Scholars of management and organizational history have focused on work and organization as an activity that is paid-for and which takes place outside the home, thus rendering invisible much of what has been women's works of organization in the past. This article seeks to challenge that by presenting an account of a ritual undertaken by women in medieval France. A reading of the cultural symbolism of the ritual allows a glimpse into the material conditions of their lives and of the organizing for which they were responsible. The ritual allowed them to have a sense of control over lives which were precarious and where women were marginalized and excluded from the official rituals of the Church. The use of ritual, liminality, resistance by groups marginal to the focus of power and activities of sense-making and rationalization are all evident in this tale – and all subjects of ongoing debate and conversation between scholars of organization.
Dante.1984. The divine comedy, Vol 1: Inferno, trans. M. Musa. New York: Penguin.
16.
DuffyE.1992. The stripping of the altars.New Haven: Yale University Press.
17.
ElliottD.1999. Fallen bodies: Pollution, sexuality and demonology in the Middle Ages.Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
18.
FraserJ.G.1932. The golden bough.Basingstoke: Macmillan.
19.
FraserN.1985. What's critical about critical theory?: The case of Habermas and gender. New German Critique35: 97-131.
20.
van GennepA.1908 [1960]. The rites of passage, trans. M.B. Vizedom and G.L. Cafee. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
21.
GoldbergC.1994. Choosing their futures, a custom for babies. Western Folklore53: 178-190.
22.
HallissyM.1993. Clean maids, true wives, steadfast widows: Chaucer's women and medieval codes of conduct.Contributions in Women's Studies 130. Westport, CT: Greenwood.
23.
HanawaltB.A.1995. At the margins of womens space. In Matrons and marginal women in medieval society, ed. EdwardsR.R., and ZieglerV., 1–18. Woodbridge: Boydell Press.
24.
HanawaltB.A.1986. The ties that bound: Peasant families in medieval England.Oxford: Oxford University Press.
25.
HatcherJ.2001. Women's work reconsidered: Gender and wage differentiation in late medieval England. Past and Present173: 191-198.
26.
HoleC.1940. English folklore.London: Batsford.
27.
JordanW.C.1996. The great famine: Northern Europe in the early fourteenth century.Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
28.
KleinL.E.1995. Gender and the public/private distinction in the eighteenth century: Some questions about evidence and analytic procedures. Eighteenth Century Studies29(1): 97-109.
29.
LeerssenJ.1995. Wildness, wilderness and Ireland: Medieval and early-modern patterns in the demarcation of civility. Journal of the History of Ideas56(1): 25-39.
30.
Le GoffJ.1989. The medieval imagination, trans. A. Goldhammer. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
31.
Le Roy LadurieE.1972. Times of feast, times of famine: A history of climate since the year 1000, trans. B. Bray. London: Allen & Unwin.
32.
MacLehoseW.F.2006. ‘A tender age’: Cultural anxieties over the child in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.New York: Columbia University Press.
33.
MartinJ.1990. Deconstructing organizational taboos: The suppression of gender conflict in organizations. Organization Science1(4): 339-359.
34.
Mazo KarrasR.2003. Because the other is a poor woman she shall be called his wench. In Gender and difference in the Middle Ages, ed. FarmerS., & Braun PasternackC., 210–229. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
35.
MilroyB. Moore, and WismerS.1994. Communities, work and public/private sphere models. Gender, Place & Culture1(1): 71-90.
36.
NewmanM.G.2003. Crucified by the virtues: Monks, lay brothers, and women in thirteenth-century Cistercian saints’ lives. In Gender and difference in the Middle Ages, ed. FarmerS., and Braun PasternackC., 182–209. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
37.
NightingaleP.2005. Some new evidence of crises and trends of mortality in late medieval England. Past and Present187(1): 33-68.
38.
PowerE.1975. Medieval women.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
39.
PurkissD.2000. Troublesome things: A history of fairies and fairy stories.Harmondsworth: Allen Lane.
40.
ReiderP.M.2006. On the purification of women: Churching in Northern France, 1100-1500.New York: Palgrave.
41.
RotmanD.L.2006. Separate spheres?: Beyond the dichotomies of domesticity. Current Anthropology47(4): 666-674.
42.
SalisburyJ.E.1994. The beast within: Animals in the Middle Ages.London: Routledge.
43.
SaundersC.1993. The forest of medieval romance: Avernus, Brocedliande, Arven.Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer
44.
SchmittJ.-C.1983. The holy greyhound: Guinefort, healer of children since the thirteenth century, trans. M. Thom. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
45.
Schoon EberlyS.1988. Fairies and the folklore of disability: Changelings, hybrids and the solitary fairy. Folklore99(1): 58-77.
46.
SegalenM.1986. Historical anthropology of the family, trans. J.C. Whitehouse and S. Matthews. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
47.
SimpsonJ., and RoudS.2000. A dictionary of English folklore.Oxford: Oxford University Press.
48.
SprungerD.A.1993. Wild fold and lunatics in medieval romance. In The medieval world of nature, ed. SalisburyJ.E., 145–163. New York: Garland Publishing.
49.
SwansonR.N.1995. Religion and devotion in Europe: 1215-1515.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
50.
TagliaK.A.1998. Cultural construction of childhood: Baptism, communion and confirmation. In Women, marriage and family in medieval Christendom, ed. RousseauC.M., and RosenthalJ.T., 255–288. Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications.
51.
TurnerV.1969. The ritual process: Structure and anti-structure.London: Routledge.
52.
TurnerV.1979. Frame, flow and reflection: Ritual and drama as public liminality. Japanese Journal of Religious Studies6(4): 465-499.
53.
TurnerV.1982. From ritual to theatre: The human seriousness of play.New York: PAJ Publications.
54.
VickeryA.1993. Golden age to separate spheres?: A review of the categories and chronology of English women's history. The Historical Journal36(2): 383-414.
55.
Walker BynumC.1982. Jesus as mother: Studies in the spirituality of the High Middle Ages.Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
56.
Walker BynumC.1988. Holy feast and holy fast: The religious significance of food to medieval women.Berkeley: University of California Press.
57.
Walker BynumC.1991. Fragmentation and redemption: Essays on redemption and the human body in medieval religion.New York: Zone Books.
58.
Wallach ScottJ.1996. Gender: A useful category of historical analysis. In Culture, society & sexuality, ed. ParkerR., and AggletonP., 57–75. London: UCL Press.
59.
WarnerM.1976. Alone of all her sex: The myth and the cult of the Virgin Mary.London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson.
60.
WebbD.2003. Freedom of movement? Women travellers in the Middle Ages. In Pawns or players?, ed. MeekC., and LawlessC., 75–89. Dublin: Four Courts Press.
61.
ZipesJ.2002. Breaking the magic spell: Radical theories of folk and fairy tales.Lexington: University Press of Kentucky.
