<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)

Abstract

敬虔なカトリックの女性信者は、ライシテに価値を見いだすフランス共和国で何を考え、どのように生きたのだろうか。それが国民統合の使命を担った公立学校の教師だったとするとさらに問題は複雑であろう。本稿では、アルプスの山岳地帯を拠点とし、主に両大戦間期に活動した女性カトリック・グループ「ダビデ」を取り上げる。彼女たちのネットワークは雑誌や図書館制度、巡礼を通して全国に広がり、一九二〇年代末には公立小学校に勤務する女性教員の一割ほどを惹きつけた。共和国の小学校教師としての使命を果たしつつ信者として生き抜くことは、ダビデにとって両立可能であり相互補完的でさえあった。共和国とカトリシズムはともに、彼女たちに人との親密なつながりをもたらし、自己を主張し防衛する手段をも与えた。本稿では、第三共和政期フランスの小学校教師の日常世界を明らかにし、宗教の社会的意義をジェンダーの視点から考察する。

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.