Once Upon a J’Ouvert: part two of a three-part series by Sonja Dumas
If you’ve ever witnessed traditional mas, one of the first characters that might come to mind is the Dame Lorraine.
Nowadays it’s usually played by a woman, whose form highlights distended breasts and buttocks under a long dress, possibly layered with a second full skirt or maybe with a full petticoat below. She has a domino (half-mask) on her face and perhaps holds a fan or umbrella, or sports a hat with a generous brim.
Her outfit is anachronistic – it belongs to the nineteenth century – and there is a strong sense of buffoonery. There is a specific traditional tune that oozes pomposity and accompanies the Dame Lorraine, although these days the character is seen mostly in Carnival competitions and therefore parades across the stage to whatever soca song is playing.
The first major thing to consider is the pronunciation of the term “Dame Lorraine.” It is French in origin and Caribbean in usage. So the first word is pronounced “dam,” as the French would pronounce it, meaning “lady.” We pronounce the second word, also French, “Lo-RAIN” in Standard English, or “Lo-REN” in Creole, with the accent on the second syllable, but without the throat-rolling of the “r,” as they would do in classic French.
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And why is French used in the first place? Because our Carnival ethos is rooted in French Catholic tradition. Catholicism was introduced by the Spanish and the word “Carnival” comes from carne vale, a term with roots in Latin, loosely translated as “farewell to the flesh.”
However, according to anthropologist Daniel J Crowley, it was the French Catholics who, from the 1780s, made the significant carnivalesque intervention in Trinidad, allowing people to indulge in debauchery before the austere period of Lent in the Christian calendar. From Christmas to Carnival Tuesday, they could indulge in carnal desires, excessive behaviour and lewd moments, exorcising those undesirable traits from their systems in preparation for repentance.
So Carnival activity consisted of extensive feting and bacchanal then – as it does now – albeit in different forms.
If you read the first part of this series, you’ll know that I discuss African interpretations of Carnival. These are what gave us the root of how our current Carnival is imagined and portrayed.
So the second major thing to consider is that the original Dame Lorraine was a performance by groups of recently emancipated African people, and it wasn’t a singular character or a band of people in the same costume. It was a satirical performance of the colonial period – yet another gesture of resistance on the part of the Africans.
This time, it was in the form of extreme lampooning of the colonial hierarchy. The Africans would create costumes from repurposed materials which imitated the Europeans, and they would poke fun at them by donning exaggerated body parts.
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