthe authorities pressuredthe priestto stop his "superstitious" both practices.He retracted his belief in their possession and his willingness to exorcise, and from that moment the intensityof the mal grew rapidly.' The degree of attention lavished on the girls and women-numbering aroundtwo hundredat the end of 1861 -is evidencedby the physicianswhom
* This article could not have been completed without the help of JacquelineCarroy, who generously made availableall her primarydocuments;special thanks are due to CarolineFord,RobertNye, LyndalRoper,Nicholas Stargardt, Megan Vaughan,and an anonymousreviewerof the Journalof ModernHistory,as well as to lain Pears for his usual tireless aid. 1 C. L. Maire,Les posse'es de Morzine, 1857-1873 (Lyon, 1981), pp. 44, 63-64. [TheJournalof ModernHistory 69 (September1997): 451-478] ? 1997 by The Universityof Chicago. 0022-2801/97/6903-0002$02.00 All rights reserved.

452

Harris

the Savoyardauthoritiesand later the Frenchadministration summonedto investigate the strangeepidemic. A local medical man, who diagnosed the outbreak as demonopathyin 1857, was followed by Doctor Arthaud,a Lyonnese physician, who made the more up-to-date diagnosis of "hystero-de'monopathie" aroundthe end of 1860.2But the resistanceof the mal to orderlycontrol and treatmentseemed to require a more interventionistpolicy, and in 1861 Adolphe Constans, a Parisianalienist with court connections and the inspecteur ge'ne'ral des asiles des alie'ne's, arrivedto repress the furious public displays.3Unwilling merely to observe and analyze, Constansused all his considerable power to expel the afflicted from Morzine, to intern some in public hospitals,and to use both a small detachmentof infantryand a new post of the gendarmerieto maintain order. By 1863, it appearedthat his methods had worked,andmost of the Morzinoises,seemingly cured,were allowed to return. However,when the bishop, MonseigneurMagnin, visited the village the following year, the mal reappearedin more violent form: some ninety women flew into mad convulsions, attackingand insulting him and pleading desperately for a collective exorcism.4 The outbreakbroughtConstansand the infantryback to the village, causing many of the women to flee throughthe mountainpasses into Switzerland,fearful of being deportedlike criminals to the New World. But the terrifiedresponse of the afflictedwas misplaced.After this second outbreak,morer subtle measures of "educationmorale" were introduced,with the foundation of a library and the institution of a regime of lectures and dances intended to provide some "enlightened"diversion and "soothing"distraction.Througha mixtureof subsidy and coercion-which ended with billeted soldiers helping villagers with the harvest-as well as the continuedhospitalizationof the possessed, Constans and his successors forced the mal underground.5 By 1873, only a few lone sufferersremained,women who experiencedtheirconvulsions
2 J. Arthaud,Relation d'une hystero-demonopathie epidemiqueobserve'e a Morzine (Lyon, 1862). 3 See his Relation sur une e'pidemie en 1861 (Paris, 1863). d'hystero-demonopathie 4 See CharlesLafontaine in Le Magne'tiseur (May 15, 1864); the articlesin Courrier des Alpes (May 21, 1864), reprintedin Le Monde (May 22, 1864); and the reprinted letterin L'unionmedicale (July 2, 1864). -"Rapportde gendarmerie" (May 30, 1867), Archives Departementales,which remarked:"Parmiles 120 filles de Morzine environ qui sont parties ces jours-ci, pour allereffeuillerles vignes en Suisse, il y a une cinquantaine de maladesenviron," a figure which points to the persistenceand intensity of the disorder.The "Rapport du Docteur Broc,"one of Constans'ssuccessors,gives a brighterpictureon August 12, 1867, Arch. Dep., claiming that the majority had reverted to a simple hysterical state. Although some still went on secret pilgrimages and had crises at home, the seizures no longer occurredin public and never duringreligious services.

Possession on the Borders 453 in privateignominy,6 eking out a meagerand marginalexistence eitherin Morzine itself or in neighboringSwitzerland.7 Such a synoptic account gives only the slightest taste of the events surroundingthe mal. I limit myself to this brief introductory descriptionbecause of the narrativesweep already providedby JacquelineCarroyand Laurence Maire.8 Theirinformativeandperceptivevolumes concentrateon the key male actors-priests, physicians, and administrators-and seek to uncoverthe different tactics employedto help, control, and transformthe women undertheir supervision.Publishedin the early 1980s, these works show the markof Michel Foucaultand, to a lesser extent, of Michel de Certeauon historicalscholarship,focusing on the impact of discursivestrategies,especially medical expertise, in containing and transformingthe epidemic. While they both begin by elucidatingproblems of witchcraftand possession in the local world and seek to uncoverits religious roots, they are chiefly concernedwith the mal as a key case study in the coercive secularizationof peasant society, with a particularinterestin demonstrating how the diagnosis of hysteriawas centralto thatprocess. I intend in this article to question not only the vision of secularizationbut also the broaderconceptualcategoriesof "tradition" and "modernity" thatunderpinit. Although sympatheticto the plight of the villagers and interestedin local religious beliefs, both Carroyand Maire nonetheless tend to see witchcraft and possession as expressionsof traditionalcultureand their manifestation as the last gasp of a dying world.Indeed,Mairegoes so far as to liken the mal to Luddism, and she sees it as an attemptto restore a lost civilization In contrast,I will show how the fears and seizures of througharchaicrituals.9 the Morzinoiswere partof a changingand developingpeasantcosmology that drew on the dilemmasof nineteenth-century society. I reject the bipolar,static in favor of an account that grapples and "modernity" concepts of "tradition"
6"Rapport de gendarmerie," September 14, 1869, Arch. Dep. The gendarme described two women, one forty-eight years old and the other thirty-seven,who lived alone and in the worst poverty.The first,JosephteChauplannaz, still had crises lasting three-quarters of an hour and was instructedby the mayornever to speak of them to anyone. 7See the pathetic letter, in misspelled French, of January4, 1870, written to the prefect by JeanneBerger.Abandonedby her husbandand seeking shelter in Geneva, she wrote asking for the means to get throughthe winter and to keep her children. 8 See Jacqueline Carroy, Le mal de Morzine: De la possession a V'hysterie (Paris, 1981), and Maire,Les possedes de Morzine;otherworks includeA. Baleydier,A proa Morzine (audience solennelle de la rentree du 2 octobre) pos d'un mal myste'rieux (Chambery,1949); and Dr. Henri Bouchet, Relation sur l'epidemie de Morzine (Lyon, 1899). 9 See Maire,Les posse'ees de Morzine,p. 118.

454

Harris

with collective distressby not dismissingwitchcraftandpossession as anachronistic relics.'0I will show how possession in both its linguistic and its bodily dimensions expressed the tension between, on the one hand, the desire for exotic urban affluence and, on the other, guilt over the loss of the village's spiritual,psychological, and economic integrity.Religion and "superstition" were thus hardlya brakeon peasantmentalitiesbut, rather,mediatedthe conflicts between the village and the nation. In additionto this historiographical I aim to provide a funreinterpretation, damentalcritiqueof the discourse analysis that underpinsprevious studies of the mal de Morzine.Such work shows the women as if grippedin a discursive vice, squeezed between the articulatedexigencies and expectationsof family, religion, medicine, and the state.Whatis surprising,given this approachto the problem,is how little energyhas been spent on examiningthe discursiveworld of the women themselves; occasionally, their statementsduringtheir possession crises are recountedand an anthropologicalgloss is painted on the language of collective distress,with Maire tentativelysuggesting a protofeminist bid for emancipationencoded in the actions of the afflicted women. She suggests, without arguing directly,that the women created their own discursive response to authoritythroughwitchcraft and possession and that they were ultimatelyconstrainedby the more powerfuldiscoursesthat marginalizedand silenced them. Although the linguistic interpretation provides a powerful account of the mal, I will arguethat it neglects centralfeatures.The mal was too emotionally disruptiveand above all too physical to be understoodfully in these terms,and it is these unstable,sometimes violent, and above all painful dimensionsthatI intend to underscore.The persistenceof possession, and the enduringconvulsive experience, meant that sufferers could not articulatetheir distress; they remainedlocked in a culturaldramain which the definingpower of language was largely absent. I will show instead how the mal opens a window onto the unconsciously aggressive fantasies of the women against menfolk who were not "good enough"to rid them of their "devils"and purge the parishof witchcraft.As will be seen, the afflicted not only resisted the demandsof husbands
" In making this argument,I owe much to a developing revisionist historiography that, by and large, has concentratedon questions of political and social acculturation, as well as on problemsof regionalandnationalidentity.See, e. g., CarolineFord,Creating the Nation in ProvincialFrance(Princeton,N.J., 1993); P. M. Jones, ThePeasantry in the French Revolution (Cambridge, 1988); Michel Lagree, Culturesen Bretagne, 1850-1950 (Paris, 1994); and the recent synthesis by James R. Lehning,Peasant and French:CulturalContact in Rural France during the NineteenthCentury(Cambridge, 1995). I depart,however, from this trend with my special interest in the parallel,but related,sphereof subjectiveand collective meaningand experience,which the mal and possession crises reveal.

Possession on the Borders 455 andfathersbut also condemneddoctorsfor theirinadequacyandcursedpriests Nonetheless, while for having spiritualpowers too puny to exorcise the mal."1 it did not authoritytemporarily, the mal enabled them to renouncepatriarchal offer a means of resolving village tensions;indeed, it only servedto strengthen the prestige and authorityof outsidersinterveningin their affairs. This study will begin by examiningthe mal in its village context, including the impact of changing social conditions and French annexation.It will continue by investigatingthe fantasies of fear, evil, remorse, and longing voiced by the "devils,"analyzing why both the witches and the "devils"were male, and showing how unstablegenderrelationswere at the heartof the psychological drama.The final section will examine why, emulating the menfolk who emigratedto find work, the afflicted left the village in searchof exorcists and magnetizers to cure them. This quest for men more powerful than those at home, I will argue, left the village in disarrayand ultimately,if unwittingly, opened the door to the manipulationsof Constansand the French state. Both Constansandthe women identifiedsome of the same problems,but his authoritariansolutions were rarelyto theirliking. While such measuresappeasedthe Morzineinto the Frenchnation, they did not alleviate village and "integrated" the psychic distressor bodily misery.
RELIGIONAND THE VILLAGECOMMUNITY

The commune of Morzine sits in the high countryof the southernChablaisin the far cornerof the Aulph valley,separatedfrom Switzerlandby only a single mountain.Difficult of access, it sits perchedon the banksof the Dranse and at the time includedseveraldispersedhamlets.Like manyvillages in Savoy,Morzine dependedon emigrationto sustainits expandingbut impoverishedpopulation. From the eighteenthcentury,when subsistenceon the land became increasinglydifficult, Savoy became famous for its migrantworkers-peddlers, By the time chimney sweeps, masons, carpenters,and later factory workers.'2 of the mal, the streamof emigrantshad become a flood, with the men andboys of Morzineleaving for Genevaand Lausanneto work in the building trades.A
11Constansdescribesin Relation,p. 53, how neithermedical intervention was of any use and how priests in particularwere singled out for not being "assez saints pour avoiraction sur les demons."When the bishop arrived,the women called him a "Loup la d'Eveque"who did not have "le pouvoirde guerirla fille, non il ne peut debarrasser du sous-Prefetau Prefet sur les evenements qui se sont fille du diable."See "Rapport passes le 30 avrilet le ler mai,"Arch.Dep. The prefecthimself was struckby one of the raging women who had no respect for his authority;see Rapportde l'Abbe Chamoux'a l'Eveque, 1866, Archives Diocesaines. 12 See AndrePalluel-Guillard a nosjours, XIXe-XX et al., La Savoie de la Re'volution siecle (Rennes, 1986), pp. 150-54.

456

Harris

the total men census of 1854 gave Morzine a populationof 2,284 inhabitants; absent from the village varied between 400 and 500, with the majorityonly returningbriefly aroundthe Christmasholidays. The peak of this cycle (and the maximumsize of the village) occurredaroundthe time of the outbreakof the mal. Laterin the 1860s the populationbegan to decline, evidence that the was finallybrokenby the decision to settle elsecycle of leaving and returning where permanently."3 The communitysubsisted on a meager mountainagriculturethat produced barley-corn,oats, and potatoes. Scarce resources were spent on bread, which increasedthe burdenof debt and forced ever more men onto the road to Switzerland. Otherwise,the community depended on livestock, the key resource that, when threatenedby illness, unleashed the witchcraftfears that haunted the village. The tending of animals exacted a heavy burden,as villagers went up to chalets, first in April to feed the animals on the spring grass, and then again in June duringthe cheese making. In the valley, however,June sowing and summercultivatinghad to continue. The loss of half of the most active men meant that the women were obliged to do more and more of these tasks had ruled work and housealone, where once a strictgendercomplementarity hold relations. The end to this fragile equilibriumbroughta severe change in psychological and social relations.For Morzine,like othervillages in the Chablais,was made clans that encouragedendogamousunions; men who up of large patriarchal contravenedcustom by marrying"outside"were regardedwith bitternessby the young women of the parish,and the "foreign"bride was often treatedwith in" underscoredthe prioritygiven to hostility.'4The emphasis on "marrying local affiliationin maritalunions thatfosteredthe perceptionthat all goodness should be containedwithin the parishand the mountainsthat encircledit. The Morzinois lived as a group, garneringtheir meager livelihood from managed communalproperty,supplying wood, shelter,and even scarce labor for every memberof the village. Emigrationthus strainedthis society to the limit, breakingthe strictdivision the villagers' social and between "us"and "them"that had hithertostructured psychic worlds. As fathers and brotherswere rarely present to impose discipline, Morzine's traditionswere maintainedby women and children, whose continuedlife in the village came to symbolize the ideal of domesticatedrootedness, despite the growing hardshipsthis life demanded.While "free"from their menfolk, they were also overworkedand increasinglyinsecure.The loss of so manyof the active men meantthatyoung women were unableto establish
Maire,Les possedees de Morzine(n. 1 above), p. 28. See A. Van Gennep, "Les fiangailles et le mariage en Savoie,"in La Savoie, vue par les e'crivains et les artistes, ed. A. Van Gennep (Paris,n.d.), pp. 343-80.
13 14

Possession on the Borders 457 their own foyers and were obliged instead to labor in their relations' households to survive. Women became simultaneouslymore central to the village communityand increasinglyconstrainedby its demands,while men were key in negotiatingexternalchallengesbut growingmarginalto life inside Morzine. The mal reversedall these verities to the point of caricature. As I will show, it was above all these insecure,often unmarried women who left the village in search of a cure; and, far from being a refuge from the sinful world, Morzine itself became the site of danger.Evidence of this belief could be dramatic: one girl carriedaway from Morzine told her bearershe would be able to walk the minutethey came to Montriond(an adjacentcommune),and she promptlydid so, going on throughthe mountainpasses into Geneva to find relief from a famous magnetizer.15 Neighbors too began to shun the village when in 1864 the inhabitantsof Montriond,who usually made an annual procession with theirlivestock to receive communalblessing in the church,"didan aboutturn at the edge of their territory,not daring to put their feet onto the lands of 16 Morzine." The mal took the formit did because of the importance of religion in shaping collective identity.An episcopal enquiryof 1845 had noted the fervorand the devotionalregularityof the Morzinois and, more generally,of the parishesof the high mountains.Investigators pointed to the frequencyof confession and communion, even among men, the fervor of prayer,the observance of feast days,the love of the Holy Sacrament andthe Blessed Virgin,as well as enthusiastic participation in religious confraternities, especially those of the Rosary and the Eucharist.17While these two organizationshad roots in the CounterReformationand were headed by the clergy, the Morzinois were even more devotedto the Confraternity of St. Esprit,the village'soldest penitentorganization with early medieval roots and one of the oldest surviving institutionsof its kind in Savoy.The penitentsbelieved in its prophylacticpowers and sought the aid of priests to ring bells, bless or exorcise farms and stables, and protect them against climatic disaster.Moreover,the confraternity organizedfuneral meals and distributedalms, acting as a focus for village sociability.In sum, it
Constans(n. 3 above), p. 60. de gendarmerie," "Rapports May 7 and 9, 1864, Arch. Dep. 17 Roger Devos, "Quelquesaspects de la vie religieuse dans le diocese d'Annecy au milieu du XIXe siecle (d'apresune enqu&ede Mgr Rendu)," Cahiersd'histoire(1966), pp. 49-83. After the Revolution,the clergy saw HauteSavoie as once again in the front line, with the region resistingnot only Protestantism but also the seductionsof revolutionarydoctrine.The diocese of Annecy and Geneva had priests back in every parish churchby 1820 and by midcenturyhad added another1500 to its ranks;see Paul Guichonnet,"Du concordata l'annexion(1802-1860)," in Geneve-Annecy: Histoiredu diocese, ed. Henri Baud (Paris: 1985), pp. 191-222; and Palluel-Guillard et al., pp. 184201. For more on the vicissitudesof the Savoyard church,see the hagiography by Abbe F.-M. Guillermin,Viede Mgr Louis Rendu,EvequedAnnecy (Paris, 1867).
16 15

458

Harris

managed the supernatural-especially the highly valued cult of the deadand the social life of the parishin a mannerthat satisfiedthe religious requirements of the laity.18 The religious life of the Morzinois was thus made up of two intermingling of St. Esprit,was the religion of strands.One, represented by the Confraternity popularritual,which included devotion to local saints, talismans,and village missionaries,by processions. The other was shaped by Counter-Reformation the traumaof Protestant conversionand Catholicreconquest.Savoy in general and the Chablaisin particularwas the pays par excellence of St. Francois de andbuildinga fortressof Sales' evangelism,securingItaly from contamination Catholicpower againstCalvinistGeneva.19This legacy offeredthe Morzinoisa an obsession with hellfire and damnation,sin and guilt. "religion of fear,"20 Local nineteenth-centuryclerical reformers bemoaned the continuation of these associationsby decryingthe stagnantand unyieldingattitudesof the parish clergy, with one describing their rigorism as "gloomy,wearying, scrupulous, uneasy,'21 a type of Catholic piety that mirroredthe Protestantseverity on the other side of the mountains.Such attitudesoften engenderedanticlericalism, for the priests controlledthe sacraments,monitoredpenitence through They were confession, and hence determinedwho could take the Eucharist.22 able to withhold or to offer religious consolation and, as I will show, it was often priestly harshness,intransigence,or inadequacythat would most enrage the Morzinoises duringtheircrises. An equally important elementof religious sensibilitywas the belief in magic of the and sorcery.For, while lamentationover the entrenched"superstitions" ruralpoor was a leitmotif of medical, ethnographic,and sometimes clerical the Chablaisseemed particularly suscepwriting in many regions of France,23 tible because it borderedon the Vaud, the region that produced the earliest
18 The centralityof the confratemityis describedby A. Van Gennep, En Savoie, du berceaua la tombe(Paris, 1916), pp. 198-217. 19 (1536-1622)," Henri Baud, "Le defi protestantet les debuts de la contre-reforme account of this (re)conversion, in Baud, ed., pp. 98-128. For the seventeenth-century see P. Charlesde Geneve,Les trophe'es sacre'sou missionsdes capucinsen Savoie (Lausanne, 1976). 20 Jean Delumeau, Sin and Fear: The Emergenceof a Western Guilt Culture,13th18th Centuries,trans.Eric Nicholson (New York, 1990), pt. 3. 21 et al., p. 190. Palluel-Guillard 22 confessional, see Philippe For more on the rigorismof the earlynineteenth-century d'Ars, 3d ed. (Paris, 1986), pp. 405-8. Boutry,Pretreset paroisses au pays du Cure' 23 See JudithDevlin, TheSuperstitiousMind: FrenchPeasants and the Supernatural in the NineteenthCentury(New Haven,Conn., 1987), for an overview of peasantbelief Christianitywas constantlythreatenedby the vitality of more and the way "orthodox" "popular" conceptions.

Possession on the Borders 459 mythology of witchcraftin the fourteenthcentury.24 As will be seen, in their efforts to combatthe mal the Morzinoisseemed all too willing to substantiate a pictureof atavisticresurgence,25 andfor this reasonthey attracted the disgusted criticismof a Parisianlike Constans.
THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE MAL: Witchcraft and Possession

It was against this backgroundthat the mal erupted,intensifying until it attractedthe full-scale attentionof the state. There was, however,no straightforwardevolution,and untanglingthe variousaccountsof cause and effect and of witchcraftand possession is often impossible. It is separatingthe narratives even difficult to know when the mal started.One crucial event, however,occurredin the springof 1857, when Abbe Favre,the vicaire of the parishunder Pinguet'sdirection, took his young female parishionerson retreatto prepare them for their first communion.Favre seemed to embody the unyieldingreligion that so worriedclerical reformers.He talked often of Satan, believed in black magic and evil spirits,26 and terrorized the girls with his depictionof the treasonousJudas.27 Reportsof him thus hintedat a priestwho exhorted,bored, and terrifiedby turns. He paid special attentionto one girl, Peronne T., who became central to subsequentevents. She began to have spasmodic convulsions duringhis lessons and, althoughknown to be overjoyedat the prospectof her firstcommunion, remarkedthat Favre had vexed and wearied her to distraction.28 Later, with anotherten-year-old,she claimed to have had a letter from the Mother of God. Letters that came into the village from the outside world, properly
24 For this dating, particularly in relationto the Sabbath,see CarloGinsburg,"Deciphering the Witches' Sabbath,"in Early Modern European Witchcraft:Centres and Peripheries, ed. B. Ankerloo and G. Henningsen (Oxford, 1990), p. 122. See also E. William Monter,Witchcraft in Franceand Switzerland:TheBorderlandsduringthe Reformation(Ithaca,N. Y., 1976), esp. chap. 1; and the older works of Jean Guiraud, Histoirede l'inquisitionau MoyenAge (Paris, 1914), pp. 235-60; JeanMarx,L'inquisition en Dauphine': Etudesur le developpement et la re'pression de I'he're'sie et la sorcellerie du XIVesiecle au debutdu regnede FranVois Ier (Paris, 1914); andA. VanGennep, Le Folkloredes Hautes-Alpes:Etude descriptiveet compare'e de psychologiepopulaire (Paris, 1948), 2: 72-85. 25 Van Gennep sought to prove the historical and geographicallinks in Incantations medico-magiquesen Savoie (Annecy,n.d.), p. 15. 26 See the "Rapport de l'Abbe Vallentien. .'. L'Evequed'Annecy,Mgr.Magnin," January 20, 1869, Arch. Dioc. 27 "Rapport de l'Abbe Chamoux,"1866, Arch. Dioc. 28 de l'Abbe Vallentien"; See "Rapport the words she reportedlyused were "Cetabbe me fatigue."

460

Harris

stamped and delivered,were central events in this tightly woven community, evidence of the importanceof the recipients:"One sees these girls raise their hands,as if to receive letters,breakthe seal, thenreadwith a mixtureof groans, tears, smiles, or satisfactionaccordingto whetherwhat they read is happy or sad. At that moment, they fall to the ground and foam [at the mouth] in an alarmingfashion. The slightest idea of churchprayersends them into frightful contortions."29 From the outset their physical and psychic distress was disruptive, as the pair fell into convulsions, utteredprophecies-correctly preto dicting, for example,who else would fall prey to the mal-and surrendered the male "devils"inside them. The reasons adducedfor PeronneT.'s susceptibility were her infatuationwith the table turningand spiritrappingso popular in the 1840s and 1850s3?and her traumatic of witnessing of the near-drowning a young girl in March 1857.31 Nor was the idea of demonic influenceparticuhad fallen larly foreign:a young girl from the nearbyparishof Essert-Mornand into convulsions a few years earlier and was taken to Besancon to be exorcised.32

This account of the early stages of the mal is remarkablefor the way the descriptionof Marianencounteris so quickly dismissedin favorof possession. Indeed, there were enough similaritiesbetween Morzine and villages where visionaries had apparitionsof the Virgin to suggest that the mal might have neighdeveloped differently.A decade earlier, two young shepherdsin the" boring mountaincountryof the Dauphinesaw the Virgin Mary at La Salette; BernadetteSoubiroushad her visions in 1858 in the Pyrenees, and over a decade later the girls of Marpingenin the Saarlandhad a similar experience.33 Morzine sharedwith these otherexamplesmanygeographicaland sociological features. Three cases occurredin poor, overpopulatedupland areas; all four
On voit ces filles lever les mains, comme pour recevoir des lettres, on les voit rompre le cachet, puis lire avec un melange de gemissements, de pleurs, de ris, de satisfaction selon que ce qu'elles lisent est heureux ou malheureux.Dans le moment actuel, elles tombent par terre et ecument d'une maniere alarmante.La moindre idee de priere de l'Eglise les jette dans les contorsionsaffreuses. Lettrede Abbe Pinguet a l'Eveque (signed also by Favreet Sinvel, vicaires), May 22, 1857, Arch. Dioc. 30 See Thomas A. Kselman, Death and the Afterlife in Modern France (Princeton, N.J., 1993), pp. 143-62; and Nicole Edelman, Voyantes,gue'risseuseset visionnaires en France(1785-1914) (Paris, 1995), esp. pp. 108-58. It is important to note thatAllan Kardec,one of the leading lights of spiritism,not only visited Morzine duringthe outbreakbut also wrote aboutit as an example of the veracityof his doctrines. 31 Constans(n. 3 above), p. 23. Indeed, throughout the mal women threwthemselves into the Dranse in some reliving of this traumatic,suicidal experience. 32 "Rapport de L'abbeChamoux,"1866, Arch. Dioc. 33 See J. Stem, ed., La Salette, Documents authentiques,2 vols. (Paris, 1980-84); R. Laurentin, ed., Lourdes:Dossier des documentsauthentiques(Paris, 1958), esp. vol. 1; and David Blackboum,Marpingen:Apparitionsof the VirginMary in Bismarckian Germany(Oxford, 1993).
29

Possession on the Borders 461 happenedon the borderlands and involved childrenof similar ages; and Marpingen and Morzine shareda crisis of out-migration that was the most salient feature of their village communities.34 All were deeply markedby local traditions of Marianpiety, increasingly overlaid in midcenturyby the Churchsponsoredvariety.The poor worshippedthe Motherof God in local sanctuaries, treasuring miraculousimages discoveredby theirearly modem forebears; at the same time, they were increasinglytutoredin the dogma of the Immaculate Conceptionpromulgated in 1854 andwere partof a movementto inculcate a special love of the Virgin as a model for daughterlypurity and motherly virtue.35 But for all these similaritiesand, above all, a sharedreligious culturethat believed in supernatural the priestsand villagersof Morzinewere intervention, quickly able to distinguishpossession from Marianapparition by referenceto long-standingreligious and folkloric traditions.Unlike the visionaries of La Salette, Lourdes,and Marpingen,the girls of Morzinesaw no "ladyin white"; not only was there no ravishing sighting, but in addition the Virgin did not appearin her accustomedhaunts,on the mountain,in a grotto, or in the forest awayfrom the parishchurch.Moreover,the visionariessufferedno immediate ill effects from her appearance;BernadetteSoubirouswas even temporarily relieved of her many ailments. Nothing could be more different in the case of Morzine.From the outset, the girls experienceddebilitatingseizures;their prophecies relayed no general mission; and the Virgin was quickly replaced by a cast of male charactersvariously described as "devils,""demons,"and the "damned." Finally,"mischievous" experimentation with the spiritworld,as well as the recent evidence of traumaticevents, all suggested the influence of evil ratherthan of good. For example, PeronneT.'s affliction was contagious, her malady spreading to older women. Moreover,the childrenastonishedthe villagersby theirfrightening acrobaticfeats of contortionand physical prowess.36 Otherevents confirmedthe presence of evil, and villagers rememberedthat, even before 1857, therehad been uncannyhappenings-above all, the deathof livestock.Animal deaths were often seen as an early and ominous indicationof witchcraft,and so seriously did Constanslater take this "superstitious" belief that he insisted
34 Blackbourn,Marpingen,esp. chap. 2; Lourdes also had a similar crisis, but one involving more permanentemigrationto SouthAmerica;see Jean-Frangois Soulet, Les Pyre'ne'es au XIXesiacle (Toulouse, 1987), 2:90-91. 35 On the cult of the Virgin in the nineteenth century,see G. Miegge, The Virgin Mary: TheRomanCatholicMarianDoctrine (London, 1955), pp. 107-33; MarinaWarner,Alone of All Her Sex: The Myth and Cult of the VirginMary (London, 1976), pp. 236-54; for the images of Mary, see L'image de piete en France, 1814-1914 (Paris, 1984), pp. 97-99. 36 Constans,pp. 28-29.

462

Harris

on the need for post mortemsto "prove" to the villagers that the animals' demise resulted from nothing more than the unhygienic and overcrowdedstate of the stables.37 Moreover,throughout the many years of the mal, animals,like theirhumanmasters,seemed possessed, with horses refusingto go where they were biddenandcalves actinglike goats,jumpingon mountainrocks andprecipices."
* 38o

Whateverthe cause of the mal, the normallypious, docile, and hardworking dispositions of the affected girls and women evaporatedunder its influence. Responsibility for their behavior was firmly placed on the "devils" (les dcmons)-on rareroccasions referredto as the "damned" (les damne's)-who took over theirbodies, spoke theirwords, and commandedtheir actions.These two descriptiveterms give some clue as to the spiritualuniversethese women inhabited.They seemed unconcernedwith the theological distinctionbetween, on the one hand,the "devils," fallen angels from the originalrevoltagainstGod souls who returnedfrom hell to tormentthe and, on the other,the "damned," living. They used both categories, seeming to mix them and their characteristics interchangeably. Sometimes their affliction resembled the activities of "devils,"demonstrating such classic symptomsof possession as physicalcontortionsand an ability the "devils"neverused the to talk in foreign tongues.Althoughnevernamed,39 highly localized patois, speaking instead in French and German,a polyglot capacitythatreflectedthe realityof life in the borderlands. They spoke through the possessed women in Latin, the languageboth of exorcists and of the devil, who could invertwordorderandmock the priests.The Germanno doubtcame from forays into Switzerland,while smatteringsof Latin came from sermons and exorcisms. The use of "good"French was perhaps the most suggestive, since it was firstthe languageof revolutionary liberationbut was increasingly also being appropriated by forces of occupationand repression.40 At the same time, these "devils"bore a more than passing resemblanceto the errant souls from purgatorywho, throughoutFrench peasant culture, fromtheirnetherworld to plead playedon the feelings of the living by returning
Letterfrom Constansto the prefect, July 29, 1864, Arch. Dep. "Lettredu Brigade de Morzine de la Gendarmerie Imperialeau Chef d'escadron de la Gendarmerie de la Haute-Savoie," July 29, 1865, Arch. Dep. 39 Unfortunately, it is uncertainif they were anonymousor if observerssimply failed to recordtheirnames. 40 Many authorsmention the different languages spoken, but few as thoroughlyas Constans,pp. 88-96; while at otherintervalshe pointsto the ignoranceof the villagers, in this instance he is obliged to acknowledge that lessons were taught in French and that all children spoke the language fluently from seven or eight years of age. There were also a few wordsin Arabic,as well as a devil who spoke with anAuvergnataccent.
37 38

Possession on the Borders 463 for masses andindulgencesto speed theirway to heaven.4' Such requestscould be made with courtesy, but others pressed their cases menacingly, noisily hauntingthe living until they were satisfied.42 In nearbyLanguedoc,girls and young women were frequentlythe targetsof such visits,43 andwhen Bernadette Soubirousfirst saw her vision, local women were convinced that she was receiving a visit from a recently deceased woman.44 Nor was this the only way that beings from the other world visited their erstwhile companions.As the example of PeronneT. demonstrated, the girls and women of Morzineparticipatedin the vogue for table turningand spiritrappingand were no strangersto the disruptivedemandsof the spiritworld. Althoughthese "devils"had little individuality, many had a generic identity as semidomesticatedwanderersor as foreignersnot belonging to the community. One hunter,who spoke througha possessed girl, describedhimself as a man who detested the Frenchand cursed the priests as hypocriteswho would soon join him in hell. There was no remorsefor bad behavior,only a celebration of blood lust: "A hunterwalks ahead with the sound of the horn and the barkingof the dogs," with a full game bag, liquor, white bread, and meat.45 Above all, he praisedthe pleasureof living in the body of the woman, urging her to the same wildness, which she acted out by imitatingthe barkingdog and the sounds of the ass, horse, bull, pig, and lamb-virtually the entire menagerie of Savoyard culture.46 Othersalso came from the semidomesticated world: one was a shepherd,47 a type of travelerseen as having a special knowledge of stars, moon, and sun and who possessed a talent for healing. There is some evidence to suggest that a groupof Swiss shepherdsregularlyappearedin the region to practicetheirmedicinal arts and thatthese men combined an exotic, foreign, and Protestant presencewith magical practice.48 A thirdwas a woodsman, whose way of life also combined domestic and wild features, as he scratcheda living from the forest by selling wood, tendingherds for families too poor to rent pasturage,and making charcoal. One girl insisted that this
41 42

Kselman (n. 30 above), pp. 111-24. See CharlesJoisten,"Lesetres fantastiquesdansle folklore de l'Ariege,"ViaDomitia 9 (1962): 25-48. 43 For the continuation of such traditions,see Jean-Pierre Pinies, Figuresde la sorcellerie languedocienne(Paris, 1983), esp. pp. 205-41. "4Laurentin, ed. (n. 33 above), 1: 143-45, 153-54. 45"Rapport de gendarmerie," June 13, 1864 (a statementtaken by Dr. Kuhn, Constans'ssuccessor,in the gendarmes'presence),Arch. Dep. 46 For similar kinds of eruptions,see Lyndal Roper, Oedipusand the Devil: Witchcraft, Sexualityand Religion in Early ModernEurope (London, 1994), pp. 190-91. 47 "Lettre de l'Abbe Blandin,vicaire ... Morzine,"September1, 1864, Arch Dioc. 48 Devos (n. 17 above), p. 78.

464

Harris

devil had mutilatedher with his axe.49 All threeof these characters seemed tied to a marginalif not semilegal existence and to occupationsthat were increasingly under threat.The hunterwas most likely a poacher,using the forest to kill game thatbelonged to others;shepherdswere known to bringherdsacross the frontierillegally to escape taxes; and woodsmen often eked out an illicit living in forests that were no longer communal property but increasingly owned and managedby rich proprietors.50 While these "devils"celebratedtheir deeds, others expressed remorse for sins that had condemnedthem to hell, showing an astonishingdegree of conformity to the rigors of Counter-Reformation teaching.Again, on the whole these sinners were not from Morzine, but strangersor outsiders. One devil from Abondance (a neighboringcommune) was licked by eternal flames for having "eaten meat on Friday."5' One woman who had eight "devils" gave voice to a Frenchmanwho died at fifty-two: "I missed mass, disobeyed my parents,went to the veille'e,playedcardswith libertines,blasphemed,said bad things about religion and priests.... I am justly damned."52 This catalog of misbehaviorin fact summed up well how the women behaved during their winter gatherings.Any good Catholic might regret such misconduct, but in Morzine such remorsewas linked to the evils of bewitchmentand an intense fear of hell. The two kinds of devils showed differentrelationshipsto sin, the former reveling in transgression,the latter tormentedby commission of the slightest infractionagainstreligious orthodoxy. Among the many subversiveactivitiesof the "devils"were theirrejectionof local food, describedby Constansas miserablebread,"potatoesof bad quality; salted and smoked meat, often contaminated; the residues of milk; and a bad
cheese, hard and heavy, called tomme."53 Instead, they demanded cripplingly

expensive alternativesassociated with luxurious city life, such as sugared black coffee and chocolates. They sat at veille'es-seen, in this instance, as subversivebecause they encouragedindividualsto impoverishtheir families by drinking-and showed immoralityby playing cards.54 Their demandslater became so extremethatthey wantedthe same food at home thatthey had eaten at governmentexpense when in hospital,55 and, if their families protested,the
Constans(n. 3 above), pp. 26-27. For the story of these struggles in the Pyrenees, see Peter Sahlins, Forest Rites: The Warof the Demoiselles in Nineteenth-Century France (Cambridge,Mass., 1994). 51 C. Chiara,Les Diables en Morzineou les nouvellesposse'ees (Lyon, 1861), p. 14. 52 "Lettre de I'Abbe Blandin,vicaire 'aMorzin?," September1, 1864, Arch Dioc. 53 Constans,p. 5. 54 Ibid., pp. 48-50. 55 The distress of the families is evident in "Rapport de gendarmerie," October 15, 1863, and again in "Rapport de gendarmerie," January15, 1867, Arch. Dep.
49 50

Possession on the Borders 465 convulsionsbegan again, alwaysprecededby an epigastriccrisis in which they felt as if they would explode. As in many village cultures, food and identity were symbolically linked. Survivalin overpopulated villages dependedon the willingness to sell the best foodstuffs for cash and to keep appetitesconstantlyin check. Again, the mal invertedthis patternwhen the women demandedprohibitedalternatives. In so doing, they subvertedand mocked;they insisted on eau-de-vie, the classic gift of the bridegroomto the father of the bride and a symbol of masculine exchange. The otherfoodstuffs were the preserveof the rich and productsof the city, and by demandingthem they linked themselveswith the sinful life of the urbanworldbeyondthe mountains. Such behavior requires interpretation, although making sense of the language and bodily experience of these suffering women takes us beyond conventional historical analysis. Anthropologistslike Janice Boddy who have workedon the Zarcult in the Sudanhaveanalyzedsimilarphenomenain terms of a refinedversion of discourse analysis.56 Women'sdevilish ejaculationsare describedas an "anti-language" thatexpresseddisquietand longing, inverting and reassessingdaily life from the perspectiveof the underprivileged. She argues that the unique power of an "anti-language" derives from its "muted" qualities, for subversivefeelings and ideas are presentedin an idiom of complete irresponsibility: aftereach outburst,the women distancethemnselves from their statementsand behaviorand are able to returnto normallife while creatively forging new identitiesof self and community. It is temptingto apply a similaranalysisto the possessed women of Morzine andto see them as expressinga subversivediscoursethatdestabilizedthe hegemonic ones that constrainedthem. The Morzinoises were able to transgress the moral and gender orderof theircommunitywithout sanctionas they blasphemed, refused to work, and acted like the wildest of men. Thus, the hunter barked,whinnied,and snortedso thatall who knew the womanwere convinced that the "devil,"not she, was responsible.Moreover,such an "anti-language" would have permittedthem to confrontthe worldbeyondthe mountains,since the devils were foreignersand strangerswho relativizedthe women'sposition at home. They commentedunabashedlyon the women'stormentsand desires by acting out theirlazy, brutish,repentant,or self-flagellatingfantasies.In this kind of interpretation, the "devils"'commentaryon village life createda poetics of transgression andrelativity.57 The womencould be seen as mythical"bri56 See her impressive Wombsand Alien Spirits: Women,Men, and the Zar Cult in NorthernSudan (Madison,Wis., 1989), esp. pp. 156-59. 57 Ibid., pp. 301-9, as well as Peter Stallybrassand Allon White, The Politics and Poetics of Transgression (London, 1986).

466

Harris

coleurs"58 who used the debris of historical experience, religious training, and

storytellingto constructtheirdemonworld.Wandering Jews, the damnedburning in hell, the life and times of huntersand journeyers-all would have enabled the possessed to remakethemselves and recast village morality. This seductive approachto the understandingof the possession crisis of Morzine,however,falls dangerouslyshortof graspingthe negative,disruptive, and physically violent features of the mal. While the theory of an "antilanguage"sheds light on the creativeand imaginativepossibilities of such phenomena-particularly in regardto relativizingMorzineto the worldoutsideit denies the painfulelements that sustainedthe mal for so long. For the rebellion took on a physically compulsiveform thatwas as much self-destructiveas it was subversive.Visitorscommentedon the women'swide range of physical symptoms,the seizures,the feelings of suffocation,and the stomachdisorders; other sufferershurtthemselves when their "devils"mutilatedthem with axes, or when they beat themselves against the furniture;still others screamed in agony when the "demons"inside them made them trembleconvulsively.59 Moreover,the possession crisis unleashed a hatred of men that had both liberatingand self-defeating consequences. Wives refused to sleep with husdirecbands,anddaughters reveledin theirwillingness to challengepatriarchal tives. For example, duringa veille'e,one girl reportedlymocked her friend for receiving a paternalbeating, remarking,"You are really stupid;if my father had done as much to me, I would have killed him."60 Such understandable gestures of defiance,however,could be accompaniedby more destructivebehavior.Repeatedlythe possessed women sought to provehow ineffective their menfolk were by paradingtheir "devils"as their new masters,therebydiminishing men who were alreadyemasculatedby economic pressuresand emigration. Moreover,the mal broughtfamilies to the brink of destruction.Fathers had to search for cures among doctors in Geneva and Lausanne,among the Capuchin missionaries at St. Maurice-en-Valais,and even as far away as Einsiedeln in Switzerland.6'These journeys involved tremendousoutlays of money,which this impoverishedcommunitycould ill afford. As will be seen, these expedients gave the possessed a brief vacation, but they did little to remedy the women'sgrievancesor to restorea sense of gender Nor were fathersand husbandsthe only ones to be mocked; complementarity. all local men of authorityand influence were swept aside and deemed "not good enough."Abbe Favre and his ineffectual exorcisms were derided.Other
58

See ClaudeLevi-Strauss,The Savage Mind (Chicago, 1966), pp. 21-22. above), p. 52. 60 Ibid., p. 49. 61 Ibid., pp. 27-28.
59 Constans(n. 3

Possession on the Borders 467 men with soundermotives and more power like the bishop were spat on and defiled. Finally,the few able-bodiedmen who did not leave the communityin the months of migrationwere, as will be seen, accused of witchcraft.For several years,civilized interactionamongthe villagersended, andthe lack of local solutionsleft open the possibilityof more authoritarian ones devised by outsiders like Constans. Perhapsnowherewas the breakdownin village solidaritymore evident than duringthe accusationsof witchcraft.In theory,witchcraftand possession are distinct phenomena. Witchcraftimplies a voluntarypact with evil and the spread of misfortunethroughspells and curses; possession, in contrast,presents a passive and victimized subjectinto whom the demons enter.62 The former phenomenonrests on the knowledge and active perpetration of sin, while the latter disengages the moral responsibilityof the subject. The happenings in Morzine obscuredsuch distinctions,for the villagers believed that all their misfortunes,includingthe susceptibilityof the women to possession, resulted from the evil designs of a witch who had ensnaredthe entireparish.Witchcraft and possession were thus linked in Morzinethroughterritory,63 with cracks of vulneiabilityappearingeverywherein the parishin a varietyof forms:animals died, accidentsoccurred,and girls became possessed, with the last only one of the many plagues broughtby the witch'sgreatpower. After the early crisis initiated by the communion lessons, the mal spread when village women accused witches-often unnamed-of evil intent.Claudine G. said that one of the witches prowled aroundher house without her being able to see or hear him;64 Marie Ch. knew a sorcererhad bewitchedher by the way he caughther eye;65 Fran9oiseB. lapsed into convulsionswhen an unknownman spied on her and her animalsin the stable and then transformed himself into a bird.66 A witch made Suzanne B. eat his bread, forcing her to
62 In practice,however,possession was more than this brief definitioncan convey;it was a highly complex social performanceand psychological state, and in famous examples could destabilize social values and gender roles. For the classic example, see the documentspresentedby Michel de Certeau,La Possession de Loudon(Paris, 1990); for the dynamicsof power involvedin the recordingand interpretation of the language of possession, see Michel de Certeau,L'e'criture de l'histoire (Paris, 1975), pp. 250-73. 63 See JeanneFavret-Saada, in theBocage, trans.Catherine Deadly Words:Witchcraft Cullen (Cambridge,1980), p. 196. Favret-Saada shows how witchcraftbelief implied a vision of the subject without Cartesiandualism, an idea of the self that made no distinctionsbetween mind and body, progeny and property,the last category encompassing both animalsand territory. She speaks only of familial domains,while Morzine showed how an entireparishmight be contaminated. 64 Arthaud, Relation d'une hystero-demonopathie (n. 2 above), p. 24. 65 Ibid., p. 28. 66 Ibid., p. 29.

468

Harris

ingest his evil influence, while a differentFran9oiseB. dranka glass of wine The in the companyof a witch and claimed to be vomiting it up a year later.67 tales seem to reworkreligious mythology and ritual:sharingbread was not a means of spiritualcommunion, but the ingestion of evil; wine was not the blood of redemption, but a poison thatcould neverbe ejected.The womanwho workedin the stable-suggestive of the warmthof the manger-was spied on in a voyeuristicfashion by a bird-mannot at all like the dove of the holy spirit. What is interestinghere is how closely tied to the liturgy the witches' actions were; like the "demons"who missed mass and ate meat on Friday,theirbehavior seemed utterlypredictable-simple inversionfantasiesthatreferredrepeatedly to orthodoxChristianbelief. The Morzinoiswere obsessed with identifyingthe evildoerresponsible.Initially,they believed the troublelay with the shadowyandelusive figureof Abbe Cottet, once a priest in the parish.They rememberedhow they had thwarted his earlierattemptsto complete a new chapel, promptinghim to retaliatewith the words, "I will stick in a thorn in [Morzine] that will not be pulled out a metaphorthatsuggesteda nagging andpainfulinflammation. very quickly,"68 In susVirtuallyall subsequentaccountsrelatedthe mal to this imprecation.69 that had acknowledging priests special powpecting Cottet,the villagers were of also came not from the transubstantiation the Host but ers, which merely If good, they could be relied from their constantcontactwith the supernatural. on to protectanimals,fields, and householdsfrom disturbance, to ease the way The hereticalnotion that of shepherdsand travelers,and to expel evil spirits.70 implied thatthe power of the sacramentswas tied to the virtueor sinfulnessof the priest keenly affected the villagers' perceptionof Cottet,who was seen as inclined to use his powers for evil. The villagers sought strong countermeasures in the form of sorcery to release themselves from his spells. At an uncertaindate early in the story but before Constans'sarrivalin 1861, a group of armedvillagers went in the dead of night to a ruined chapel-the unfinished edifice of Abbe Cottet's ambitions-by a lake near Montriond, six or eight kilometers from Morzine. There, they eviscerateda dog, took out its liver, savagely ran it througheighteen times with a sabre and then buried it in the middle of the chapel amidst
Ibid., pp. 33, 40. de l'Abbe Chamoux,"1866, Arch. Dioc. "Rapport 69They had risked his wrath, no doubt, because they would have had to contribute both money and labor to the project, and the new chapel would have shifted power, influence, and scarce resourcesfrom Morzine. For the competition among priests for new chapels, see Palluel-Guillard et al. (n. 12 above), p. 191. 70 For a discussionof priestlypower in another andpious region of France, peripheral see SandraOtt, The Circle of Mountains:A Basque ShepherdingCommunity (Oxford, 1981), pp. 94-96.
67 68

Possession on the Borders 469 curses.7'The eighteen blows were meant to representthe days left in Cottet's life; they were disappointedwhen the priest survived, demonstratingthe demonic strengththat enabled him to repel such powerful countermagic. Unlike the events describedabove,this episode drewon a rich fund of secretive, magical practicethatdivergedsharplyfrom the liturgy.In the region, villagers protectedthemselves against spells by buryingliving snakes underthe thresholdsof houses, boiling nails in special vinegars,or heating a pot until it was red hot and then strikingit, hoping therebyto deflect the witch'spower.72 Even in this magical arena, however, piety and sorcery often went hand in hand; magical incantations,for example, parodiedthe Ave Maria, while the crucifix and holy waterwere the most widely used talismansagainstevil spirits. Gue'risseurs-sorciers would divine the saintresponsiblefor particular maladies and then proposea series of offerings to placatesupernatural rage so that the bewitched could be "released."73 Whateverhis initial responsibility,it soon became evident thatCottetcould not be the sole cause of the problem.As the symptoms continued to grow worse long afterhe had left, new causes were adducedfor theirpersistence.In particular,villagers concentratedon the dissolution of their treasuredConof St. Espritin 1860 and the transferof its assets to a secularbureau fraternity de bienfaisance in the last moment of Savoyardadministration.74 They were convinced that their affliction was due to its destructionand consequentlyinvited a local magnetizerinto their midst to combat their troubles.This man arrivedwith twelve disciples and for five months went from house to house, boardingand lodging at the expense of the afflictedfamilies.75 The symbolism here was explicit:the confraternity was identifiedwith Christand the apostles, and in housing these men the Morzinoishoped to restorethe spiritualbalance of the parish.76 Alongside this action was the perceived need to combat those neighbors seen as the beneficiariesof the confraternity's extinction,whetherunderSavoyardor laterunderFrenchadministration. Accordingly,the accusationsshifted from Abbes Cottet and Favreand came to rest on those holding special power in the village, the notary in charge of propertytransactionsand the miller, The key object of hatred,however,was JeanBerger,a cobblerand Chauplanaz.
71

Constans(n. 3 above), pp. 40-41.

72A. Van Gennep, Le Folkloredes Hautes-Alpes:Etude descriptiveet compareede

psychologiepopulaire (Paris, 1948), 2:92-93. 73 Philippe Terreaux, La Savoiejadis et naguere (Paris,n.d.), p. 133. 74 For Cavour's ecclesiastical policy, see R. Aubert,Le Pontificatde Pie IX (18461878) (Paris, 1952), pp. 76-80. 75 "Rapport de l'Abbe Chamoux,"1866, Arch. Dioc. 76 Little is known of the magnetizer exceptthathe was convictedof charlatanism and imprisonedfor five years when his ineffectivenessagainstthe mal was proven.

470

Harris

the mayor'sadjoint whose influence had increased with annexation.Berger issued, for a fee, certificatesthat testified to the health of animals taken into Switzerland,was paid for official seals, and, underFrenchadministration, sold for a fee the hated livrets d'ouvrierthat were so vital to migratingworkers:in other words, he controlled the process of leaving and returningthat was so essential to the village's continuedsurvival. Berger maintainedhe acted honestly,bringing the benefits of the new adThe villagers, however,accused him of fraudover ministration to the village.77 building works and saw his claims as merely a cover for personal ambition. Moreover,the churchseemed to agree and, angryat the dissolutionof the conandfor otheraffronts,local priestsdenied him confession.78 fraternity Berger's it was only a step furtherto Frenchloyalties after 1860 sealed his reputation; see his declarationsas an indicationof the sort of disloyaltythata witch would be sure to possess. Eventually,the authoritieswere forced to give him police protectionfrom the murderous impulses of the villagers who, with pitchforks, axes, and sticks, triedto kill him.79 At first glance, the witch accusationsseemed to shareall the characteristics of the sixteenthand seventeenthcenturies,with animaldeath,illness, and misfortunefollowed by individual and collective efforts to forestall the witches' But such superficial similarities are deceptive. At Morzine, ninepower.80 tensions were revealedby the accusations,as powerfulmenteenth-century first a vengeful priest and later representativesof the state within the local community-became the targets of hatred. For in the early modern period, older women were most likely to be accused of blighting crops, killing livestock, and deformingbabies with black magic. For a brief moment duringthe mal such a traditionalfigure almost appeared,when one of the girls at the communion lesson spoke of an old (unnamed)woman from the neighboring communeof Gest as the likely source of evil. She never appearedagain in the narrative, however.Villagersinsteadtransferred their anger againstthose who benefited from political change and were held responsible for upsetting the already delicate spiritualand economic balance of the community.This im77"Lettre de justification ecrite par Jean Berger au sous-prefet," April 11, 1862, Arch. Dep. 78 BrigadierCommandant Fourcade,"Rapport tres confidentiel," January28, 1864, Arch. Dep., relatedhow a priestat the Mission of St. Mauricehad refusedBergerabsolution, taking him to task for not believing in witchcraft,accusing him of working against the St.-Espritand of being a spy for a secret society, possibly a reference to liberal-leaninggroupsassociatedwith anticlericalism. 79Constans,pp. 43-44. 80 RobinBriggs, Communities of Belief: Culturaland Social Tensionin EarlyModern France (Oxford, 1989), esp. pp. 83-106. For more, see RobertMandrou,Magistratset sorciers en Franceau XVIIsiecle (Paris, 1968).

Possession on the Borders 471 portantshift shows how wrong it is to see witchcraftin Morzine as a throwback; the villagers built on a centuries-oldtraditionbut invested witchcraft with new and differentpsychic and social anxieties.
THE SEARCH FOR A CURE

Centralto the villagers' perceptionof the afflictionwas the idea thatthe entire parish was contaminatedand that beyond its bordersimprovementcould be found. There were two importantand intertwinedconsequencesof this belief. First, the afflicted entered the migratoryworld previously restrictedto men; they were permittedthe luxury of traveland affordedthe opportunityfor adventures. Second, they acted out an aggressive fantasy towardthe men-fathers, husbands,priests, physicians-at home, constantly insisting that they were "notgood enough"to alleviate the mal. Even those who treatedthem on the outside were generally inadequateto the task, so that Morzine seemed to live in a constantstate of crisis. In their searchfor relief, the afflictedused overlappingremedies;the documents reveal no linear movementfrom one expedient to the next, but rather recordcertainmomentswhen a varietyof particular strategieswere being used. From the earliest days of the mal, the afflictedbegged the priests at home not only to say the conventionalblessing for loci et animaliumbut also to exorcise beasts, property,and people.8' Exorcism was the obvious first step, and the records show that by 1861 several of the afflicted had already experienced over a dozen such ineffective interventions. They turnedto the priestsbecause exorcismwas, in a sense, an ordinary partof life, encounteredat baptismwhen the priest orderedthe devil to leave the newborn's body and make way for the Local churchmen,such as Abbe Pinguet, performedsemipublic holy spirit.82 and collective exorcisms and only stoppedwhen, as mentionedearlier,French pressuremade this course no longer viable. The controversial Abbe Favrealso conductedsuch collective rites in 1858, and contemporary reportsrecountthe harrowing physicalexpulsionof the "devils":"ateach exorcismthe people roll on the ground,make [others]hearthe mewing [of cats] and feel suffocatedby a lump in their throatswhich makes them vomit; there is then a panting,like the yapping [of a dog]."83 Their bodies invaded by a bestial evil, they were unable to ingest the Eucharist,and in this mortal combat the "devils" were
"Lettrede I'AbbeVallentienau Prevot," January20, 1869, Arch. Dioc. See the entryon "exorcism" which discusses the "exorcismespreparatoires au bapteme,"in the Dictionnairede the'ologie catholique(Paris, 1912), 5:1778-79. 83 [A] chaqueexorcisme les personnesse roulentparterre;font entendredes miaulements, se sententcomme suffoqueesparun globule qui leur monte au cou, les provoque a vomir, suit une respirationprecipitee,qui ressemble 'aune sorte de jappement.Abbe Vallentien,"Recitretrospectifde L'Abbe Vallentien," Arch. Dioc.
82 81

472

Harris

Those afflicted deserted their priests more powerful than the local priests.84 early on in the story (althoughthe exact date is uncertain),going to the nearby bourg of Samoens and then to the Capuchinmissionariesat St. Maurice-enValais where twenty-sevenof them were exorcised.85 When these measures did not work, the clergy were accused of not being "good enough,"their powers underminedby weakness or sinfulness. The afflicted sought ever more powerfulpriests and pinned greathopes on the pastoral visit of Monsignor Magnin in 1864. A French governmentappointee of Savoyard origin,Magninhad soughtreconciliationwith the secularauthorities, high-handed but Constans'suse of the armyto quell the mal andthe physician's Magnin'sdesire to defend attitudetowardthe clergy quickly souredrelations.86 the faithfuland to exercise his moraland spiritualauthority,87 however,did not mean he was willing to exorcise. He was convinced that the mal was mental entreaties. illness, not diabolicalpossession, and had resisted the parishioners' but seven or eight women were When he arrived,the Morzinoisseemed calm,88 in convulsionsby the time he came to the churchand, later,between sixty and eighty were rolling aroundin the cemetery,screaminginsults at him when he refused to exorcise one sufferer:"Wolfof a bishop, we must tearout his eyes; he hasn'tthe power to cure the girl; no, he cannot rid the girl of the devil."89 On his refusal to exorcise her, they set on him inside the church,kicking and insulting him, spitting in his face, and finally ripping off his pastoral ring.
For more on exorcism, see Roper (n. 46 above), pp. 171-80. "Lettrede Berard,missionnairede Saint Frangoisde Sales ... . l'eveque,"June 20, 1861, Arch. Dioc. 86 See "Lettre de Constans ... .a l'Eveque," May 20, 1861,Arch.Dioc., in which Constans accuses the local clergy of superstitiousbelief, and Magnin'sangryreply of May 16, 1864, Arch. Dep.; for Constans'sconciliatoryresponses see his letters of July 30 andAugust 9, Arch. Dioc. 87 Whereasthe Second Empirehad broughtcollaboration between churchand state, these relations soured in 1859, both from internalclerical scandals and from the increasingly divisive Roman question.The eclipse of the churchby the secularauthority in the later stages of the mal reflected, on a local scale, this national shift in policy, particularlyimportantin bringingCatholic Savoy to heel. For background,see Aubert (n. 74 above),pp. 80-97, 108-23. See also Rene Remond,L'anticle'ricalisme en France (Brussels, 1985), pp. 9-10; and Alec Mellor, Histoire de l'anticle'ricalisme franVais (Tours, 1966), pp. 232, 287-91. For clerical scandals, see CarolineFord, "Guerryvs. Picpus: Religion, Propertyand the Politics of Anticlericalismin Nineteenth-Century France" (unpublished typescript, Departmentof History, University of British Columbia). 88 "Rapport du Sous-Prefetau Prefet sur les eve'nements qui se sont passes le 30 avril et le ler mai-3 mai 1864,"Arch. Dep. See also CharlesLafontainein Le magnetiseur (May 15, 1864); the article in the Courrierdes Alpes (May 21, 1864), taken up by Le monde (May 22, 1864); and the articlein L'unionmedicale (July 2, 1864). 89 du Sous-Prefetau Prefet,"May 3, 1864, Arch. Dep. "Rapport
85 84

Possession on the Borders 473 Perhapsmore thanany other,this eventtilted local powerawayfrom the bishop to Constans. While religiouspreoccupations dominatedthe rantingsof the possessed, and the remedies they chose often dependedon the consolationsof the church,the afflictedeasily desertedits ranksto go in searchof secularhealers.They chose most notably the prince of Europeanmagnetism, Charles Lafontaine, who lived in Geneva during these years. In journeying to him, they demonstrated their willingness to try new remedies, as well as their knowledge of the latest therapeuticfashions. He saw the mal as the result of exalted religious feeling gone awry,and he blamed Favrefor his exorcisms that, he believed, had only intensifiedthe disorderby confirmingthe superstitiousfears of Satan. With this "enlightened" perspective,he examinedthe case of VictoireVuillet, who demonstratedall the symptoms of the disorder:head- and stomachaches, feelings of suffocation in the epigastric region, nervous tremblings, somnambulictrances,and wild behavior.When she appearedin his consulting room she screamed,bent her body in such a contortedmannerthat her head touched her feet, suspended herself from the back of a chair "in a position and then jumped on all the furniture.Lafontaine impossible to describe,"90 sought to calm her througha magnetictranceand the applicationof magnetic water.He placed a hand on her hand and the other on her stomach and "all these marvels suddenly stopped, and we were merely with a sick person who moaned and twisted in convulsions which we were able to stop almost inHe finishedthe firsttreatment stantly."9' by inducing a somnambulicstate and after thirty minutes released her into calm consciousness. He repeated this treatmentfor two weeks and claimed its complete efficacy, both for her and for five others. We may doubt his claims, and Lafontainehimself acknowledged that his success did not terminatethe mal, since the superstition thatreigned purported in the mountainskept it alive. His accountof his workgives little sense of how the Morzinoisesviewed his operations.They probablyrecognizedan authority who, despite the lack of priestly garb, impressedthem with his commanding personality (all contemporaryrecords attest to his charisma) and the occult qualityof his expertise.However,like the priests who exorcised, his approach was overtly physical. He did not use the sign of the cross, preferringinstead the movementsof greatpasses thatswooped aroundthe subjectandpersuaded her to enter a trance.The waterwas magneticratherthan holy, seemingly possessed of physical qualitiesthat acted on the disturbedand "hysterical" organism. Both priest and magnetizertouched and exhorted,using props and ges90CharlesLafontaine,L'art de magne'tiser, ou le magnetismeanimal considre' sous le point de vue the'orique, pratique et the'rapeutique (Paris, 1866), p. 348.
91Ibid., p. 349.

474

Harris

tures of remarkablesimilarity and resonance. Indeed, the afflicted may very well have appreciatedLafontaine'smethods because they reminded them of more familiarreligious rites. Both priest and magnetizerrehearsedtheirmoves accordingto a sexual script,theirmasculineauthority contrastedwith the alternativelyraging or quiescentfemale presence ostensibly undertheircontrol. None of these expedients producedanythingbut temporaryrelief, and the crisis promptedthe administration in Paris to interveneon two separateoccasions. Like the magistratesand ecclesiastics of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries,Adolphe Constans arrivedendowed with the powers bestowed on 92 the reaction him by centralizingauthoritiesand with a brief to restoreorder; of the villagers in both eras was to fly to the hills and resist. But here the similarities end. Counter-Reformation officials often sought not to reconvert but to impose for the first time Christianpracticesand beliefs on a population innocent of church dogma and ritual.93In contrast, Constans brought the thoughtprocesses of modem positivism and administration and sought to impose them in an environment where neithertraditionnor reputationsanctioned his authority.94 Constans confronted what he saw as a case of hystero-demonopathy and used retrospectivediagnosis to place the mal in a historicalcontext. Working within an establishedpsychiatricgenre, he saw Morzine as partof a tradition of pathologicalreligious experience,as he showed the similaritiesbetween the physical convulsions manifested throughoutthat traditionand comparedthe isolationof conventsto the white seclusion of the highAlps.95 But he also made important distinctions,comparingthe diabolicalutterancesof, for example,the nuns of Loudun-educated women of high social standing-with the banal and brutalexclamationsof the peasant folk of Morzine.96 His disdain for the local poor was not mere disgust, however;he was also making a point about historical evolution. It was not, in his view, surprisingthat the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries had a surfeit of such pathological manifestations, as they were part of a particularepoch and its spiritualpredilections.However,
80 above), chaps. 2, 3. See Jean Delumeau, Catholicism between Luther and Voltaire, trans. Jeremy Moiser (London, 1977), pp. 203-27, and Sin and Fear (n. 20 above), pts. 2, 3. 94 For the history of the emergence of an influentialcadre of alienists, see Jan Ellen Goldstein, Console and Classify: The FrenchPsychiatric Profession in the Nineteenth Century(New York, 1987). See also her work that impinges on ideas of collective behaviorin early psychiatrictheory:Jan Goldstein, "'Moral Contagion':A Professional Ideology of Medicine and Psychiatryin Eighteenth-and Nineteenth-Century France," in Professions and the FrenchState, 1700-1900,,ed. Gerald L. Geison (Philadelphia, 1984), pp. 181-222. 95Constans(n. 3 above), p. 13. 96 Ibid., p. 106.
93 92 Mandrou(n.

Possession on the Borders 475 ideas should persist in the he was visibly affrontedthat such "superstitious" mid-nineteenth century. He saw the mal as a dangerousexampleof theiranachto ronistic survival,andhe saw France'sannexationof Savoy as an opportunity impose his view of psychic and physical health. between the Such an approachshowed the yawning gap in understanding Otherattitudes,however,show a strangeinvillagers and the plenipotentiary. tersectionof belief. For example, in using the theory of degeneration-fully elaboratedin 1857 by Auguste Morel-Constans sought an explanationof andhereditary characteristics could be transmitted how noxious environmental While Morel's work had concentratedon the urto succeeding generations.97 ban environmentof factory workersin Rouen, Constansapplied similarprinciples to the mountains,pointingto the qualityof the food, the coldness of the water,and the frigidity of the climate in general, which in his view was too harshfor a healthyphysiologicalequilibrium.Such an assessmentof local conditionswas not dissimilarto those "voiced"by the afflictedwho soughttemporary relief by fleeing theirpays, demandingthe luxuries of urbanfoodstuffs and enjoying the fare providedby hospitals. Both Constansand the afflicted thus made comparisionsbetween Morzine and the "modem"world, and both found the village lacking. With these common points their agreementended, however.Constanscondemnedtheirbelief in witchcraftand possession as arconchaic, while the afflicted groped towardexpressing nineteenth-century flicts throughreligious traditionshe despised. Moreover,Constans's"solutions"could be dramaticallypunitive. He was of the nineteenth-century almosta caricature secularizingphysician,representing thattraditionin its coercive ratherthanits tolerantguise. Indeed,his therapeutic rationalewas perhapsharsherin its implicationsthan that proposedby the local clergy. Had it worked, exorcism would have provided a means of expelling the "devils"both from the physical bodies of the women and from the contaminatedterritoryof the parish. In contrast,Constansdemandedthe suppressionof the "demons"and insisted that they were an integralaspect of the maladyratherthana discreteforeign agent thatcould be spewed forth and thus ejected. I am hardlysuggesting thatexorcism had no physical or psycho97 B.-A. Morel, Traitedes dege`ne`rescences physiques, intellectuelles et morales de maladives(Paris, 1857). For 1'especehumaineet des causes quiproduisentces varie'tes workthat deals with the historyof the idea of degeneration,see R. Nye, "Degeneration and the Medical Model of CulturalCrisis in the French Belle Epoque,"in Political Symbolismin ModernEurope,ed. S. Drescheret al. (New Brunswick,N. J., 1982), pp. in French Mental Medi19-41; I. Downbiggan, "Degenerationand Hereditarianism cine, 1840-90,9 in TheAnatomyof Madness: Essays in the History of Psychiatry,ed. W F Bynum et al., 3 vols. (London, 1985-88), 1:188-232; and my Murdersand Madness: Medicine, Law and Society in the Fin-de-Siecle (Oxford, 1989), pp. 51-79.

476

Harris

logical costs, but it might have broughtthe relief of blaming the "devils."98 In contrast,Constans'sanalysis of demonopathyand hysteriafocused on the illness's pervasive,inescapablequality and the individual's(and local society's) responsibilityfor it. Above all, Constansgeneratedmore fear, as women fled across the mountains to escape the infantryor were forcibly detainedin nearbyhospitalsuntil they were "cured." Even he ultimatelyrecognized the need for a more subtle policy. He redrew Morzine'sboundariesand had an importantimperial road built that channeled movement in new directions, literally transformingthe territoryof the mal.99 With these physical changes came a shift in social welfare; he providedpensions for the needy'00and even subsidized the families whose womenfolk were hospitalized.'0' New clergymen, whom Constans hoped would oppose the demonic and magical beliefs of the parishionersin the confessional, arrivedin the village to unite administrativeand religious authority.'02 Bals, music societies, and a librarywere introducedto soothe and enlighten,while the soldiersbillettedin the village ultimatelytransformed the village economy by paying for their room and board and helping with the harvest.
CONCLUSION

With Constans, the women finally found a male figure who, if not "good enough"to cure the mal, was certainlypowerful enough to transformit. The afflicted of Morzine-impoverished, physically exhausted, and emotionally distraught-did not consciously invite Constans'sintervention.Here I would like to stress the difference between their powerful unconscious fantasies of aggression and the unsought consequences of their realization.The afflicted
98 For a contemporaryexample of these preoccupations,see Mart Bax, "Women's Madness in Medjugorje:Between Devils and Pilgrims in a YugoslavDevotional CenStudies 1 (1992): 42-54. tre,"Journalof Mediterranean 99See "Rapport du gendarmerie," September20, 1864, Arch Dep. The extent of the changes he wroughtcan be divined from the following: Constans'slettersto the prefect on September28, 1864, and October 11, 1864, and the confidentialreportto the sousprefect on October22, 1864. 100 Letterfrom Constansto the prefect, September28, 1864, Arch. Dep. In this missive, he asks the prefect to arrangea pension for a soldier from Morzine who lost his sight while on leave ratherthan on duty,knowing full well that they would need to go beyond the letter of the law to enable the injuredman to take up his place in the Invalides. 101 One way in which this help was given was by offering six months'leave to soldiers fromMorzinewho came from afflictedfamilies, enablingthemto keep the family economy going. See "Rapport de gendarmerie," July 26, 1865, Arch Dep. 102 "Lettrede Constans'al'Eveque, May 20, 1861, Arch. Dioc.

Possession on the Borders 477 were too absorbedby theirimmediatemiseryto considertheiraims dispassionI ately, and they caused havoc by accusing men of witchcraftand inadequacy. hardlywish to suggest thattheirunderlyinggrievanceswere withoutjustificaI am arguingthatthe only availableoutlet for theirrage andhatred tion. Rather, was destructivebehavior,which not only intensified their suffering but also made it difficultto renegotiatevillage genderrelations. this complexpsychologicaldynamicis centralto questioning Understanding the Foucauldianorthodoxy which has hithertounderpinnedthe study of the mal; Constans's"triumph" was not merely the installationof a new discursive "medico-administrative but was equally the fulfillment of an unapparatus" conscious, inchoate,and often dangerouslyaggressiveemotionalprocess. The women of Morzinedesiredtwo irreconcilableaims: first,the maintenanceand restitutionof the collective spiritualand social solidarityof the village, and, second, the relativizationof village morality through greater mobility and openness to the outside world. The conflicts that these divergent desires arousedresulted in psychic misery and physical torment,in self-punishment for perceivedtransgressions, and in enragedaccusationsagainstmen unableto "fix"theirpain. Constansmanipulated this instability,deepenedthe process of emasculationthroughhis reformistmeasures,and imposed the outside world withoutrespectingvillage mores. The pychologicaldramaof the mal thus offers otherpossible interpretations of peasantdistressin the nineteenthcentury.On one level, the languageof the possessed enables us to listen to the mutedvoices thatrelativizedthe village's position vis-'a-visthe outside world. The hunter'sburlesque,the woodsman's howls, the shepherd'scry, all may have laid the groundworkfor forging new identities for women seeking to change their lives. In this expressive task, witchcraftand possession showed the transformative potentialof religious belief and the interpretive power of peasantmentalities,both of which hastened ratherthan forestalled "modernity." Moreover,they demonstratethe extent to which such changes occur not merely throughthe impact of institutionsand mediatorssuch as male clergy, nuns, and teachers,but also throughcollective culturalprocesses undergoneby people forced to confrontthe erosion of old patternsof life and the consequencesof permanenttransformation.'03 dimensions of rural On anotherlevel, the mal highlights the unarticulated distress and demonstratesthe very real limitations of even a sophisticated discursive approach.Despite the insights it offers, the notion of an "antilanguage"cannot comprehendthe physical disruptionand psychological misery that were the cardinalfeaturesof the mal. It deepened and enduredabove
103 For the key role of intermediaries and relationsbetween the centerand periphery, see, e. g., Blackbourn,Marpingen(n. 33 above);and Ford, Creatingthe Nation in Provincial France (n. 10 above).

478

Harris

all because such distresscould not be expressedin language,for there was no availableidiom to generatenarratives able to give such pain broadermeaning. the "irrational" Understanding aspects of collective hatredandviolence, therefore, demandsan imaginativesympathyfor varietiesof misery that cannotbe reducedto mere "discourse" and a focus on bodily and psychic experience in ways that episodes such as the mal permit. Finally,by concentrating on this "irrationality," by which I mean compulsive physical responses and unconscious psychological motivations,I could be accused of unwittinglyreinforcingan older, and often repudiated,traditionthat sees peasanteruptionsas illogical, incoherent,physically violent, and dangerously "primitive." I hardly wish to usher in once again the old stereotypes of peasant savagery.Rather,I hope my analysis of the mal provides a different tone and emphasisby showing how such popularprotestcan be neithersentimentalized as the last gasp of a traditionalsociety nor regardedas the heroic incarnation of early feminism.The pictureof culturalchange thatthe mal suggests was neither a self-conscious march towardmodernity nor a desperate clinging to tradition.In Morzine therewas an awarenessof the inevitabilityof change, but the evolution was accomplished throughpainful lurches fueled equally by unarticulated fear of and hope for the future.