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Cajun Women and Mardi Gras: Reading the Rules Backward

By (author) Carolyn E. Ware

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Cajun Women and Mardi Gras is the first book to explore the importance of womenâ€™s contributions to the country Cajun Mardi Gras tradition, or Mardi Gras â€œrun.â€ Most Mardi Gras runs--masked begging processions through the countryside, led by unmasked capitaines--have customarily excluded women. Male organizers explain that this rule protects not only the traditionâ€™s integrity but also women themselves from the eventâ€™s rowdy, often drunken, play.Â Throughout the past twentieth century, and especially in the past fifty years, women in some prairie communities have insisted on taking more active and public roles in the festivities. Carolyn E. Ware traces the history of womenâ€™s participation as it has expanded from supportive roles as cooks and costume makers to increasingly public performances as Mardi Gras clowns and (in at least one community) capitaines. Drawing on more than a decade of fieldwork interviews and observation in Mardi Gras communities, Ware focuses on the festive actions in Tee Mamou and Basile to reveal how women are reshaping the celebration as creative artists and innovative performers.