{"id":20533,"date":"2016-10-06T07:09:20","date_gmt":"2016-10-06T14:09:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.womeninandbeyond.org\/?p=20533"},"modified":"2019-10-05T13:45:21","modified_gmt":"2019-10-05T20:45:21","slug":"women-declare-the-days-of-matrimony-in-france","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.womeninandbeyond.org\/?p=20533","title":{"rendered":"Women declare the days of \u201cmatrimony\u201d in France"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Every year since 1984, the European Days of Heritage<\/a> take place during a weekend in September in many places in France. It means that monuments and other places of art and culture are open to the public free of charge. The word heritage in French translates \u201cpatrimoine,\u201d which defines heritage as coming from the father or \u201cpater\u201d. Since last year, a group of feminists has organized a counter event called the \u201cmatrimoine\u201d<\/a> (matrimony) to shed light on the forgotten cultural, political, artistic heritage arisen from women.<\/p>\n

This year, the official theme<\/a> was \u201cheritage and citizenship.\u201d Needless to say, the emblem of the French republic Marianne, the woman with a naked breast, is an empty symbol for women\u2019s history. The official website bragged about the importance put on symbolic places of birth of citizenship while the Matrimoine group focused on the symbolic places of the elimination of women from public spaces. Not to forget that full citizenship for French women came late, after the Second World War.<\/p>\n

The first author of a theater play in Europe was a woman, Hroswitha de Gandersheim, a German abbess. In France the national theater \u201cla comedie francaise\u201d formed by Moliere in the 17th<\/sup> century used the talent of the playwright Catherine Bernard in 1689. On the other hand, between 1958 and 2002 none of the national theater productions came from a play written by a woman despite the great number of women playwrights.<\/p>\n

We went to the center of Paris close to City hall \u201cHotel de Ville\u201d and \u201cTour Saint Jacques\u201d to attend the event<\/a> about the transmission of women\u2019s knowledge, from the \u201cwitches\u201d or from the alchemists.<\/p>\n

We talk with Mo\u00efra Sauvage, one of the initiators of this movement, and with the two comedians, Morgane Lory and Veronique Ataly, who incarnated some witches, their lives and the horror of their deaths, tortured and burnt alive. Their adage said, \u201cCure with plants rather than with prayers.\u201d<\/p>\n