The Language of Dress: Resistance and Accommodation in Jamaica, 1760–1890
Steeve O. Buckridge
University of the West Indies Press
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The
Language of Dress
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The
Language of Dress
Resistance and Accommodation in Jamaica, 1760–1890
Steeve O. Buckridge Foreword by Rex Nettleford
University of the West Indies Press Jamaica Barbados Trinidad and Tobago
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University of the West Indies Press 1A Aqueduct Flats Mona Kingston 7 Jamaica www.uwipress.com ©2004 by The University of the West Indies Press All rights reserved. Published 2004 08 07 06 05 04
5 4 3 2 1
CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION DATA Buckridge, Steeve O. The language of dress: resistance and accommodation in Jamaica, 1760–1890 / Steeve O. Buckridge; foreword by Rex Nettleford p. cm. ISBN: 976-640-143-8 1. Clothing and dress – Jamaica – History – 18th century. 2. Clothing and dress – Jamaica – History – 19th century. 3. Dress – Jamaica – History – 18th century. 4. Dress – Jamaica – History – 19th century. 5. Costume – Jamaica – History. I. Title. GT667.B83 2004
391.009'7292
Cover illustration: I.M. Belisario, Queen or Ma’am of the Set Girls (c.1837). From Sketches of Character in Illustration of the Habits, Occupations and Costume of the Negro Population in the Island of Jamaica (Kingston, Jamaica, 1837). Reproduced by courtesy of the National Library of Jamaica. Cover and book design by Robert Harris. E-mail:
[email protected] Set in Adobe Garamond 11/14.5 x 25 Printed in the United States of America.
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To my mother, who taught me to serve God, to reach for the stars and to love with all my heart!
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Vain trifles as they seem, clothes have, they say, more important offices than merely to keep us warm. They change our view of the world, and the world’s view of us. Thus, there is much to support the view that it is clothes that wear us and not we them . . . they mould our hearts, our brains, our tongues to their liking.
– Virginia Woolf, Orlando
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Contents
List of Illustrations / viii Foreword / x Preface / xiii Acknowledgements / xiv
1 2 3 4
Introduction
/ 1
The Crossing
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16
Dress as Resistance
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67
Dress as Accommodation Conclusion
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174
Appendix 1 / 195 Appendix 2 / 197 Notes / 199 Glossary / 232 Selected Bibliography / 240 Index / 260
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111
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Illustrations
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1.1
The Linen Market
1.2
Metal buckles made by slaves
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41
1.3
Bone buttons made by slaves
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42
1.4
Laghetto or lace-bark branch
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51
1.5
Preparing Lace Bark, Jamaica
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53
1.6
A Piece of Prepared Lace Bark, Jamaica
1.7
West Indian Washer Women
1.8
Freed woman wearing lace-bark veil
1.9
Negro Mode of Nursing
1.10
Creole Negroes
2.1
The simple headwrap
2.2
Surinamese headwrap: Wacht me op de hoek
/
2.3
Surinamese headwrap: Feda let them talk
91
2.4
Four Girls
2.5
St Vincentian Villagers Merrymaking
2.6
Red Set Girls and Jack in the Green
/
2.7
Queen or Ma’am of the Set Girls
103
2.8
Koo, Koo or Actor Boy
3.1
The Romantic dress
3.2
Dress of the 1870s
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120
3.3
Dress of the 1880s
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120
3.4
Dress of the 1890s
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121
3.5
King Street, Jamaica
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41
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105 119
130
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93 101
90
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3.6
Harbour Street, Jamaica
3.7
Nathan, Sherlock & Co. Ltd, Metropolitan House, Shoe Department / 132
3.8
Alfred Pawsey’s store advertisement
3.9
Nathan, Sherlock & Co. Ltd, Metropolitan House Dress Goods / 133
3.10
Betty of Port Royal
3.11
Mrs Louis Verley
3.12
Fun day for a group of middle-class Jamaicans
3.13
Mrs A. Bush, middle-class Jamaican woman
3.14
A View of King Street
3.15
Washing Day on the White River
3.16
Nineteenth Century Negro Woman, Lydia Ann
3.17
G.M. Campbell and Servants, Spanish Town
3.18
Miss Josephine Gray
/
3.19
Miss Marie Gray
148
3.20
Jamaican woman in a stylish hat
/
3.21
Native Jippi-Jappa Hat Maker
150
3.22
Governor of the Leeward Islands
3.23
Nineteenth Century Negro Girl, Celia
3.24
A Negro Wedding in the Country
3.25
Native Wedding Party
3.26
Task Workers Breaking Stone by the Roadside
3.27
On the Way to Market
3.28
On the Road to Market
3.29
Jamaican Market Woman with Basket
4.1
Jamaican woman in “separates”
4.2
A fashionable lady
4.3
Mrs Maria Gray in European dress
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135 136
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182
Illustrations
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Foreword
To introduce his concluding chapter of this well-researched, engaging and informative study of dress and its bipolar significance in Jamaica under slavery and colonialism, Steeve Buckridge, the author, borrows Anne Hollander’s most apposite statement that “[w]hen people put clothes on their bodies, they are primarily engaged in making pictures of themselves to suit their own eyes, out of the completed combination of clothing and body”. The Language of Dress brings the reader up to date by way of comment and persuasive argument that Jamaicans in bondage and outside of it have persisted in using clothes (dress) for purposes of identity and even for masking, whether it be in a nineteenth-century festival art such as Jonkonnu or in the late-twentieth-century rhythm and style of popular “dancehall” culture in which less is admittedly oftentimes more, if only to resist the time-worn denigration of the black body. In either case, such “combination of clothing and body” puts a great many Jamaicans arguably among the world’s best dressed poor. The book’s relevance at this time of publication is by no means unconnected to that lingering preoccupation with dress in complete combination with the body. The author successfully argues that such preoccupation is a manifestation of the techniques of accommodation and resistance, used separately and oftentimes simultaneously both for survival in slavery and for self-definition in freedom. From the book’s early journey to press, it seemed as though the author had invoked clairvoyant powers in anticipating the heated debate which followed later on the erection of the nude Redemption Song statues sculpted by Jamaican artist Laura Facey and placed at the entrance of Emancipation Park, a new facility in midtown Kingston commemox
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rating the “full free” emancipation in 1838 of slaves in Jamaica. The Buckridge study, if it does nothing else, confirms the importance of dress to African forebears in bondage and their Jamaican descendants in freedom in affirming self, delineating identity, defying denigration, and asserting self-dignity and pride so as to regain the paradise lost in a process of dehumanization – lost almost totally in past history while continuing to be threatened with diminution in contemporary life. The undressed statues excited the ire of many who were further incensed by the stark nakedness that exposed the black male’s genitalia, stereotypically deemed to be over-endowed. No less disturbing to many are the fulsome mammary glands which, because they are life-giving, are felt by protesters to be the black woman’s prerogative to have them covered (that is, dressed) even when minimally adorned in modern-day tasselled splendour or allowed to appear with a suggestive cleft between the protuberation, as was evident in the low-cut full-skirted gowns of the Victorian era which were adopted by Jamaican freed women in accommodation but no less in resistance to that enduring slave image indelibly imposed on newly emancipated persons by an ignominious past. The book will provide much grist for the mill which is the discourse on whether liberation from slavery (physical and mental) means, or should mean, a new beginning, preferably in nudity, freed of the “fabrics of servitude”, which came in the form of coarse cotton rations of cloth called osnaburgs or of hand-me-downs for church and festive wear from the masters’ clothes closets in the great house, or whether liberation should celebrate the pre-slave existence of the enforced African arrivants who, on the author’s account, continued to nurture “African customs in dress”, thus enabling them to “maintain a vital cultural link with their ancestral homeland and, in the process, to resist the institution of slavery which denied them basic human rights”. What is clear from this Buckridge study of the formation of Jamaican “creole” society over time is that, as with what now exists as the intangible heritage of Jamaica’s and indeed of all of Plantation America’s peoples of African ancestry, “innovation and creativity” were engendered from the earliest of times as a means of self-affirmation and self-validation. Such creativity and innovation apply to dress (from the variety of coded head-ties to the skilful adaptations of European fashion) as much as to such other creolized aspects of life as worship, orature, the performing arts (especially music and dance), family patterns and language. Foreword
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As such, this volume is a valuable and welcome addition to the growing literature on Jamaica’s and the wider Caribbean’s history and process of becoming, and it should be required reading for all who have an interest in Caribbean history and cultural studies. Rex Nettleford
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Foreword
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Preface
This study was inspired by my experiences growing up in Jamaica. The world of my childhood was populated by strong women who shared stories of their own struggles and of my ancestors’ resilience and determination to create both a better life for their family and a space for themselves within the male-dominated society. For instance, Theresa Green, a woman huge in stature, owned her own business and was a boxer in her community. Theresa won every match and was happy to beat (literally) any man who dared to challenge her to a fight. GangGang raised cattle and became famous for climbing tall trees – a habit she maintained well into old age. These stories – showing that women were capable of mastering any job as well as any man – shaped, sustained and nourished me. More important, they shaped and sustained my mother and grandmother, who, like so many others, refused to be marginalized. Instead they relied on their inner strength and their own history to get them through life’s daily challenges. In many cultures, it is customary for individuals to save a particular garment that is symbolic of an event. Some women save their wedding dresses. Others may keep a garment with religious and symbolic significance, such as a baptismal or christening outfit. These garments are usually passed down from one generation to the next. My mother saved her children’s baby clothes, a habit that my siblings and I found strange and at times embarrassing. On my visits home, my mother would retrieve the garments from a plastic bag, which was carefully hidden in her closet. She would lay out the clothes meticulously, then would indicate as she went along which garment I had worn at age one, two and so on. The clothes were discoloured with age but had otherwise remained surprisingly intact. On one occasion, when I asked why she
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did this, my mother replied, “Because it is your history!” My mother had long known the importance of material culture and the function of dress as a historical artefact. Her words stuck with me, though it was not until years later, when I embarked upon this study, that I came to understand their meaning. I also realized that many Jamaicans, like my mother, are fascinated with dress and obsessed with style. From the “uptown” ladies in cutwork linen suits and the Rastas in bright colours to the dancehall queens in glitter and the ghetto fab ladies in body tights, the Jamaican body performs as a canvas that both transforms and is transformed. As a result, the “body politics” of dress is a narrative, or a script, about style. The discipline of material culture studies enables us to comprehend this narrative and to see that Jamaican black people have long used dress to make a statement. In the process old paradigms are challenged and new ones created, as in the case of dancehall in contemporary Jamaican popular culture. This book is not a descriptive overview of fashion. It is about the use of dress to create a space to conform, confront and contest. On another level, this study is a return to my roots and a look at how the past has shaped the present. It is also a celebration of Jamaican women’s contribution to the struggle for freedom and their ability to create a space for themselves in an oppressive society. I share this work of history as a testament to my love for, and gratitude to, all Jamaican women who struggled to survive and in the process left a rich legacy of hope and solidarity.
xiv
Preface
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Acknowledgements
There is an old Jamaican proverb, “one-one coco full basket”, which means that the contributions of each person, no matter how small, will lead to a bountiful harvest. An acknowledgement is a testament to this truth. I thank Claire Robertson for her guidance, mentoring and encouragement. I also wish to extend my sincere appreciation to Dr Leila Rupp, Dr Ahmad Sikainga and Dr Gwendolyn O’Neal for their intellectual support during the early stages of this project. My deep appreciation to the staff and faculty of the Ohio State University History Department and the graduate school for their help throughout my years there as a student. I am grateful to the CIC, GSARA and the Elizabeth Gee Fellowship Foundations for supporting my doctoral studies. The Ford Foundation provided me with a post-doctoral fellowship that allowed me to spend a year in Jamaica at the University of the West Indies. This permitted me to study, research and write in a way that would otherwise not have been possible. I am proud to be a Ford fellow and I thank the staff at the National Research Council, which administers the grant, for their support and assistance. My research has benefited immensely from the superb service and expertise of the administrative staff, archaeologists, archivists and librarians at the following institutions, the University of the West Indies Library and West Indies Collection, the National Archives of Jamaica, the Jamaica Heritage Trust at Port Royal, the Institute of Jamaica’s Natural History Division and Museums of History and Ethnography; and the National Library of Jamaica. Special mention must be made of archivist Racquel Stratchan, librarians Mrs Eppie Edwards, Mrs Francis Salmon, Mrs Ouida Lewis, Ms Pat Dunn and Ms Valerie Francis, who always went the extra mile to assist me. I will always be indebted to them
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for their patience and assistance during my field research. Thanks to Mr Lawrence Nelson, head of research, and Mr D’Owen Grant, botanist and senior forester, at the Jamaica Forestry Department. My thanks also to the staff in the Office of the Governor General at King’s House and Mona Information Systems. My deep appreciation to Dr David Boxer of the National Gallery of Jamaica, who welcomed me into his home and shared his love of art and photography with me. Thanks also to Mr Michael T. Gardner, Dr John Campbell, Dr Susan Mains, Mr David Johns and the staff at Photo Express for their assistance with photographs. I am particularly grateful to Dr George Proctor and Mrs Tracy Commock, director and botanist of the Natural History Division at the Institute of Jamaica for their kindness and courtesy. I am thankful for my friends at Long Mountain House for their support, and to Ashie and his peers at City Guide for providing me with superb transportation service to and from the archives. I am intellectually indebted to Professor the Honourable Rex Nettleford, vice chancellor of the University of the West Indies, for his continued support and mentoring over the years. His insight and knowledge continue to mould and shape me, and for this I will always be thankful. My deep appreciation as well to the staff in the Office of the Vice Chancellor, especially Ms Eula Morgan, and the staff in the Housing Office, particularly Mrs Merita Dunkley and Ms Valrie Buckley, who were always generous with their time and attention to my comfort and needs. Dr Olive Lewin, director of the Jamaica Folk Singers, and Mrs Muriel Whynn, of the Moore Town Maroons, were kind enough to share their ideas and stories with me. Many thanks to Professor Carolyn Cooper for sharing her love of African dress and textiles. Mrs Shirley Lindo-Pennant introduced me to the Accompong Town Maroons, who opened their hearts to me and taught me much about my culture. I thank them. I am indebted, as well, to Professor Verene Shepherd for her guidance and friendship, Professor Patrick Bryan, Dr Swithin Wilmot, and the staff, faculty, and students of the History Department at the University of the West Indies for their help and suggestions and for making me feel so welcome during my fellowship year. Ms Vanessa Ellis and Mrs Michele Bartley in the Department of History were willing to assist me with technical challenges whenever necessary. Many thanks to a true pioneer in the field of Jamaican dress, Ms Glory Robertson, for her encouragement. Heartfelt gratitude to Professor Barry Higman, the xvi
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Jamaica Historical Society and the members of the Association of Caribbean Historians who offered valuable advice on this project during the 1998 conference in Suriname, and to those who made suggestions during the history seminars at Mona during my tenure. I wish to acknowledge Mrs Linda Speth and her staff at the University of the West Indies Press for their dedication to this project, and for navigating me through the publication process. I thank the staff of the Kingston and St Andrew Corporation Markets Company Limited who assisted me in my research, particularly market consultant Mr Michael Webb and the manager of the Coronation Market, Ms Sandra Bullock. I am most grateful to all the market women who were so generous with their time and knowledge. There were many others with whom I have shared conversations and correspondence, and whose responses and suggestions helped me in this study. I appreciate the support and assistance from Dr Priscilla Kimboko and Ms Valorie Frank who helped to set up my fellowship account, and from my chair, Dr James Smither, Jon Jellema, dean of the Faculty of Arts and Humanities, and all my colleagues and friends in the Department of History and across campus at Grand Valley State University. My sincere thanks to the faculty and staff of Grand Valley State University Library, especially Jill Reyers. Finally, I would like to acknowledge my friends who helped to make this journey easier, my teachers who enlightened me, and my family members, particularly the women who both inspired and moulded me. I thank them for their prayers, their unbounded support, and most of all, their unconditional love that nourished and sustained me throughout the years.
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Introduction
Material culture is made up of tangible things crafted, shaped, altered and used across time and across space. It is inherently personal and social, mental and physical. It is art, architecture, food, clothing, and furnishing. But more so, it is the weave of these objects in the everyday lives of individuals and communities. – Simon J. Bronner, American Material Culture and Folklife
Material Culture and Dress as Jamaican History Many scholars do not read objects as they read books, as a means of comprehending the people and the times that created the objects. However, the study of material culture seeks to change this by exposing material evidence to historical analysis. Material culture is the study of human-made physical objects, or artefacts, in social settings, to understand the beliefs, values, ideas, attitudes and assumptions of a particular community or society at a given time. It enables us to understand the meanings of texts and to highlight the social and cultural history embedded in them.1 It is not my intent to establish the primary importance of objects as opposed to documents, but to show that objects are parallel to written materials. As Henry Glassie has appropriately stated, “For too long historians have left out vast realms of experience that do not fit into words at all, that can only be shaped into artefacts.”2 The study of material culture includes the analysis of a spectrum of objects – from the use of space to something as simple as a teapot, photograph or a chair in one’s home. Material culture is especially important for studying individuals 1
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who left no written records. In the Caribbean, for example, written narratives generated by enslaved people do exist. Many enslaved Africans wrote important treatises, dictated autobiographical accounts, presented critical oral testimony to commissions of inquiry and assisted in or made arrangements for the publication of their opinions and experiences, which form part of the Caribbean tradition. Yet, unlike other Caribbean territories where slave narratives do exist – such as the works of Mary Prince, Olaudah Equiano and Esteban Montejo, and letters by Dolly Newton and Jenny Lane – no such texts or letters have been found in Jamaica so far.3 Scholars have had to resort to colonial and official documents and planters’ journals for a picture of enslaved peoples’ lives. However, material culture can be most useful in this regard, because it promises to fill the gaps in our knowledge of slaves’ lives, and in the process make significant contributions to the field of Caribbean history. Material culture facilitates new methods of exploration and interpretation by analysing the material objects of those who left no written records. Henry Glassie has stated that without material culture, “we would miss the profound wordless experience of these people”.4 As a consequence, material culture allows us to give voice to the voiceless; it enables us to see objects as a form of visual literacy that can be read. It differs from archaeology in that many archaeologists disengage themselves from the study of belief, the province of cultural anthropology, and even more from aesthetics, the province of art history. Material culture in this respect can be described as an object-based branch of cultural history.5 The use of material culture along with documents can be most useful to historians. Cultural historians Steven Lubar and W. David Kingery point out that the artefact-document dichotomy is in many ways false. Although historians traditionally use documents rather than artefacts or objects, documents are a species of artefact, and some historians, mostly palaeographers, make use of the document as artefact. Further, artefacts are remnants of the environment of earlier periods, a portion of the historical experience available for direct observation. Not only do artefacts present new evidence to support historical arguments, they also suggest new arguments and provide a level of rhetorical support to arguments that mere documents cannot begin to approach. Kingery argues that artefacts, especially when used in conjunction with the kind of history gleaned from documentary sources, widen our view 2
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of history as they increase the evidence for historical interpretations.6 In this study, the artefact that is used along with written sources is dress. This is a study of how dress, as part of the material culture of enslaved and freed women, functioned as a symbol of both resistance to slavery and accommodation to white culture in pre- and post-emancipation Jamaican society, 1760–1890. This project illuminates the complexities of accommodation and resistance, showing that these responses were not opposites but were interwoven. Nor were these responses confined to any specific period. Instead, they reflect a pattern throughout Jamaican history, a continuum that began on the shores of Africa and has continued into the present. This analysis will enhance our knowledge of the African diaspora and its impact on the lives of African women, while the focus on dress will stimulate further scholarly work on women’s material culture and the role of women in Caribbean history. This study not only reveals the dynamics of race, class and gender in Jamaican colonized society but also examines the relations between dress and the body, and the use of the clothed body as a means of cultural expression and performance art. This is not a study of fashion but rather an analysis of how dress narrated style, or the space where one could conform, contest, confront and resist. I argue that African slave women and their descendants in Jamaica had some control over their clothing, and that they were able to maintain and nurture expressive African cultural characteristics in their dress as a means of survival. Emancipation brought major changes in dress customs, from more African modes to more European-influenced styles that accompanied greater possibilities for social mobility. My findings are not definitive, but they suggest how dress, as an artefact and a part of material culture, can be used to communicate various aspects of women’s lives within the Jamaican plantocracy. Social historians Mary Ellen Roach-Higgins and Joanne Eicher define dress as “an assemblage of modifications of the body and/or supplements to the body”.7 We can, then, assert that dress includes many forms of adornment: hairstyles; coloured, dyed or bleached skin; pierced ears; scented breath as well as garments; jewellery; accessories; and other modifications of and items added to the body. From this perspective, the term dress is most appropriate for this study. The term apparel has serious limitations in that it does not include body modifications, whereas the term costume implies an out-of-the-ordinary social role or activity. Consequently, the latter term is avoided except in relation to carnival Introduction
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dress. The term fashion is used occasionally, to refer to the actual style of a garment. Fashion and dress should not be confused, however, because the term fashion lacks the precision of the word dress. Furthermore, not all types of dress qualify as fashion. Religious dress, for example, in some societies, resists fashion changes.8 In this study, the term dress is used instead of garment or apparel because neither of these terms is technically correct, nor are they as comprehensive or inclusive as the term dress. How does one analyse dress, and what do material culturalists look for in such artefacts? Cultural historian Jules David Prown informs us that the objective of a cultural historian is to investigate the beliefs of individuals and of groups of individuals. He argues that there are surface beliefs, of which people are aware and which they express in what they say, do and make, and there are also beliefs that are hidden or submerged. A cultural analyst wants to get at hidden beliefs, at what lies under the surface, behind the “mask” of the face.9 The ability to get behind the mask allows the analyst to establish a footing in the subject’s culture. Clifford Geertz describes this as an opportunity to converse, rather than merely talk, with one’s subjects.10 Unmasking the face can present problems. The cultural analyst tries to understand another culture whose pattern of beliefs and mindset are different from our own. Our own beliefs and mindset bias our view. It is essential to try to approach the other culture in an unbiased manner, at least while we gather data. This is the great promise of material culture. By pursuing cultural interpretations through artefacts, we engage the other culture in the first instance, not with our minds, the seat of our cultural biases, but with our own senses. Metaphorically speaking, we put ourselves into the bodies of the individuals who made or used these particular artefacts; hence, we see with their eyes and touch with their hands. To identify with people from the past or from other places empathically, through the senses, is clearly a different way of engaging them than abstractly, through the reading of written words. Prown adds that instead of our minds making intellectual contact with their minds, “our senses make effective contact with their sensory experience”.11 I have tried to do this here – to capture the experiences of Jamaican enslaved women by making contact with their own experiences. I focus not merely on the reality of these experiences but, as Joan W. Scott explains, on “trying to understand the operations of the complex and changing discursive processes by which identities are ascribed, resisted, or embraced”.12 4
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Caribbean Historiography and Dress We miss the profound wordless experience of all people when we concentrate exclusively on texts made out of language. – Henry Glassie, “Studying Material Culture Today”
Early historiography on Caribbean slavery was Eurocentric and often depicted a complacent male slave. For example, in 1928 Lowell Ragatz remarked, “The West Indian Negro [slave] had all the characteristics of his race. He stole, he lied, he was simple, suspicious, inefficient, irresponsible, lazy, superstitious, and loose in his sexual relations.”13 Gender was not an issue, and enslaved women were rarely mentioned. Since 1970, there have been major developments in the study of slave resistance and rebellion. Studies by Monica Schuler, Michael Craton, Barry Gaspar, Richard Hart, Hilary Beckles, Barry Higman and Brian Moore have filled crucial gaps in our knowledge about organized slave revolts and resistance.14 In addition, Gad Heuman has carried out important research on marronage and slave runaways.15 The rise of gender studies and women’s history in Britain and America in the late 1970s to 1980s became a way for women to tell their “herstory” and to establish women and gender as categories for historical analysis within many historiographies and, in the process, “engender” history. This investigative process at first involved primarily the role of white women within the cult of domesticity. While white women became the focus of attention, slave, freed and black women remained voiceless and invisible. Early scholarly work on women slaves focused on the US South, represented in studies by Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, Darlene Clark Hine and Kate Wittenstein, and Deborah Gray White.16 Meanwhile, Arlette Gautier produced a comprehensive study of women slaves in the French Caribbean.17 The pioneering works on women and gender relations in Jamaica and the British Caribbean include those by Lucille Mathurin Mair, Hilary Beckles, Barbara Bush, Marietta Morrissey, Janet Momsen, Verene Shepherd, Patricia Mohammed, and, more recently, Brian Moore, Barry Higman, Carl Campbell and Patrick Bryan.18 Lucille Mathurin Mair’s monograph The Rebel Woman in the British West Indies During Slavery has inspired new scholarship that focuses on the contributions of Introduction
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African slave women and their descendants to resistance in the British Caribbean.19 The analysis of dress as part of material culture studies was built on the early works of anthropologists and undertaken by art historians, social psychologists and social historians such as Mary Ellen RoachHiggins and Joanne Eicher and Anne Hollander.20 Some of the most challenging recent work on dress has been produced by American and British scholars of feminist cultural studies such as Juliet Ash and Elizabeth Wilson and Shari Benstock and Suzanne Ferris.21 Many of these analyses focused on marginalized social groups – such as women, gay men and lesbians, and ethnic minorities – in the context of latetwentieth-century capitalism. These studies concentrated on the repressive and restrictive powers of dress and on fashion as a commodity. Social scientists, social historians and cultural historians, however, examined dress and its reflection of the relations between social groups in industrial societies.22 While some scholars, such as bell hooks,23 explored dress in contemporary popular cultures, others began to investigate slave dress, hairstyles, headwraps, and church hats, to gain some understanding of their impact on the daily lives of Africans and their descendants and of how dress was used to construct individual and social identities. Early studies on slave dress focused on the US antebellum South and included works by, among others, Eugene Genovese, Gerilyn Tandberg, Sally Graham Durand, Helen Bradley Griebel and, more recently, Helen Bradley Foster.24 Although there is a good deal of interest in the fields of literary and cultural studies in contemporary Jamaican dress, such as Rastafarian and dancehall fashions, the analysis of dress in Caribbean historiography has been limited. Some pivotal works on slave dress include those by Edward Kamau Brathwaite, Michael Craton, Barry Higman, Roderick McDonald and, more recently, Steeve Buckridge.25 In addition, Glory Robertson, Patrick Bryan and Carol Tulloch have enlightened us about post-emancipation customs in dress.26 Other writers such as Joseph Moore and Edward Seaga have examined Afro-Jamaican religions and their ceremonial dress.27 In more recent years, Rex Nettleford, Judith Bettelheim, Richard Burton and Hilary Beckles, among others, have enriched our knowledge of carnival dress and masquerade as satirical revelry.28 But more scholarship is needed for analytical discourse on the material culture of Caribbean enslaved people and on dress as artefact. This study is the first of its kind in British Caribbean historiography that 6
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focuses exclusively on the dress of colonized women, both slave and freed, and examines dress as a symbol of resistance and accommodation. African slaves in the Caribbean participated in resistance and accommodation activities that were vital to their survival in a society that sought to dehumanize them for the purpose of exploitation. Numerous studies have shown that slaves resisted enslavement in many ways. Some resistance activities were blatant, like rebellions, while others were subtle, like feigned stupidity. Some forms of resistance were based on the notions of accommodation and adaptation – in that accommodation in itself was a form of resistance. Accommodation in this respect was part of a subtle and complex survival strategy and adaptive mechanism. Similar adaptive mechanisms included submission, degradation and self-hatred. These forms of resistance have been under-represented in recent studies. Historian Sidney Mintz has argued that adaptive mechanisms like accommodation cannot be ignored because they reflected complicated processes of culture change and retention that must be analysed. He maintained that to dismiss them as a lack of desire or will to resist on the part of slaves is “tantamount to the denial of creative energies to the slaves themselves”.29 Yet slaves were very creative, and this study illuminates one aspect of their creativity – their use of dress for cultural expression and to make a political statement. It should not be assumed that accommodation as a resistance strategy was ineffective or that it masked the reality of slaves’ lives. Caribbean slavery was brutal; and even though it failed to completely deculturate and dehumanize African slaves, the atrocities committed against African people cannot be denied. Subtle resistance strategies like accommodation mirrored slaves’ intelligence and their ability to create delicate balances in their resistance efforts. The fact that Africans and their descendants in the Caribbean survived is an affirmation of the effectiveness of these strategies. Caribbean historiography needs to develop a theoretical framework for the study of dress and material culture. This theory must be relevant to and reflective of the conflicts, struggles, experiences and realities of Caribbean people. Such a development will allow Caribbean historians to join various scholars studying material culture in other parts of the world and stimulate new and exciting debates in the field. It will enable us to address crucial questions and develop more understanding of the use of dress and the body within the social, economic and political contexts of Jamaican and Caribbean society, both past and present. Introduction
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For instance, we need to know why dress is so politicized and divisive during Jamaican electoral campaigns, creating opposing camps of green, orange, and more recently blue. How did dress articulate differences, and empower women, within the plantation complex and the colonial state at large? Is there a relation between patriarchy and the Caribbean woman’s dress, and how does the “masculine gaze” interpret and construct black femininity? Does dress, as social reproduction, represent and authenticate social categories? What is the role of dress in social activities such as drama and dance? What are the relations between dress, the body and sexuality as reflected in the symbolic link between white cloth and virginity? Is there a connection between dress and the diseased, as well as tortured, body? Why is it that the term blood klaat (blood cloth), once used in association with women’s menstrual flow, has become part of Jamaican “cuss” vocabulary and an abusive, profane term used predominantly by Jamaican men? We also need to address whether dress reflects the interconnectedness of cultural systems, and whether an understanding of dressing across social boundaries or cross-dressing is essential to understanding culture and resistance. How did ethnic minorities’ dress customs influence the Jamaican people, and what influence did ideological and political movements, such as the Afrocentric movement and nationalism, have on Jamaican dress and the emergence of a national costume? Do clothes and the dressing of the human body have potency – in other words, can dress be used as a channel to communicate with the spirits in private and public rituals?30 It is important to note that dress played many roles in slave society besides cultural resistance and as a means of accommodation. In fact, dress was closely linked to Afro-Jamaican religions and traditional medicine. For instance, among the Revival Zionists, their officers, among them the wheeling shepherds and shepherdesses,31 wear distinctive long gowns of specific colours and kerchief-tied turbans for different types of ceremonies. A blue gown is worn when invoking individual spirits, and a white gown for a secret working in purity.32 In obeah, priests or priestesses (commonly called obeah men or women) wear red flannel shirts or a crosspiece of red under their ordinary clothes and, sometimes, gold earrings. The gold is said to brighten their eyes so they can see duppies (ghosts).33 Traditional African medicine was used for several things apart from healing, such as protection and the harming or killing of enemies.34 These practices involved herbs and sometimes objects that had been 8
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physically close to a particular person, including items of dress. Personal effects, therefore, had to be carefully disposed of or put away lest they fall into an enemy’s hands.35 In Jamaica, for example, among some obeah followers, it was believed that burning certain clothing would take off the owner’s skin. In some parts of the island, it was believed that sewing a button on a garment while wearing it could bring about the wearer’s death, since this activity was normally done only on dead bodies.36 In Jamaica, like many other Caribbean countries, people still believe that putting a red chemise or a red ribbon on a newborn will keep away evil spirits. The religious uses and significance of clothing deserve in-depth attention that is beyond the scope of this study. In this text I am concerned with the secular legacy of African cultural characteristics; Africanisms expressed in Jamaican slave women’s dress; the functions that dress performed in slave society, such as resistance and accommodation; and the role dress played as a marker of class distinction, status, occupation, feminine beauty and gender relations. I also analyse how dress changed after emancipation and the significance of these changes – specifically, why did large numbers of Jamaican women adopt European dress? Moreover, I explore the reciprocity of fashion trends between classes and races, and the fashion synthesis that emerged in Jamaican society.
Terminology and Organization A word on terminology regarding racial and cultural categories is advisable. Jamaican society was divided into three main castes during the period of this study: whites, coloureds and Africans.37 Whites in this context referred to people from Europe or of unmixed European descent – in Jamaica, mainly English, Scots and Irish. This group also included locally born whites. The second caste, the coloured, consisted of all people of African and another ancestry. In the United States all persons of African ancestry, of whatever degree, were categorized as Negro, or black. Miscegenation in Jamaica gave rise to gradations of coloureds: a sambo was the child of a mulatto and Negro; a mulatto was the child of a white person and a Negro; a quadroon was the child of a mulatto and a white person; and a mustee was the child of a quadroon and a white person. The more common term for this caste was mulatto. Any slave or Introduction
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free person of colour could be termed mulatto, brown or yellow. Some coloureds had special privileges granted by private acts. The third group were Africans and their descendants. Whites used two kinds of generalizations for this group, Negro and slave; the terms were synonymous until abolition.38 More recently, the debate on terminology has led to several new terms in Caribbean historiography. Some scholars now use the following terms, among others: enslaver instead of planter or master; enslaved or enslaved person rather than slave; and post-slavery instead of post-emancipation. The classification and organization of individuals in this respect is necessary if one is to comprehend how the institution of slavery functioned and to grasp the dynamics of the power relations between the various groups involved. Some of the newer terms can be stylistically cumbersome and convoluted, depending on the context in which they are used. Nonetheless, their proponents argue that using terms like enslaver and enslaved prevents an essentialist reading of slave and places the blame of enslavement squarely on the planter and slave owner. This rationale is indeed valid; however, we should also keep in mind that the terms are not perfect and can be problematic in certain contexts. The term enslaver, for instance, is very broad in definition; it implies homogeneity among slave owners and those who were involved in the enslavement of Africans, thus masking the diverse occupations and economic interests of those involved. Participants in the enslavement of human beings included ships’ captains, planters, bankers, and many others. I have chosen to use some of these new terms. Throughout the first part of this study, I use the terms slave and African for those from Africa and of African ancestry living in Jamaica, rather than the term black, which has an ahistorical twentieth-century American connotation. The term slave is used to identify Africans’ status within the plantation economy, while the term enslaved is also used to evoke a sense of the harsh realities of the slave experience in the diaspora. For the same period, the term coloured is used in reference to slaves and freed persons of mixed ancestry. In the second section, on the post-slavery era, I use the terms ex-slave and freed persons, which makes sense to a certain point. These eventually give way to socio-economic categories based on the old tripartite racial division of slavery – upper class (white), middle class (coloured/mulatto) and working/labouring/peasant class (African).39 The term Afro-Jamaican is also used to describe the peasant and labouring classes. These groups are discussed further in the text. The term black 10
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is used mainly in the final chapter in regard to contemporary situations, as it has become increasingly popular in Jamaican society. During the colonial era, Jamaican racial categories were more complex and fluid. Whites may have seen themselves as one group set apart from all others, but all those of African descent were not in the same category in their own view. The subjects of this study are slave and freed women, and their descendants, who lived in British colonial Jamaica and were African or of African ancestry. The key term resistance is used in its broadest sense to mean the ability to strive against, oppose, refrain or abstain from, as well as to make efforts in opposition. Accommodation means to embrace or to adopt and use as one’s own; this term is used interchangeably with acculturation. These terms are more appropriate in this context than the term assimilation.40 This study focuses on Jamaica because of the abundance and availability of sources on dress. The style and organization employed here are intended to appeal to a wide audience beyond the academic community, while the start and end dates for this study were determined by the data collected. Extensive sources on slave dress before 1760 are scarce, whereas the analysis of dress through to the end of the 1890s enables some understanding of the transformations in dress customs from slavery to freedom. The period after abolition to the end of the nineteenth century was one of expanding consumerism and an increase in the value placed on material acquisition. There were also a plethora of new commodities, greater access to them for everyone, and vast amounts of retail sales, never before seen in Jamaica. I have chosen to focus attention on women rather than men (or both) because women, over time and across many cultures, have been the ones primarily responsible for the production, maintenance and care of clothing.41 This practice was maintained within the slave community and continues to the present. Despite this, there is some reference to men and their clothing because the lives and dress customs of Jamaican colonized women can be understood only within the context of their relationships with other racial groups and with their menfolk. The interdisciplinary nature of this study is heightened by the use of primary and secondary sources, derived not only from history and women’s studies but also from anthropology, social psychology, folklore, cultural studies, archaeology, and textiles and clothing. Particular attention has been paid to journals and travel records that reflect changes in Introduction
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dress over time and include sketches and descriptive accounts of slave and freed women’s dress. Written sources are used in combination with illustrations, photographs and paintings of slave and freed women by artists of the period, such as Adolphe Duperly and I.M. Belisario. The earthquake of 1907 and the great fire that followed destroyed the principal photography studios of the period, along with many nineteenth-century photographs and their negatives, so photographs of freed women’s dress in the late post-emancipation era are rare.42 Nevertheless, the few from the period included here are examined in detail. I have also created several illustrations based on my interpretation of the data collected. These sources are supplemented with an analysis of artefacts of slave dress found during various archaeological digs. Oral history obtained during field research is employed where possible. This information is the result of open-ended interviews about dress conducted with Jamaican folklorists, folk musicians, Maroons and market women about Jamaican dress. Other oral sources used include stories and slave songs related to dress that were recorded and preserved. I have also incorporated some of my own experiences and observations from growing up in Jamaica. Jamaican proverbs and songs in patois are included as a means of evoking the folk sensibilities of my subjects. Likewise, quotations from various writers serve as a useful frame for my argument. Although I have used various methods and sources to uncover some aspects of slave women’s use of dress, this study is by no means exhaustive. At times I have had to generalize from specific examples because of the lack of evidence and the absence of slave testimony. The book is divided into four chapters, which reflect a diversity of theoretical, comparative and interdisciplinary approaches to the study of colonized women’s dress. The first chapter, “The Crossing”, explores the role of dress in African societies and its use as a communicative tool. This analysis of African women’s dress within the African context is crucial to understanding why dress played such an important role in Jamaican slave society. I examine how African women dressed in their homelands and the cultural characteristics, especially those regarding dress, that were brought across the Atlantic to the Americas. The second part of the chapter looks at how the new arrivals adapted to their new environment, the types of clothing they received, and what they were allowed to wear. I also analyse the laws that regulated their dress and the effectiveness of these laws. I emphasize the cultural traits brought across the Atlantic and the notion of cultural retention – in other words, what 12
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was maintained, nurtured and fashioned to suit the needs of African women in exile. I also include a discussion on the Creole dress that was a product of the process of creolization. Much has been written about creolization over the years since the publication of Kamau Brathwaite’s pioneering text, The Development of Creole Society in Jamaica (1971), which sparked numerous interpretations and schools of thought on this phenomenon. These interpretations have led to lengthy debates and have continued to divide scholars in diverse fields such as culture studies, Creole studies, linguistics and history. Some scholars have turned away from Brathwaite’s Creole-society model based on acculturation due to osmosis, whereas others, like Sidney Mintz, have argued from early on that Creole cultures are almost entirely new creations that seek to adapt to new environments. More recently, some Caribbean linguists and those in the field of diaspora studies, like Maureen Warner-Lewis, have emphasized the cultural continuity between Africa and the Caribbean. Meanwhile, historians such as Paul Lovejoy and David Trotman have reaffirmed Mintz’s creolization as “newness”. Percy Hintzen argues for a definition similar to Richard Burton’s “segmentary creolization”. For Hintzen, creolization was a type of hybrid “Creole space” between two racial poles that serve as markers for civilization and savagery.43 It is not my desire to theorize about creolization any further or to make this study overly theoretical; nonetheless, creolization is implicit throughout the text. It is essential to realize that creolization in this study does not mean simply commingling of African and European elements, but rather a complex process of compromises and, to borrow Rex Nettleford’s term, a battle for cultural space. In the first chapter, I also cover some of the symbolic aspects of dress and adornment within their limited cultural boundaries. An analysis of dress in a particular society cannot be undertaken without examining the social and cultural context as well as its impact on the body. Clothing and unclothing the body, as well as the process and act of dressing up or down, are activities that transform, manipulate and reveal ideologies of both body and dress. We cannot treat dress as independent from the body because the two are inextricably tied; as a consequence, “the biological self is subject to acts of dress”, therefore “the body has a certain primacy”.44 Most societies at times set limitations on what is socially acceptable in terms of dress, and those who do not conform are often disallowed a positive self-identity, eventually leading to their Introduction
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developing a negative self-image. I use a symbolic-interaction perspective throughout this study to show how dress can reflect both the negative and positive images, as well as reveal the status differences and class identities within and between cultures. From the perspective of symbolic-interaction theory, individuals acquire identities through social interactions in various social and physical settings. Identities are communicated by dress, as it announces the social position of the wearer to both wearer and observers within the specific interaction situation.45 Chapter 2, “Dress as Resistance”, deals primarily with the aesthetic value of Jamaican enslaved women’s dress and its use as a symbol of resistance to colonial domination. I examine why dress became a “weapon of the weak”,46 as James C. Scott described it, and how this expression of resistance contested the power of the colonial regime. The use of dress in this manner was varied and sometimes challenged gender categories. For instance, some enslaved persons cross-dressed; others disguised themselves as freed persons to resist a life of servitude. Others destroyed the garments received from their owners as an act of defiance. A discussion of the African woman’s headwrap highlights its importance as both a symbolic and functional tool in the resistance movement, as well as a vital link to enslaved women’s heritage. Some consideration is given to the ambiguous meanings of carnival dress. Masking and masquerading provided enslaved persons with a sense of power – at least temporarily. The third chapter, “Dress as Accommodation”, focuses on social change in post-emancipation Jamaican society, the rise of a consumer society and the commercialization of clothing. I consider why many women abandoned the more African plantation ways of dressing and accommodated to white culture by embracing Victorian ideals of feminine beauty. Women began to wear European-style dress, consisting of long skirts, crinolines, bonnets and gloves. I examine the role of dress in communicating social and moral customs, the reasons for accommodation, who accommodated, and the extremes these women pursued to achieve their aims. Apart from how and why the transformation took place, I present the problems and failures of accommodation. The work would be incomplete without some focus on the role of seamstresses, and this chapter contains analyses of their contributions to their society and their changing roles within the new social order. The final chapter provides a brief overview. Recent developments in women’s dress in Jamaican popular culture deserve some attention. This 14
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section provides the opportunity to bridge the past and the present, to relate my discussion on dress to present-day cultural activities. As historian Barbara Bush has stated, “The purpose of history is to establish a continuity between the past and the present.”47 The continued importance of dress as a symbol of resistance and accommodation is evident in aspects of Jamaican popular culture and movements, such as dancehall, Street Style and Rastafarian customs in dress. These contemporary dress styles play a key role in the shaping and construction of a Jamaican identity.48
Introduction
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Chapter 1
The Crossing
Clothing establishes new statuses and connotes new identities in several rites of passage. When a new village chief or king is installed, the first step and one of the most crucial moments of the ceremony consists in tying a turban around that individual’s head. – Adeline Masquelier, “Mediating Threads”
Africa as Source and Origin The history of Jamaica is one of migration, involving diverse groups of people, each of which arrived with aspects of their own culture. Cultural contact eventually gave rise to both cultural conflict and integration – particularly between Europeans and Africans, because the white ruling class defined the terms under which the African existed. Africans were among the earliest migrants to Jamaica. The first wave arrived under Spanish rule from 1498 to 1655; the second, under the British between 1670 and 1808. They were forcibly extracted from their homelands and brought to Jamaica as slaves. Enslaved Africans came from diverse backgrounds and cultures, predominantly from West Africa. They represented the Igbo, Coromantee, Congo, Papaw, Chamba and Mandingo people.1 The conditions of transit for enslaved Africans were not conducive to the coordinated transfer of any entire African culture. Based as it was on 16
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the economic desirability of cheap labour and profitable commerce, the Atlantic slave trade was not designed for the aid, comfort or community of the involuntary migrants.2 Nevertheless, Africans brought with them to the Americas aspects of their culture such as folklore, music, language, religion and dress. The customs and beliefs that were retained in the African diaspora enabled displaced Africans to maintain a vital link with their ancestral homeland. As slaves in an alien environment, Africans shaped and modified these cultural elements based on their experiences, needs and circumstances. They also nurtured certain African characteristics and transmitted them to their descendants. In Jamaica, most African slaves and their descendants worked on the sugar plantations that dominated the colonial economy. Others worked on pimento, ginger and coffee estates or on pens (estates that produced livestock). Africans also worked as slaves in urban centres, serving as builders, domestic servants, sailors, longshoremen, carters, firemen and even hospital attendants.3 Slave owners believed in control through deculturation, achieved by means of dehumanisation and psychological conditioning, in order to create a passive, powerless class suitable for European exploitation.4 The planter class argued that eradication of all forms of African cultural practices was essential because of their power to unify the slaves and thus enable them to resist or rebel against their masters. Nevertheless, “Africanisms” persisted, not as archaic retentions but as vibrant cultural features that continued to grow and develop – in a sense, establishing new roots in a new environment. Robert Farris Thompson has argued that these practices contributed significantly to the enrichment of the Americas in the areas of herbalism, mental healing and funeral customs, to name a few.5 African cultural features were retained and nurtured in Jamaica because they guaranteed the survival of Africans and their descendants despite European attempts at cultural annihilation. Melville J. Herskovits points out that cultural retention was useful because it fulfilled functions that were indispensable to the survival of African people.6 Furthermore, keeping African customs alive fostered a “soulforce”, as Leonard E. Barrett describes it, that gave quality to the lives of Africans and enabled them to cope with the horrors of enslavement.7 Cultural expression as a survival strategy played an integral role in the daily lives of African slaves. As a consequence, one cannot study Africans in Jamaica or the diaspora without some appreciation for, and The Crossing
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understanding of, the cultural significance of Africa as source and origin. The term culture has diverse meanings and connotations. Here, culture refers to a group of people who share common properties and participate in the same institutions and organizations. Culture is also a continuum of variations and may include different groups of people who possess commonly shared features but in different ways, to different degrees and in different conglomerations.8 Further, it is imperative to remember that there is no single “African culture”. Africa is a continent with vast numbers of diverse ethnic groups. Each ethnic group possesses its own culture – a unique language, set of customs (including dress) and belief system. When the term African culture is used here, it does not imply that all Africans share a common set of beliefs. Specifically, to understand Africa’s diverse and complex dress customs requires some cultural analysis. Clifford Geertz argues that analysis is imperative in this case because “In the study of culture, analysis penetrates into the very body of the object!”9 Geertz explains that cultural analysis includes “Guessing at meanings, assessing the guesses, and drawing explanatory conclusions from the better guesses, not discovering the continent of meaning and mapping out its bodiless landscape.”10 Cultural analysis allows us to “peel away the layers” and illuminate the expressive nature of African women’s dress and its role as a narrative form. Dress in any culture both adorns and protects the body. However, dress has other functions. Dress is political, in that it brings people together and also puts them in conflict with others. Mary Ellen RoachHiggins and Joanne Eicher argue that human beings in every society develop ways of designing and fabricating supplements (dress) for the body out of materials available in their environment. These supplements are often used to modify individuals’ bodies in ways that identify them with, or distinguish them from, others.11 In this respect, dress differentiates and separates people. Dress can also reflect one’s social mobility and accomplishments. Modifications to the human body are often limited by the aesthetic standards of the culture. Therefore, what may be acceptable in one culture may not be so in another. Yet artistic expression in dress is not always defined by the particular culture; it can also be individualistic.12 Although cultural patterns of dress may differ from one society to another, dress in any culture is a means of communication. Human ecologist Betty Wass stated that 18
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It [dress] conveys messages when members of a society who share a given culture have learned to associate types of dress with given, customary usage. Through this customary association certain types of dress become symbols for either specific or class or social roles, with this symbolism changing over time in different social and ethnic contexts.13
Within Jamaican society dress also functioned as a communications tool. It expressed not only individuality based on unique physical features and aesthetics but also group affiliation, gender, status and class, occupation, state of being and religious beliefs. Since dress conveyed messages, some cultures emphasized appropriate dress for individuals during specific situations or events such as religious rites. Dress as a means of communication is part of a long, rich heritage in cultural expression that goes back to the continent of Africa. It was in Africa that some of the great advancements were made in the history of dress and the manufacture of cloth. For example, the ancient Egyptians were the first to make sleeved tunics, after perfecting short and kneelength kilts for men and a simple shoulder-strap jumper for women, all made of plain linen woven from bast (flexible fibrous bark) fibres. The earliest complete garment yet found by archaeologists anywhere in the world is an Egyptian linen shirt of sophisticated design from the First Dynasty, c.3000 BC.14 Dress continues to play a vital role in many contemporary African societies and even beyond the shores of Africa. To explore what aspects of African women’s dress were brought to Jamaica by African slaves during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, some knowledge of African dress during the same period is essential. The diversity of West African cultures, each with its unique form of dress, makes it impossible to include every group and all aspects of their clothing. Therefore, only some common characteristics are highlighted. The distinctive status, age, sex and occupation of any individual within a society were often indicated by aspects of dress: ornaments worn (for example, Ashanti slaves and commoners were not supposed to wear gold jewellery); facial and bodily scarring and paint; the wearing of animal skin and leather; fabrics or textiles worn; regalia carried; use of ceremonial masks; and hairstyles or head coverings worn.15 Since cultural markers reflected West Africans’ relationships with each other and with their environment, many African cultures emphasized appropriate dress. Among the Yoruba, for instance, fashionable dress was honoured, and one who donned inappropriate dress was said to aro’ gi l’aso [wear cloth like wood].16 The Crossing
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Appropriate dress was central to the social, economic, spiritual and cultural functioning of the society, in that dress authenticated differentiation and legitimized authority and the creation of cultural norms and values. As a consequence, dress was closely linked to the daily activities of many Africans. For instance, among Nigeria’s Hausaphone Mawri people, clothing served as a principal medium of communication between individuals, the community and the spirit world and continues to be so even today. For the Mawri, dress creates spiritual beings, and these spirits require particular types of dress. Furthermore, in Mawri society, the tying of clothing is metaphorically linked with marriage and reproduction and the initiation of relationships, while untying speaks of relationships broken and of death, when the clothing belonging to a deceased person is given away.17 The ritual use of dress is performance in nature: dress is not only the core but also the medium through which the human body is redefined over and over. Apart from expressing spiritual or religious affiliation, dress as part of public performance occurred in funerary rituals, dance, healing, and initiation rites as well as African drama and folklore. Textile manufacturing was an important industry in many West African societies and is still the livelihood of many communities. Foreign observers have admired the aesthetic sophistication of African textiles for centuries, since the time of the Greek and Roman presence in ancient Egypt. In the late fifteenth century, Portuguese navigators brought home beautiful textiles from Africa along with carpets and silks from India and China. Textiles and mats from sub-Saharan Africa were used to decorate the houses of wealthy European merchants and the elite. During their long history as successful traders, Africans found that cloth was consistently a much-desired trade item whose production served as an economic stimulus. Indigenous cloth was used as currency in the Kongo and Kuba kingdoms, and in some marketplaces it was exchanged for oil, ivory and gold. Cloth was used as bride wealth in the marriage ritual, to display a newborn baby, and even to pay fines in court.18 Local and imported textiles were also bartered for slaves. Arabs brought, for example, “articles of Moorish silk made in Granada, southern Spain . . . obtaining in exchange any number of slaves and some in gold”.19 Clothing production became a source of commercial wealth that involved both African men and women in buying, selling, tailoring, appliquéing, cut pile embroidering (a complex weave and embroidery
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process with raffia palm fibre in the Congo), and creating new and fashionable designs. In addition to making indigenous textiles, Africans imported fabrics by means of major trade links such as the Trans-Saharan and East Indian Ocean trade routes. The empire of Mali encouraged trade with foreign markets long before Europeans arrived on the West African coast. The Berbers and Arabs were key players in this early trade, supplying West Africa with silk and satin fabrics from the east. With the establishment of the Dutch and British East India Companies and their trade empires in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Indian cottons and silks were introduced to West Africa in large quantities. Later on, “Holland” cloth, Indonesian batiks and their imitations were imported and became popular. The rise of the Atlantic slave trade and the involvement of the Portuguese, British and French also facilitated the importation of foreign cloth. Design elements of these imported fabrics were modified, and new designs were introduced over time throughout West Africa.20 In the nineteenth century, Manchester cloth from Britain captured the textile trade on the coast, replacing the more expensive Indian cottons. European textile printers made special trips to the West African coast to bring back examples of indigenous cloth, which they copied and later traded with Africans.21 Acquisition of West African manufactured fabrics and fabric-related skills enhanced European textile technology and enriched European cloth manufacturers. The introduction of inexpensive Europeanized African fabrics led to a decline in the indigenous textile industry in several areas of West Africa.22 Meanwhile, Africans wore imported silks and satins to indicate status; these fabrics were often reserved for the elite. The Atlantic slave trade resulted in an exchange of not just human beings but also cultural ideas and technology related to dress. West Africans were influenced by Islamic and European customs in dress, and this process led to the synthesis of various dress customs in some African communities. In 1849 the traveller Frederick Forbes reported that during his mission to the Kingdom of Dahomey, “There was a perfect blaze of dress . . . the principal ladies of the [king’s] harem, up to sixteen generations, were magnificently dressed in silks, satins, and velvets, hats and plumes of the time of [King] Charles the Second.”23 Many African rulers and other men of importance received cloth and clothing as gifts from European visitors and traders throughout the centuries of trade. Captain John Adams, a ship’s captain and adventurer, The Crossing
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revealed that in 1794 he presented the king of Benin with a “fine flashy piece of red silk damask”.24 This custom not only reaffirms that Africans had knowledge, of and expertise in, trading cloth and clothing – a talent some brought with them to the Caribbean – but also indicates that West African dress styles were highly diverse and that Africans were aware of the value of cross-cultural socialization. Furthermore, some Africans were apparently familiar with European dress customs long before arriving in the Caribbean. Despite foreign competition, African textile manufacturing flourished. Indigenous African textiles often consisted of complex patterns and designs. In many West African cultures, men did the weaving, on narrow vertical looms, and women did the spinning. The dominant fibre used in local cloth production was locally grown cotton. Local silk was very rare, and some wool was used. Animal skins were worn as dressed furs and as tanned hides. Leather was fashioned into accessories, shoes and sandals. Pattern techniques included painting, stamping, resist dyeing, embroidery, and appliqué as well as weaving. Fabrics were dyed with juices extracted from tree barks, vegetables, roots and plank. Indigo and kola nut dye solutions were very popular in many areas. Colours, including body paint, were used to symbolize a particular state in life, such as virginity and innocence, or to reflect life passages and events such as birth, death, mourning, anger, war and rejoicing.25 Some West African textiles became famous – for instance, the kente cloth manufactured by the Ewe and Ashanti people on the Gold Coast [Ghana]. Ashanti kente is recognized worldwide, and kente is still an important element in contemporary African dress. Kente (a term apparently of Fanti origin) was originally made from unravelled imported silk fabrics, which were then locally woven into narrow strips and sewed together to produce dazzling, complex patterns.26 The visitor John Beecham recalled in 1841 that the Ashanti “purchased the richest silks in order to unravel and interweave them with their own thread; and their best clothes are extolled for their fineness, variety, brilliance and size”.27 Other types of textiles manufactured in West Africa included barkcloth and fabrics made from plant fibre (bast) and grass woven with locally grown cotton. The Ashanti also made bark-cloth from the bark of the kyenkyen tree. The bark was beaten flat and widened and the fibres felted together. In Ashanti communities, primarily slaves and those of low rank wore bark-cloth. However, in other areas of Africa, like the Haya Kingdoms, this was not the case. Bark-cloth was an important 22
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trade good, and the Haya monarchs carefully regulated its trade. The Haya people wrapped their dead in bark-cloth for burial. The mourners cut off sections of the shroud and wore them to reflect the state of mourning, thus identifying the living with the dead. Bark-cloth was also considered an integral part of a Haya woman’s bride wealth.28 Another common feature of West African dress was the use of beads. In 1794 while visiting the kingdom of Benin, Captain John Adams observed: “Coral is a very favourite ornament in the royal seraglio, which is always well filled; and the women like those of the Heebo [Igbo] nation, wear a profusion of beads, if they can by any means obtain them.”29 Beads, widely worn by both men and women in African cultures, included a wide range of forms made from natural media such as animal teeth, vertebrae, cowrie shells, ostrich shells, nuts and ivory, as well as drilled and shaped stone. There were also indigenous copper, brass, silver and gold beads. Archaeological sites at Ife in present-day Nigeria have revealed that glass beads were produced there locally before European contact, yet it was the “trade beads” made of glass in Europe and Asia that Africans used most in both art form and in dress.30 Beads served many functions that varied from one culture to the next. In some communities both men and women wore beads for their aesthetic value, established by cultural guidelines. The symbolism of beads – their colour, material, size and shape, even where they were worn on the body – helped the wearers to communicate non-verbally their religious beliefs, sex, age, wealth and status. Strings of beads were worn for protection against evil spirits, as in the case of Ashanti women’s waist beads.31 Among the Yoruba, beads played a significant role once a young woman was old enough to marry, forming a substantial part of her dowry and her property. On her wedding day the bride would be dressed in costly clothes with “beautiful beads around her neck and waist”.32 Beads were also used to ornament slippers, gowns, caps and special ceremonial outfits for priests and kings. The Yoruba made ornate handsewn beaded crowns, masks and embroidered cloth for their priests and community leaders.33 Another visual communicator was the headdress. Men’s and women’s headdresses in West Africa were highly imaginative. Their designs were varied and elaborate, and they could be time-consuming to create. From shaved heads to wigs and extensions, headdresses have been immortalized in African sculpture and art for centuries. Hairstyles, with their The Crossing
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complex configurations of braids, plaits, coils, curls, and cane row (and cornrow) patterns – or even simply rolled into locks – spoke a language that indicated ethnicity, status, wealth, occasion and even occupation. Cultural historian Mary Jo Arnoldi has argued that, from ancient Egypt to the present, Africans have regularly invested in this “headwork” and its permanent or ephemeral products with heightened value. Africans did this because headdress can recall myths or historical episodes, while hats and head coverings can represent the achievements or victories of an individual or glorify an office.34 Appropriate headdress was required for all occasions and was based on an individual’s social standing, age and artistic expression. John Barbot, travelling in Senegal in 1732, recalled the “fantastic hair treatment, plaited and twisted and adorned with some few trinkets of gold, coral and glass . . . and a coif standing up five or six inches above their heads”.35 Women’s headdress varied from one region and community to the next. In some cultures, women lengthened their hair, dressed it with palm oil or melted butter and shaped it with cloth or fibre padding. Some women wrapped their hair over supports of arched bamboo. One hairstyle favoured by Yoruba women had multiple partings; each section was twisted and then tightly wrapped with heavy black cotton thread.36 Fulani women displayed their wealth in hair ornaments and announced the birth of their first child by wearing their hair plaited at the side and joined under the chin. Wealthy and married women usually wore the most elaborate hairstyles.37 Headdresses (including hairstyles) had specific names that were imaginative and reflective of events, objects and situations in life. The Songhai women gave fanciful names to their coiffures, such as “boat of the sky”, “bellow of the forge”, and “spend the night with the one you love”.38 Headscarves (headwraps), worn casually as well as for special occasions, were popular among women throughout West Africa. This form of headdress varied in style and pattern depending on the circumstances. Headscarves were functional in that they enabled women to balance loads on their heads, protected newly styled hair and made one “presentable” when in haste. Yoruba women’s headwraps, known as gele or oja, often matched their dresses, which were coloured with indigo dye and had customary bold patterns picked out in white.39 By the eighteenth century, West African cultures had achieved high levels of refinement, complexity and creativity in their civilizations, as 24
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reflected in their dress. Many Europeans had long believed the racist propaganda of the period that African people were all naked savages and thus incapable of any great accomplishment. For some whites, nonEuropean dress and nudity or semi-nudity was a sign of backwardness. Others felt that animal skins or unsewn lengths of cloth did not constitute clothing. Nudity was socially and culturally acceptable in some African cultures, since in a very hot climate clothes would be a hindrance while working in the fields. Art historian Helen Bradley Foster has argued that Arabs and Europeans judged black Africans from the world-view that equated covering certain body parts with being civilized.40 As a consequence, nudity became the basis on which outsiders could determine the degree of civilization that Africans had attained. The rich legacy in African dress was dismissed. Moreover, the racist sentiments of outsiders fostered stereotypes about the black body and myths about sensational sexual attributes. Such racist ideas contributed to the drive to civilize Africans and the insistence that African people adopt European dress as a sign of civilization. A few Europeans did recognize the beauty of African customs in dress and realized that Africans were not “naked savages”. The nineteenth-century missionary R.H. Stone had a change of heart when he visited West Africa: What I saw disabused my mind of many errors in regard to . . . Africa. . . . [I]nstead of being lazy, naked savages, living in spontaneous production of the earth, they were dressed and were industrious. . . . The men are builders, blacksmiths, weavers, . . . hat makers, . . . tanners, tailors, . . . [the] women . . . most diligently follow the pursuits which custom has allotted to them. They spin, weave, trade, cook and dye cotton fabrics.41
Africans manufactured textiles that rivalled European and Asian fabrics in patterns and quality. From the “rhythmic” and checkerboard textiles of the Mande and Ashanti people to the intricate hand-sewn beadwork of the Yoruba, dress was a form of artistic expression. Moreover, the use of natural elements such as fibre, nuts, shells and beads, combined with generous use of colours, signalled Africans’ harmonious relationship with nature and their environment. However, dress styles and patterns throughout West Africa, as in other cultures, were not static. Styles and patterns changed over time as a result of the dictates of fashion, competition, new technology, social changes and availability of resources. Furthermore, the ability of Africans to incorporate imported materials The Crossing
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into their own manufacture of cloth reflected both flexibility and adaptability. Enslaved West African men and women brought their dress customs across the Atlantic. Those slaves who possessed knowledge and expertise in textile manufacturing, beading, dyeing and tailoring passed their skills on to their descendants. The transition of West Africans’ achievements in dress visually enriched Jamaican society and enabled African slaves to resist deculturation.
Dress, the Body and the Law: “Me Know No Law, Me Know No Sin” The Caribbean is the story of arrivants from across the Atlantic and beyond, each group bringing a cultural equipage. – Rex M. Nettleford, Caribbean Cultural Identity
African slaves were stripped of their humanity and placed in the holds of ships bound for the Americas. The African slave Mahommah Gardo Baquaqua testified: “We were thrust into the hold of the vessel in a state of nudity, the males being crammed on one side, and the females on the other.”42 The symbolic interplay between the human body, dress and social experience cannot be denied. Africans’ clothing reflected identity and relational ties with others within the community. Being stripped, having the naked body exposed, represented for African slaves their painful reality: discontinuity and the enforced severance of cultural and kinship ties. For Europeans, this became a symbolic act of ridding their captives of their “wildness”, of humiliating and enfeebling Africans to gain control. Europeans, who had equated African nudity with backwardness, were now enforcing on Africans the very act they once condemned. This reflected Europeans’ ambivalence about the black body – simultaneous fascination and abhorrence. The middle passage was horrific for African slaves, whose naked bodies were exposed, exploited, brutalized and even lynched. Upon arrival at slave markets and slave auctions, white traders groomed their slaves’ bodies to make slaves more attractive to prospective buyers and thus fetch the highest price possible. Slaves’ bodies were manipulated, intimately examined, exhibited and finally branded with hot iron. The 26
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absence of clothing and the stench of burning human flesh underlined white supremacists’ need to “break” the black body as one would break livestock. This task was essential because the sensationalized and grossly exaggerated sexual attributes ascribed to African men constituted a threat to white phallocentric supremacy, whereas the African woman was perceived as libidinous and oversexed, hence a distraction to white men. In the process of breaking the black body, African men were emasculated and African women were defeminized. African slaves who arrived in Jamaica entered a slave society that was very diverse and complex. As Elsa Goveia explains, “Jamaican slave society was not a monoculture, but consisted of the ordering of separate groups all held together within a single social structure.”43 Slave society was divided according to class, ethnicity and even occupation, and the divisions were reflected in slave dress. Mulatto slaves considered themselves a separate group of a higher social standing than African slaves. As a consequence, they often chose not to associate with African slaves. Creole (locally born) slaves viewed themselves as distinct from the newly arrived enslaved Africans. Jamaican slave society included different ethnic groups, such as the Yoruba, the Igbo and the Ashanti people. There were urban slaves, separate from field or plantation slaves. On estates, slaves were divided into groups based on skill and occupation. For example, some were categorized as domestics, who were distinct from field slaves. These groups of slaves were held together within the colonial plantocracy and were often differentiated by dress, as will be discussed later. Furthermore, Jamaican slave society was not static but, like the larger society, was continually changing. Edward Brathwaite has pointed out that what was acceptable in 1770 did not necessarily hold for 1820, 1834 or 1880. Laws in Jamaica were frequently changed and reforms enacted, and regulations varied from parish to parish, vestry to vestry and even plantation to plantation.44 Europeans ascribed specific ethnic characteristics or stereotypes to enslaved Africans. These characteristics were recognizable to whites and were used by the planters to influence the market price of individual slaves.45 The Coromantee, for example, were considered to be strong – and thus better workers – but prone to rebellion, and therefore dangerous. The Igbo were supposed to be deceitful, “crafty, artful, disputative in driving a bargain”, whereas the Mandingo were known for being “a sort of Mahomedan [Muslim]”.46 Mandingos’ knowledge of Islam was The Crossing
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imperfect, consisting of a few remembered Arabic prayers. Some could read and write, while others, according to J. Stewart, could “scrawl a few rude Arabic characters, but without understanding or being able to explain much of their meaning”. He further described their writing as “scraps from the Alcoran [Qur’an] which they have been taught by their imams, or priests”.47 Some Mandingos were strict in their observance of Friday as the Sabbath, as is customary in Islam.48 J. Stewart’s account of enslaved Mandingos clearly reflects his own bias against Islam, a bias shared by many European Christians who considered Islam a rival religion to Christianity and a “heathenistic” faith. The absence of Muslim slave labour on Fridays would have hampered the planters’ ability to maximize production for that day. Muslim slaves were few in number, however, and lived under the same jurisdiction as non-Muslim slaves, so those who observed the Friday Sabbath probably did so with permission from their owners. As a group they were viewed as non-threatening, and by the planters as “too ignorant to understand anything of the Alcoran, or of the nature of their religion”.49 In fact, there were some very knowledgeable Muslim slaves who possessed good writing skills. Nevertheless, enslaved Muslims in Jamaica, being a minority, failed to have a lasting impact on the broader slave society; many of their beliefs disappeared within a few generations. Most African slaves lacked writing skills, and the enslaved community did not have the educational infrastructure essential for Islam’s survival. Other religious constructs brought from West Africa, such as Myalism and obeah, thrived because their retention and transmission depended on oral tradition. Most Jamaican planters were opposed to any form of education, religious or otherwise, for slaves, on the grounds that it would incite them to rebel. Many enslaved Africans and their descendants therefore could not read the laws that governed their lives, nor could they participate in any way in the framing of any laws, including those governing dress. Slaves nonetheless acquired the knowledge of dress regulations – by means of oral proclamations made by the authorities, illustrations or word of mouth. Some depended on special magistrates, clergymen or their owners to inform them. Others learned through experience, trial and error, or the planters’ method of brute force. Slave owners in Jamaica were required by law to provide their slaves with sufficient clothing. On arrival in Jamaica, African slaves were provided with at least a shift or loincloth almost immediately after pur28
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chase. On reaching the plantation or place of labour, the new arrivals were provided with clothes. Europeans were unaccustomed to the dress requirements of a tropical climate and interpreted semi-nudity to connote backwardness and lewdness. They sought to ensure that their slaves wore clothes. The procedure of clothing slaves was regulated by the vestry or parish council of each parish throughout the island (the vestry consisted of the custos, or chief magistrate of the parish, two or more local magistrates, sometimes ten vestrymen, and a parish [church] rector).50 The vestry could fine slave owners who did not provide sufficient clothing for their slaves. Early laws regarding clothing allowances for enslaved persons specifically stated what articles of dress the slaves should receive. The 1696 laws prescribed: “All slaves shall have clothes, men jackets and drawers; women, jackets and petticoats or frocks once every year, on or before the twenty-fifth day of December, on penalty of five shillings for every slave wanting.”51 By 1826, the laws regulating slaves’ dress had become less specific, no longer mentioning garments such as jackets or petticoats. They stated: That every possessor of slaves shall furnish to each, once a year proper and sufficient clothing, to be approved of by the justices and vestries of the parish under penalty of five pounds for each slave omitted . . . every possessor of slaves must specify the quantity and quality of the clothes he has furnished to their [sic] slaves.52
The law remained very much the same in 1831: “Every master, owner or possessor of slaves shall, once in every year provide and give to each slave . . . proper and sufficient clothing . . . under the penalty of five pounds . . . to be recovered in a summary manner before three justices of the peace.”53 There are several possible reasons that the law became increasingly less specific. The growth in the slave population – through both natural increase and steady growth in the number of slaves imported before 1807, when the slave trade was abolished – would have made it too expensive for slave owners to provide ready-made apparel for all their slaves. By the latter half of the eighteenth century, many planters and slave owners had begun importing inexpensive coarse European fabrics and Indian cotton for slave clothing. The paternalistic ritual of clothing distribution continued, but with fewer ready-made garments and the addition of the tools, such as needles and thread, necessary for slaves to
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stitch their own clothes. The eighteenth-century planter, historian and local politician Edward Long explained: “[Slaves] annually consume a large abundance of chequed linen, striped hollands, sustain blanketing, long ells, and baize, Kendal cottons, Oznaburgs [sic], canvas, coarse hats, woollen caps, cotton and silk handkerchiefs, knives, scissors, razors, buckles, buttons . . . thread, needles, pins . . .”.54 Osnaburg was the fabric most commonly distributed to slaves because it was the cheapest, most durable cotton fabric for rigorous plantation work. Durable fabrics lasted longer, reducing cost to the planter. On the Windsor Lodge and Paisley estates between 1833 and 1837, for instance, 2,676 yards of flax osnaburg were purchased for slaves.55 Mrs A.C. Carmichael, an Englishwoman who resided on her husband’s estate in St Vincent for nearly three years between 1820 and 1823 and travelled the Caribbean, argued that some planters preferred to distribute fabrics, adding: “The estates in some colonies give out the clothing ready made to put on, but [in] others, the more common plan is to distribute cloth with needles, threads, tapes . . .”.56 In these other colonies beyond St Vincent, slaves, then, were expected to sew their own clothes. Another factor that may have led to the decreasing specificity of the law was plantation accessibility. Many plantations with large slave populations were scattered throughout the island. The local assembly naturally relied on the vestry of each parish, which had easier access to plantations, to regulate slave clothing allowances. For example, in 1832 there were 670 sugar estates with about 155,000 slaves (about 50 per cent of the slave population); there were also 350 coffee plantations and 30 pimento estates with about 20,000 slaves. These figures do not include slaves in urban areas and those involved in non-agricultural economic activities.57 The slave laws regarding dress were left to the parish vestries to interpret and to administer as they saw fit. The vestry members of some parishes wielded considerable power and decided specifically what slaves within their parish should receive from their owners. On 6 February 1818, for example, the Vestry Office for the parish of St Elizabeth issued an order from the Clerk of the Vestry, Matthew Farquharson, who stated in his decree: Ordered, that the following be the quantity of clothing to be given by every owner to each Negro [slave] for the coming year: Every Negro above fifteen years old, eight yards of Oznaburgh, four yards of Baize or Pennistone, and
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one hat or cap and one handkerchief. Ditto, from seven to fifteen years old, six yards of Oznaburgh, three yards of Baize or Pennistone and one hat for boys. Ditto, ditto, six yards of Oznaburgh, three yards of Baize or Pennistone and one handkerchief for girls. Under seven years five yards of Oznaburgh and one handkerchief.58
Jamaica had no sumptuary laws – that is, laws regulating private expenditure – that stated exactly what African slaves could and could not wear, as was the case in some Caribbean islands, such as the Danish West Indies.59 The Jamaican laws sought only to guarantee the minimum clothing necessary for each enslaved individual. However, an attempt to implement at least one sumptuary law was made in 1745. Mr Peyton, a member of the Jamaican Assembly, presented to the House “according to order, a bill to prohibit the use of silk in burials, and to compel all persons to use cotton, instead there of ”.60 No explanation was given for his proposal, and it was never passed but repeatedly deferred and finally thrown out; we do not know, either, if it was directed specifically at slaves. Perhaps there was a shortage of silk on the island; or perhaps people regarded as inferior, free or enslaved, were using silk in their burial customs. Silk, a mark of status and wealth, had long been considered the fabric of the elite and rulers in many societies. Mr Peyton may have also been influenced by the slave codes in the Danish West Indies, where slaves were forbidden to wear silk – as well as gold, silver, precious stones, and lace and other expensive fabrics.61 Slaves caught wearing these items were arrested and the dress articles, deemed stolen goods, were handed over to their owners. In other colonies with sumptuary laws that prescribed slaves’ dress, “inappropriate” dress such as expensive jewellery was often confiscated by police and magistrates.62 Slave owners refused to believe that their slaves could have obtained these items by legitimate means and felt that such dress was beyond the slaves’ status. Nevertheless, African slaves continued to “dress up” on special occasions, and, in fact, the dress restrictions forced them to be more creative in the way they “made fashion”. Sumptuary laws existed in many societies, primarily to preserve class distinction. When members of the elite or nobility found their position encroached upon by those of the lower classes who had attained wealth, they passed laws to restore respect for the difference in rank. In ancient Rome, for example, clothing colour and fabric served to denote rank. Laws were passed restricting the peasantry to one colour, officers to two
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colours and members of the royal household to seven colours. Roman ambassadors were allowed to wear gold rings, and men were forbidden to wear silk garments of any sort. In France under King Charles IX, only princesses and duchesses could wear silk. In Elizabethan England, it was decreed that no man should walk in the streets in his cloak, but in a gown.63 Sumptuary laws were also used as a means of inducing people to save money. When nations are at war, rulers take precautions to prevent the people from spending extravagantly on clothing and other luxuries, which could lead the country into bankruptcy.64 Cultural historians J. Phillips and H. Staley have noted that in many jurisdictions sumptuary laws increased as fashion changed more frequently, but such laws were short-lived in many British colonies in the Americas.65 For example, in South Carolina the slave code of 1740 strictly regulated dress. However, the authorities never enforced the law; the planters ignored it; and by the 1840s it was pronounced unenforceable and worthy only of repeal.66 Although sumptuary laws may have regulated dress, they did not necessarily stifle creativity and cultural expression. In the French West Indies, sumptuary laws facilitated the development of elaborate dress styles and head-ties among the enslaved population. The styles reflected a blending of African and Islamic aesthetics with French high fashion. Lafcadio Hearn, visting the French islands, marvelled at the beauty of these dresses and argued that their brilliance was due to “some curious sumptuary law regulating the dress of slaves and coloured peoples of free condition . . . a law which allowed considerable liberty as to material and tint, prescribing chiefly form. . . . Some of these fashions suggest the Orient.”67 In Jamaica, clothing rations varied according to gender, status and occupation, as well as from parish to parish, since the parish vestries determined the minimum amount. Vestry members, being allied with the planters, cared little about the condition of the clothing the slaves received. Moreover, the law did not prevent some slave owners from withholding the clothing allowance as punishment or to reduce their estate expenses. Such was the case in 1823, when a plantation mistress and owner in the parish of Portland refused to provide clothing for her elderly slaves. After she learned that “she must allow them the same clothing and provisions, and comforts which they had always enjoyed”, she ordered the “old and good-for-nothing negroes free, as it would save
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the expense of maintaining them”.68 According to Cynric Williams, the elderly slaves decided to plead their case: When the time arrived for giving out the clothing, the four free men made their appearance with the others, and hoped they were to have their pennistone and Oznaburgh, for they had worked all their lives for mistress and brought up several children who were now working for her, and they were old and could not work to buy clothes themselves.69
The old men were eventually kept as slaves. Other elderly slaves in the same predicament may have suffered a worse fate. Planters were clearly concerned about the cost of clothing their slaves. Most preferred to buy their slave clothing from sources in England and have the goods shipped directly to Jamaica and delivered to the plantation. This proved less expensive than purchasing the fabrics locally at dry goods stores, which often carried a limited supply and could not meet the planters’ needs. Nonetheless, some planters still found the fabrics very expensive. The “Negro Accounts” of Hugh Hamilton’s estate showed that in July 1784, 447 yards of osnaburg cost £14 13s. 51/2d. By December 1787, the price had risen to 101/2d. per yard, and 428 yards were bought for £18 14s. 6d., along with three pounds of osnaburg thread at 3s. 9d. per pound. In 1789 the Duckenfield Hall estate’s account showed the cost of osnaburg to be 1s. 3d. per yard.70 The huge demand for fabric to clothe the growing slave population had driven up the price. As a result, some planters imported cheaper fabrics, such as pennistone, to cut costs; others blatantly broke the law and refused to clothe their slaves adequately. Nor did the slave laws prohibit planters from destroying additional clothes that slaves obtained by their own means. In a letter to her brother on 27 March 1836 the missionary Mary Ann Hutchins wrote: About thirty of our people [Baptist slaves] were thus met, when all was peace, the table spread, and the candles lighted . . . and in walked their busha [master/owner]. He began to beat them with a stick, declared there should be no Baptists there, tore their clothes, took their clean linen out of a trunk and trampled on it – stripped the clothes off one woman, struck two of them . . .71
Planters cared little about their slaves’ goods, including their clothing. Enslaved persons were property and legally could not own anything that was not their owner’s. The brutality Hutchins described served not only
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to humiliate the slaves but also – in ripping the clothes off a woman’s back – signalled the owner’s complete power over them, including their bodies. Slave women’s clothing was often the target of the planters’ anger and frustration. Planters knew that slaves valued their clothing, which was not easily obtainable, and therefore punished their slaves by destroying their garments. Slave men also destroyed clothing as a means of retaliation against their womenfolk. The planter Matthew Gregory Lewis revealed that one night on the neighbouring estate of Anchovy, a male slave discovered that his wife was sexually involved with a younger man. A quarrel developed between the couple. The husband, in a jealous rage, “demanded the clothes to be restored [to him] which he had formerly given her. On her refusal, he drew a knife and threatened to cut them off her back!”72 The dress on the woman’s body had become more than a mere garment; its position on the body was symbolic. Her husband, whose masculinity had been threatened, sought revenge by threatening in turn to expose her naked body, illuminating her vulnerability and powerlessness and simultaneously empowering him. Although the clothes were worn by her and had been given to her by her partner, they were a commodity that could be repossessed and thereby manipulated. In the process, the woman’s body was commodified; she became an object for her husband’s manipulation. Human ecologist Joanne Finkelstein posits that an “effective means of weakening an individual’s morality and identity [is] to strip him or her of clothes”.73 The stripped individual is not only humbled, humiliated and weakened but vulnerable and accessible to exploitation. The slave man in this case had appropriated the power relationship between the white planter and the enslaved population; as a consequence, the woman had become a target for his oppression. The planters did not encourage African customs in dress, nor did they provide clothing or cloth that was up to their own standards of dress. Rather, they distributed minimal European-style clothing and cheap cloth, both to differentiate themselves from their slaves and to force slaves to conform to the limited styles provided. Planters sought to civilize their African slaves, but only to a point: the slaves had to remain controllable, and their clothing could not be above their status. The planters’ concerns reflected their unacknowledged fear of the “naked savage” who, if not clothed in the garments of European civility, could not be controlled. On some plantations white mistresses assisted and supervised the distribution of slave garments. Mistresses occasionally 34
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gave their family’s worn-out clothes to slaves, knowing that the relationship thus created and encouraged a feeling of dependence on whites, while simultaneously reinforcing and maintaining social distance. Some mistresses made European-style clothing for their slaves. Mrs Carmichael, for instance, remarked that “[slaves’] dresses are made up very often by their mistress and her family: for two months before Christmas, and also before Easter, I used to be so busy as possible, cutting out dresses, superintending the trimmings and inventing different fashions for them”.74 However, that custom depended on the size of the estate’s slave population and the mistress’s other responsibilities. On a large plantation with hundreds of slaves, it would have been impractical for the mistress to try to make the necessary amount of slave clothing. In the southern United States prior to the Civil War, during the offseason periods in cotton production when less labour was needed in the fields, slaves regularly spun, wove and sewed, assisting their mistresses in making clothes for the plantations’ slave population. This was rare in Jamaica because sugar cane production was a year-round activity that required a substantial labour force. Assigning slaves to make clothes would have subtracted from the labour force in the fields, reducing production and preventing planters from realizing the maximum profit. Furthermore, in the US South there was a large population of white women who resided on the plantations; in Jamaica, few plantation mistresses stayed in the colony year-round. As plantations grew in size and the enslaved population increased over the years, it became more costeffective and easier to distribute fabrics, sometimes complemented by ready-made apparel, and have slaves make their own clothes in their spare time.75 Clothing designed and made by slaves was frequently scrutinized by the white elite; Mrs Carmichael remarked that it was “easy to trace the progress of civilization in different negroes [slaves] according to their style of everyday dress”.76 Like many of her contemporaries, Mrs Carmichael regarded European dress as a mark of civilization and progress and thus saw as “civilized” those slaves who dressed in a European fashion. By this means, Europeans like her dismissed the rich West African heritage in slave dress. Not all slaves heeded European influences in dress. Even slave children sometimes rejected the clothing they received. Mrs Carmichael spoke of one such child under her charge:
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The child used to tug at her frock which was all I asked her to wear, and when by no strength she could undo it, she would go to the boy’s pantry, and taking a knife, cut it off making her appearance at the door of my room, laughing with delight at her adroitness in getting rid of such an annoyance, and throwing the frock in at the door.77
Mrs Carmichael failed to recognize that the child’s dress might have been very uncomfortable to wear. Cheap, durable fabrics such as osnaburg were warm, coarse and harsh against the skin. In the US South, slaves commonly referred scornfully to osnaburg as “[d]at ole nigger-cloth”. One slave described the fabric’s texture as “jus’ like needles when it was new. Never did have to scratch our backs. Jus’ wriggle yo’ shoulders an yo’ back was scratched.”78 New slave clothing made of osnaburg or other rough fabrics had to be broken in, or washed several times to soften the material and achieve some feel of comfort against the skin. Some children and even young adults would have preferred to go without clothing rather than tolerate such discomfort. The inconsistencies across Jamaica in the provision of clothing for slaves, and the absence of sumptuary laws, provided enslaved Africans and their descendants with some control over their dress. Slaves who did not like the clothing they received sold it to other slaves and purchased refined fabrics if they could afford them. The planter William Beckford remarked in 1796 that slave women in Jamaica “[a]rray themselves in the finest linen, in the purchase of which they betray a determined extravagance.” He added: “The women take a pride in the number of their coats, and are not contented with any but what are made from the best materials of which likewise their hats and handkerchiefs are commonly composed.”79 Most slaves used their rations of osnaburg and other inexpensive fabrics for work overalls, saving the more refined and softer fabrics, such as muslin, for special occasions and as a means of elevating themselves within the slave society. Many slaves were aware of their legal rights regarding their allowance, and when their rations were late, some protested, “demanding” what was due to them.80 Since slaves received only the minimum amount of clothing, they had to supplement their yearly ration. Jamaican resident J. Stewart reported that the annual ration for most slaves was “as much osnaburgh as will make two frocks, and as much woollen stuff as will make a great coat”.81 Field slaves’ intensive manual labour, combined with the weathering of garments, hastened the rotting or wearing out of the meagre clothing slaves received. Planters expected their slaves to obtain any nec36
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essary additional clothing on their own. During the early decades of slavery, slaves of both sexes who did not have sufficient clothing often wore loincloths. Others, particularly young children, went naked. The shortage of clothing combined with the harsh working conditions made slaves susceptible to various diseases.82 For slave women, the lack of sufficient clothing represented dehumanization and defeminization; at the same time, the partially clothed slave woman represented the delights of forbidden sex for the master. Loincloths became less popular, especially among enslaved women, by the eighteenth century, as support grew for the idea that slaves should be treated humanely, including how they were clothed. Fearful that abolitionists and local missionaries would use the issue of inadequate clothing of slaves to gain popular support for their cause in England, planters provided clothing to their slaves. Another reason that slaves were better clothed was that planters had learned early on that those without at least the minimum clothing were at greater risk of disease, which could lead to serious loss of life among slaves and significant cost to the planters. In addition, during the same period and continuing into the nineteenth century, more fabrics were imported and distributed to meet the needs of the growing enslaved population. In the Atlantic trading network, clothing and cloth were common commodities, most of which went to clothing slaves. For example, in 1790 Jamaica imported from the British Isles 3,563 yards of cambric, 590,990 yards of plain cloth and 1,062 pounds of shoes. In 1792, imported apparel amounted to some 2,592 pairs of gloves, 519 hats, 3,178 pounds of shoes and 4,740,170 items of linen, cotton and silk manufactured goods.83 The increase in imports over time paralleled both the natural increase of the slave population as well as an increase in the yardage of fabrics distributed to each slave. For instance, the quantities of fabric distributed to slaves on the Harmony Hall plantation in the years 1799, 1811 and 1813 reflect a substantial increase over time in the cloth allotment for each slave. For example, most regular field male slaves received six yards of osnaburg in 1799, but by 1811 the distribution had increased to eight yards per slave. Although in 1813 the amount of osnaburg remained the same, the distribution of baize (to complement the osnaburg) had increased substantially from three yards in 1799 to five and a half yards by 1813. The account records for Windsor Lodge and Paisley Estate also reflect increases in distribution. However, these increases were not always consistent and varied from estate to estate.84 The increase in imported fabrics throughout the The Crossing
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period saw other fabrics introduced, such as pennistone which became as popular as osnaburg in some areas, and more fabrics and ready-made apparel were now available with which planters could clothe their slaves. Despite this, the slave woman’s body remained a target for sexual exploitation by the planter. Some slaves were able to purchase extra clothes with money they had saved and earned from selling their produce. Cynric Williams, in 1823, was surprised to see slaves purchasing “finery” and remarked, “[They were] laying down pieces of money that I had never thought to see in the hands of slaves . . . gold pieces worth here [in Jamaica] five pounds, six shillings and eight pence.”85 Theodore Foulks reported in 1833 that “[a] slave in the parish of Clarendon admitted that he made by this means, forty pounds annually”.86 The opportunity for slaves to make their own clothes and buy dress material to suit their own tastes meant that styles and patterns varied among the enslaved population. Even more important, it meant that both slave men and women could be culturally expressive in their dress. Laws regarding provision of slave clothing did not insist on equal distribution of clothing between enslaved men and women. Most vestries did not seem to care about this matter either. Slave women in Jamaica generally received less clothing than their male counterparts. Slave men with skills or those, such as slave drivers, who held supervisory positions over work gangs87 often received more clothing than other slaves. Mrs Carmichael stated: “Head negroes [usually men] on estates generally received some present in the way of clothing upon the conclusion of crop.”88 In this manner, planters encouraged and supported the separation of slave groups because it helped them to maintain control over the enslaved population. The pro-slavery writer Henry De La Beche observed in 1825 that on the plantations, enslaved people were divided into four groups when it came time to receive their clothes. The first group was the slave drivers (headmen) who received twenty yards of osnaburg and eight yards of blue baize each. The second group was apparently also male but consisted of the heads of various work groups, separate from the slave drivers. They received sixteen yards of osnaburg and eight yards of blue baize each. Women constituted the third class, each of whom received eleven yards of osnaburg, four yards of blue baize and five long ells of fabric. The children made up the last group, and each child received six yards of osnaburg and three yards of blue baize.89 On some well-regulated estates “the annual allowance was ten to twenty 38
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yards to every man; seven to fifteen to every woman and in proportion to the younger people”.90 De la Beche does not refer to unskilled slave men; his observation may require some modification if this group is included. Nor does he make any distinction between skilled and unskilled female slaves, instead lumping women together as a group. However, slave women were not a cohesive group. There were skilled female slaves who worked as midwives, seamstresses, washerwomen, nannies, cooks and other domestic servants; these women usually received a higher clothing allowance than unskilled female slaves – but far less than skilled male slaves. De la Beche’s observation was not unique. On the Worthy Park Estate in 1793, most skilled male slaves, such as carpenters, headmasons and blacksmiths, received ten yards of osnaburg and three yards of baize. In fact, a few skilled slave women, such as seamstresses and washerwomen, who did receive the same amount of osnaburg did not receive any baize. On the Harmony Hall Estate, in the parish of Trelawny, slave men also received more fabric than slave women, despite the fact that women’s clothing of the period required more yardage. In 1811, for example, male head slaves received twelve yards of osnaburg and six yards of blue baize each, and each regular male slave received eight yards of osnaburg. Meanwhile, female slaves received seven yards each and children, five yards. On the same estate in 1813, most men continued to receive eight yards each; the women, seven yards each.91 It is not known what skilled male slaves did with the extra clothing they received. It is quite possible that they kept it for themselves, or they may have sold it to earn some money. Some may have shared the surplus with family members, including their womenfolk. Single slave women, however, would not have benefited in this manner. Despite the diverse talents and skills of slave women, the planters embraced the notion that women were not as good workers as men, and therefore men’s skills and labour were more valued. Although slave women worked side by side with their male counterparts in the field, doing the same kinds of work, they were denied the same clothing rations as slave men. By rewarding male slaves for their skills with more clothing, the planters reaffirmed the patriarchal norms of the colonial society and simultaneously reemphasized women’s subordination, not only within the colonial order but also to their menfolk.
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Other British Caribbean colonies, such as Barbados, did specify the minimum dress. However, the slave codes were still vague and inconsistent, so dress styles and clothing allowances varied considerably. The Barbados slave law of 1825, for instance, required that masters provide their slaves each year with “decent clothing according to the custom of the island”. The Bahamas law of 1824 called for “two suits of proper clothing and sufficient clothing” each year; and the Trinidad ordinance of 1800 stipulated, “two shifts of clothing complete”.92 British West Indian planters were committed to maintaining slavery but also tried to run their plantations as profitable enterprises; they therefore sought to narrowly restrict expenditures on slaves. They did this by providing the minimum clothing allowances to their unskilled labourers and rewarding only skilled workers. Throughout the British Caribbean, it was common for tradesmen, slave drivers and similarly privileged slaves to receive the same fabrics or clothing as other slaves but in larger amounts. As a result, “inequalities” and “distinctions” existed in each territory.93 Historian Barry Higman writes that, at a minimum, “men most often [had] a jacket, shirt, trousers, and hat or cap; and women a jacket, petticoat, and hat. Handkerchiefs were generally used by the women as head ties, while men wore Kilmarnock caps.”94 Higman does not examine the relation between gender and distribution. Many enslaved women throughout the British Caribbean colonies may have received less clothing than their male counterparts; however, this matter requires further study. Because many slave women in Jamaica received smaller clothing rations than men, they had to find alternative ways of obtaining additional clothing. Some slave women stole clothing from their masters or mistresses. Mrs Carmichael, for instance, frequently complained that her washerwomen had a tendency to “lose” articles of clothing.95 Others were able to buy extra garments and fabrics with money saved up. These items could be purchased in open-air linen markets that existed throughout the region but were most prevalent in the Eastern Caribbean. A few items were probably available in the regular markets frequented by slaves (see Figure 1.1). Fabrics purchased by slaves could be stitched into various styles by local seamstresses for the slave women who could afford it. Slave women with sewing skills were thus able to earn money. The planter Thomas Thistlewood, for example, revealed in 1786 that his slave mistress, Phibbah, made him a present of “£10 18s. 11/2d., all in silver: money she 40
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had earned by sewing, baking cassava and selling muskmelons and watermelons out of her ground”.96 Seamstresses who sewed both for the mistress in the great house and for the members of the slave community were often regarded as elite slaves. Archaeological digs at two sites suggest that a thriving cottage industry in clothing manufacture developed among slaves across the island. The dig at the Drax Hall plantation’s slave village, in the parish of St Ann, unearthed large quantities of buckles, brass thimbles, scissors, thread spools and buttons made of bone, shell, metal, glass and porcelain. The Seville plantation dig also produced buttons made of iron, brass and bone, along with brass and iron buckles (see Figure 1.2). A close examination of these artefacts reveals that the brass buttons and buckles were imported. However, slaves most likely obtained their brass buttons and buckles by means of trade in the local markets or from the planter and mistress in the great house. Most buttons found in the slave village areas were made of local materials; the large quantity of bone buttons suggests that bone was the most common. Animal bone, of course, would have been cheap and easily obtainable. The bone was cut, cleaned and rubbed or filed into the desired shape, size The Crossing
Figure 1.2 Metal buckles made by slaves from the Seville plantation dig
Courtesy Institute of Jamaica
Courtesy National Library of Jamaica
Figure 1.1 The Linen Market, c.1700s. A linen market in the Eastern Caribbean. Similar markets may have existed in Jamaica.
20 mm
41
Courtesy Institute of Jamaica
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Figure 1.3 Bone buttons made by slaves from the Seville plantation dig
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and texture. Holes were bored into the object for easy passage of a needle and thread (see Figure 1.3). The beauty, intricacy and precision of the carving on these buttons bear witness to the 20 mm talent and the superb craftsmanship that existed among Jamaican slaves. Thin strips of iron were also cut, shaped and welded together to make buttons, and iron was used to make belt buckles for male and female slaves. It is not known where slaves obtained the iron for working; it could have been purchased, stolen, received as a gift or collected 20 mm from the scrap heap of the estate. The iron would have been heated to a high temperature by a craftsman or blacksmith and hammered into the required shape. Archaeologist Douglas Armstrong points out that the artefacts found at Drax Hall show a slight increase in the number of clothing items recovered from each successive time period, implying increasing use of manufactured as well as locally tailored clothing. According to Armstrong, the artefacts reflect “a greater degree of personal freedom and perhaps the development of local cottage industries associated with sewing”.97 Some slave women received extra clothing as a reward for bearing children and to commemorate special events. These women were able to increase their social standing within the enslaved community, especially if the clothes were of European style. Matthew Gregory Lewis, for example, gave “each [slave] mother a present of a scarlet girdle with a silver medal in the centre . . . [it] entitled her to marks of peculiar respect . . . and receiving a larger portion [of dress] than the rest”.98 During the festivities to commemorate the opening of the new hospital on Lewis’s estate, every woman received “a flaming red stuff petticoat”.99 The planter Gilbert Mathison in 1810 created a formal code for his overseer, which guaranteed each slave woman who gave birth to a child a calico or linen frock for herself and two for the child when it reached the age of one month.100 Although slave women who received extra clothes in this manner were socially elevated within the slave society, for planters like Lewis and Mathison, the slave woman’s body was a matter of economic interest. The more slave women reproduced, the larger the labour force to increase production and profitability. The exploitation of The Language of Dress
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women’s labour was not enough; enslaved women were expected to be breeding machines, reproducing in exchange for the basic necessities of life. Hilary Beckles argues that the enslaved woman’s “inner world” – her fertility, sexuality and maternity – were not her own but were placed on the market as capital assets to be manipulated for the benefit of the planter class.101 Some slave women received extra clothing from white men in exchange for sexual favours. The eighteenth-century historian Thomas Atwood declared that slave women were prostitutes who submitted to white men in exchange for money or clothes.102 However, as Deborah Gray White has pointed out, this argument was based on the planters’ view that slave women were “governed almost entirely by their libido, a Jezebel character”.103 The heading for this section, “Me Know No Law, Me Know No Sin”, was the title of a popular eighteenth-century Jamaican slave song in patois, recorded by the European bookkeeper J.B. Moreton. In it enslaved women described how some of them received “fine muslin coats” from their masters in exchange for “sweet embraces”. An extract of this song according to Moreton’s documents is as follows: Altho a slave me is born and bred my skin is black, not yellow I often sold my maiden head to many a handsome fellow My massa keep me once for true, and give me clothes wid busses Fine muslin coats, wid bitty too To gain my sweet embraces . . . Him, Obisha, him de come one Night, and give me gown and Busses; Him get one pickinny, white! almost as white as missess. Then missess fum me wid long switch, And say him for da massa; My massa curse her, “lying bitch!” And tell her, “buss my rassa!” Me fum’d when me no condescend Me fum’d too if me do it; Me no have no one for t’and My friend, So me am for’cd to Do it.
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Me know no law, me know no sin, Me is just what ebba them make me; This is the way dem bring me in; So God nor devil take me!104
The song gives poignant insight into the painful realities of enslaved women’s lives. Some of them were forced to “do it” – submit to the planters’ desires. Worst of all, they had “no one for t’and my friend” [no friend to turn to for help]. Some slave women submitted to their master’s lust for fear of being sold if they rejected him. Such a punishment would have been excruciating for a woman, separating her from her family. The fear of being sold and disrupting the slave family unit was so intense that the slave woman had no alternative but to yield to the planter’s desires and to accept the clothes he gave her. The fact that Jamaican slave women created the song suggests that this was a common reality faced by many; perhaps the song united and consoled women who shared similar experiences. Furthermore, as Deborah Gray White has argued, there was no reason for slave women to disbelieve that even freedom could be bought for the price of their bodies. As a consequence, some women took the risk and offered themselves. When they did so, “they breathed life into the image of Jezebel”.105 Whether or not slave women desired these relationships is irrelevant; “the conventional wisdom was that black women were naturally promiscuous and they desired such connections”.106 Indeed, not all enslaved women who accepted clothing in exchange for sexual favours were forced. Some slave women used their sexuality to gain various favours, including European dress, as a means of “civilizing” themselves and embracing the dominant white culture. Others probably accommodated willingly to European dress because they were lured by the soft muslins and other expensive fabrics. For some slave women, such a dress enhanced their prestige and influence among fellow slaves. An example of how European dress served as a mark of social standing was the case of a slave woman named Venus. In 1815 Matthew Gregory Lewis described his encounter with her. She had been the mistress of the previous estate owner and was famous for her large breasts – hence her nickname, Big Joan. Her status as mistress to the plantation owner (now Lewis) was usurped by a younger slave woman. Venus confronted Lewis and demanded that the petticoat given to her rival be given to her. She considered the petticoat essential to maintaining her status on the estate against her rival. Lewis reported that she argued that 44
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she had “always worked for him [Lewis] well, and therefore ought to have quite as much petticoat”. Lewis stated, “I tried to convince her that for Venus to wear a petticoat of blue durant, or indeed any petticoat at all, would be quite unclassical: but the goddess of beauty stuck to her point, and finally carried off the petticoat.”107 Venus’s ability to argue for and obtain the petticoat was admirable, but the scenario is filled with complex meanings. Venus, in both name and symbolism, was a mirror that reflected colonial society’s obsession with the enslaved woman’s body and its nexus with sexual and racial mythology.108 Hence, the petticoat alluded to an identity that was constructed and shaped by the colonial discourse – that of the “wench”. The case of Venus and the petticoat is important because it shows the ability of enslaved women, despite inferior racial and sexual status, to manipulate some white men to their own advantage. Venus was able to argue for and finally command the petticoat from her master. She persuaded him that the petticoat was important to her, and she succeeded in getting what she wanted. Like Venus, women who bartered sexual favours in exchange for clothes or other ornaments exercised a type of power (though the planter’s argument that the petticoat was not suitable for Venus because it would make her “unclassical” represented his imposition of his own idea of beauty). According to French historian and philosopher Michel Foucault, “sexuality constitutes a particularly dense transfer point for relations of power, and power is diffuse and comes from below in manifold relationships of force”.109 Although Foucault’s analysis of power enables some understanding of resistance, it does not refer to the oppression of women embodied in rape and sexual harassment. As slaves, African women had few choices. They were forced to do what was necessary to survive and preserve their family. An enslaved woman’s suffering was twofold: by day she was at the mercy of the planter’s whip in the fields, and at night her body was considered by the planter to be both public and available for his pleasure. The constant exposure of their bodies during whippings and labour in the fields reduced slave women’s function to mere sex objects. The objectification of slave women disempowered them within the colonial structure and simultaneously shielded white women from the planters’ carnal lust. The slave song “Me Know No Law, Me Know No Sin” captured the essence of many slave women’s lives. They knew no laws because the laws did not benefit them but only regulated their exploitation. They knew no The Crossing
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sin because their enslavers already labelled them as promiscuous and sinful. In the planter’s view, slave women were Jezebels by nature and knew no better. Despite all this, there was an area of these women’s lives that was not sinful, where they could turn for some sense of freedom and cultural expression: their dress.
The Colour and Fabric of Plantation Dress [The immigrants to the New World had the] opportunity not only to be born again, but to be born again in new clothes. . . . The new setting would provide new raiments of self. – Toni Morrison, Playing in the Dark
African slaves could make their own clothes, and some became accomplished at sewing. Edward Long, for example, complimented the slaves he met by remarking that they were “expert at their needles”,110 while Bernard Senior reported in 1835 that slaves, in particular house slaves, were “generally good seamstresses”.111 Although the law required slave owners to provide their slaves with osnaburg fabric, all slaves did not dress alike. In fact, slave dress reflected diversity, class and differentiation within Jamaican slave society. Dress among some slaves, especially elite slaves, varied from plantation to plantation, great house to great house, as well as between urban and rural areas. Urban slaves, who sometimes received cast-off clothing from their owners, were often better and more elaborately dressed than field slaves, and their clothes reflected superior status. Dress also varied according to slave occupation. Many urban slave women preferred long, brightly coloured skirts made from refined cloth such as muslin or cotton rather than osnaburg, with beads and even gold jewellery as accessories.112 The standard slave dress among rural and field slaves was less elaborate than that of urban slaves, consisting of an osnaburg or checked frock or smock, a pair of osnaburg or sheeting trousers and a coarse hat for men, and an osnaburg or coarse linen shift, a petticoat and – according to their taste and circumstances – a handkerchief to use as a headwrap for women. On a few occasions slaves were provided with a coat. Shoes were not very common and were reserved for special occasion, such as dances and carnivals.113 46
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On some plantations the women wore their skirts pulled over a cord tied around the hips, exposing their legs as high as the knee (see Figures 2.5 and 3.23). This style provided greater freedom of movement, enabling women to more easily carry out their daily tasks. It also kept their skirts dry when they were crossing rivers. This outfit, called the pull skirt, was often complemented by a headwrap and sometimes a broad-brimmed straw hat placed over the headwrap.114 Many slave women displayed African cultural characteristics in their dress. Adherence to African styles was reinforced by the continuous arrival of Africans – as slaves until the end of the slave trade in 1807, and as indentured labourers between 1841 and 1867. The African customs that were brought across the Atlantic to Jamaica reflected both the resourcefulness and the ingenuity of African people. In Jamaica, African women used the skills they had acquired in West Africa to obtain suitable raw materials from their environment for their clothing. The Africans acquired some knowledge of native plants from indigenous Caribbean people, and they built on this knowledge and developed it further. They also passed it on to their descendants.115 Africans looked for plants that could be used to make bark-cloth and dyes to colour the fabrics they received from their enslavers. This required a process of trial and error until they learned to “make fashion” with what was available to them. For slave women, particularly rural slaves, the nurturing of an African aesthetic in their dress allowed them to dress up or “nice up” the drab, plain clothing they received from the planters, to transform their appearance from a slave aesthetic to a more pleasing and familiar African mode in dress. Moreover, the less like a slave one looked, the better the individual was perceived by others within the colonial society. Edward Long revealed that Jamaicans dyed fabrics with juices extracted from roots and plants, just as their African ancestors did.116 Long listed the various dyes and pigments used, some of which were later adopted by Europeans in Jamaica and even used in local manufacturing. Some Europeans experimented with the natural substances and produced dye solutions. The plants used by Africans to make dyes and pigments included indigo-berry, which stained paper or linen a fine blue colour, and scarlet-seed, a shrubby tree found in the Red Hills and Spanish Town areas, whose seeds produced a scarlet pigment used by both dyers and painters. The oil of the cashew nut tinted linen a rusty colour, and the milky juice from the cashew trunk produced a permaThe Crossing
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nent black dye. Other dye solutions were obtained from the annotto or roucou tree, vine sorrel, acacee (acacia), bissy (kola) bark, logwood, prickly pear (cactus), prickly yellow wood and the shrubby goat rue. Juices from the marinade root or yaw-weed were also used to make dye solutions. Lignum vitae leaves were used to refresh the colours in faded fabric. Long did provide a substantial list of dyes and pigments, but he did not give detailed information on all the dyes or the process of making the dye solutions. Nevertheless, the list of plant sources gives an impression of extensive dye production. Enslaved men and women also used Jamaican indigenous plants like the smaller mahoe for other purposes, such as making ropes and hammocks.117 Although the process of dye making continued among African slaves and their descendants, there is no evidence to date to confirm that weaving cotton into textiles, as was done in Africa, was widely practised in Jamaica. Slaves did weave plant fibre but rarely cotton. At the recent archaeological dig at Drax Hall plantation, for example, no evidence of cotton weaving was found. Although some cotton was grown in Jamaica, spinning was not common either. In some British territories in the Caribbean, such as Berbice, spinning and weaving were done on cotton plantations by a small number of slaves who also worked in the fields.118 In the United States, slave women did a lot of sewing, weaving and spinning of cotton, since, in most cases, slaves in the United States were expected to make their own clothing. Weaving and spinning were often done by older slave women who were too weak to work in the fields, but this work could also be done by younger women on a quota basis after fieldwork was finished for the day.119 There were several reasons for the absence of widespread cotton weaving in Jamaica. The amount of cotton grown on the island was too small to have an impact on the local economy. Furthermore, most British West Indian economies, including Jamaica, specialized in growing sugar cane. Growing cotton for the purpose of weaving textiles would have competed with the British cotton industry. Edward Long recognized this when he stated that [t]here is little of it [cotton] worked up at the places of its growth, except in the fabrics of hammocks; and even this little branch has never yet reached Jamaica. In some parts of the island, as in Vere, a few industrious housewives make knit stockings with it, for their families; but some few planters spin their own wick for lamps in crop time; but, probably, not a third of a bag is spent in this way, as the greater number buy what is imported from Great
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Britain . . . which is proof of great value of the West India colonies, which do not rival Great Britain in manufactures, over those which are dangerous competitors with her.120
A cotton industry in the colony not only would have competed with British manufacturers but also would have required slave labour that was used for sugar production. Therefore, a local cotton industry that required weaving and spinning skills was not encouraged by the colonial power. The Jamaican economy was so dependent on sugar production that attempts in 1841 to diversify and revitalize the declining economy with cotton and silk manufacturing failed.121 Another factor was that the British West Indian colonies were closely tied into the Atlantic trading network. The absence of a local textile industry meant that the colonial society was forced to depend on Britain for manufactured goods such as cloth and clothing. The trade between Britain and her West Indian colonies, including Jamaica, provided an abundance of British apparel and textiles for large numbers of settlers and colonized people. In addition, the colonies offered Britain both an easily accessible market for her manufactured goods and a large and rapidly expanding consumer society consisting of a predominantly African slave population. Slaves’ consumption of British textiles, along with their limited spending power to purchase some refined fabrics in local markets, suggests that their role as consumers from the seventeenth century onward contributed to the economic growth, longevity and prosperity of Britain’s vibrant textile industry. African slaves were familiar with the techniques used in the manufacture of cloth and textiles, such as spinning and weaving, since these were practised in Africa. However, the availability and distribution of fabrics and clothing to slaves meant that the need for these skills did not arise in Jamaica. Knitting was introduced by Europeans and was practised by some slaves. This was primarily a European craft, done by a few industrious white housewives, as Long stated earlier, and taught to African slaves.122 Knitting is still popular in Jamaica today. The absence of sources regarding quilt-making among slaves suggest that this activity, too, was rare in Jamaica. Unlike in the US South, where quilting was a popular occupation for female slaves in winter months, in most of Jamaica the climate was too warm for quilts. On plantations located at high altitude or in cool regions of the island, slaves received blankets to keep warm.
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One of the most interesting African dress customs that was maintained and nurtured in Jamaica by African slaves was the production of bark-cloth and lace-bark. As in West Africa, Jamaican slaves learned to make clothing from various plant materials as early as the seventeenth century. The English King Charles II, for example, who reigned from 1660 to 1685, was presented with a lace-bark cravat by Sir Thomas Lynch, who served as governor of Jamaica from 1671 to 1674 and again from 1682 to 1684.123 The thriving bark industry was very important to the livelihood of some slaves and freed people; it required the services of large numbers of people, from tree spotters, loggers and bark cutters to artisans, dyers and seamstresses. Undoubtedly, the work involved in bark production brought some financial rewards to the participants. According to Edward Long, clothing in the eighteenth century was also made from coratoe leaf, mahoe bark, date tree, mountain cabbage and the down-tree-down.124 Long did not elaborate on all the plants or exactly how most of them were manufactured into clothes, so the details of the bark-cloth industry remain largely unknown. European settlers did use the products, and many may well have profited from their slaves’ activities in this industry. In a series of interviews, several elderly Maroons in Accompong Town explained that often the bark was stripped and beaten soft, and then the fibre was pulled out, separated, carded or combed to untangle it, and dried. The fibre was then woven into textile, sewed or tied, and worn. Banana fibres, obtained from the bark, and coratoe fibre, obtained from the cactus-like leaves, were treated in the same manner. Other trees whose bark was used for making fabric included the jimmy, or whitebark, and the trumpet tree. In these cases, the bark was stripped down to the thin inner layer. This thin strip was beaten, dried and woven together.125 The exact weaving technique is no longer known; the knowledge has been lost over the decades. Nor do we know if the weaving was done on looms or if it consisted of twisting and plaiting by hand, similar to the weaving of baskets or mats. It is even possible that the weaving of these plant fibres was similar to the process of making raffia cloth in the Congo. Long reported that the most popular form of bark clothing made by slaves and freed persons came from the laghetto tree and its relative, the bon-ace.126 The laghetto, also known as the lace-bark tree, had laurel-like leaves and was found in the woods of Vere in the parish of Clarendon, and also the parish of St Elizabeth. It was native to Jamaica, Cuba and 50
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Hispaniola, and grew in woodlands on limestone hills. The tree was valued in all three territories for its medicinal properties and as material for manufactured products. The tree grew to between five and ten metres tall.127 The inner bark was of a fine, though very tough, texture and could be divided into a number of thin filaments, which, after being soaked in water, could be drawn out by the fingers. It was rolled into large “puff balls”, dried and then stretched in the sun to be naturally bleached white (see Figures 1.4, 1.5, 1.6). The end product resembled fine lace but could also imitate linen and gauze.128 Edward Long recalled: The ladies [slaves and freedwomen] of the island are extremely dexterous in making caps, ruffles, and complete suits of lace with it; in order to bleach it, after being drawn out as much as it will bear, they expose it stretched to the sunshine, and sprinkle it frequently with water. . . . It bears washing extremely well . . . with common soap . . . and [is] equal to the best artificial lace. . . . The wild Negroes [Maroons] have [also] made apparel with it of a very durable nature.129 Figure 1.4 Laghetto or lace-bark branch showing the fibre that resembles lace or linen
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Courtesy Institute of Jamaica
The bark of the bon-ace tree, found near Montego Bay, spread like the laghetto bark; however, it was not as durable and therefore not used as much in clothing. The laghetto, or lace-bark, tree was so durable that it was used for other products. The bark and fibre were used to make ropes, hammocks and whips. The actual lace fibre or filament was used to make doilies or “fern mats” to decorate tables and other furniture, and it was also used in the kitchen as a sieve or strainer. Other clothing and accessories made from lace-bark included bonnets, fans and slippers, and both men and women used laghetto linen for mourning attire.130 The plant fibre was used most in clothing manufacture. The fact that lace-bark could be used as regular lace and imitation linen would have been appealing to many members of the enslaved community. Like contemporary linen, clothes made from this type of fibre would have kept the body cool and relatively comfortable in hot weather, and would have served as an ideal fabric for dress-up occasions. Another reason for the popularity of locally made lace-bark linen could have been its affordability and accessibility – there was an abundance of readily available trees for lace-bark produc-
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tion. Imported European manufactured lace and refined fabrics such as silk and muslin were expensive and beyond the reach of many slaves. Moreover, bark-cloth production was not as time-consuming or difficult as spinning and weaving entire textiles and therefore could be done during slaves’ free time. The Herbal Council member of the Accompong Town Maroons, Mrs Caroline Ena Lawrence, remembered her mother telling her about lace-bark. She recalled that her grandmothers and great-grandmothers made lace blouses and frills for dresses and skirts, and that some women wore “stylish” outfits consisting of a lace-bark blouse and a banana-fibre or coratoe-fibre skirt.131 Descriptive evidence of dress patterns or designs made from lace-bark and bark linen is scarce. Nonetheless, Long’s account suggests some European influences on styles, with reference to suits and frills. Early records by Sir Hans Sloane and Edward Long reaffirm that the popular clothing industry based on lace-bark and bark-cloth production developed early on in Jamaica, and by the eighteenth century, slaves, freed persons and Maroons were involved. It is logical that the Maroons were the ones most extensively engaged in this industry by then; sugar was “king” by that time, and those working in cane production would have had little time for other activities. Furthermore, lace-bark forests were located predominantly in the regions of Jamaica designated as part of Maroon territories. The peace settlements with the Maroons in the eighteenth century would have given the Maroons greater control over the industry. Edward Long does not mention men’s participation in bark clothing production during this period, which suggests that women not only made the lace products but also traded and controlled the industry. Men may have helped with logging and harvesting the bark, but the actual lace production remained an exclusively female activity, at least for a while. This enabled women to provide clothing for themselves, their family and members of the slave community. Most likely, Jamaican women, both slave and freed, found lace making more profitable and worthwhile than weaving textiles and concentrated their efforts in the lace-bark industry when they could. Since male slaves received more clothing than females did, men may have seen no need to participate in making clothing. Others, perhaps, chose not to be involved because of a stigma associated with bark-cloth: in some West African societies, such as the Ashanti, bark-cloth was made and worn by the poorest slaves.132 From the nineteenth century onward, some male slaves and freedmen 52
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Courtesy David Boxer Collection of Jamaican Photography
got directly involved in lace-bark production, as seen in Figures 1.5 and 1.6, perhaps influenced by the financial successes of the women in the community. Bark-cloth production continued to be an important industry into the early twentieth century. Slavery affected men and women in different ways. Slave women were expected to be creative and flexible. They worked in the fields during the day and in the slave household at night. Yet they kept many customary practices of African dress alive. Slave women’s essential roles as mothers, healers, teachers and even spiritual leaders within the slave community made them ideal conduits for the transmission of African customs in dress. As slaves, African women and their descendants had contributed to the success of the colonial economy, yet they were not allowed to enjoy the fruits of their labour. Their innovation and experimentation in dress, such as making and using bark-cloth, was a response to their oppressed state and a desire to create their own economic sphere. The popularity of bark-cloth and lace-bark suggests that a trading network and market system developed, based on bark products. This enabled some women to trade and be financially independent of their menfolk. Slave women’s labour determined the standard of living within the enslaved household. They were expected to take care of the house, raise the children, and make the clothes so everyone could be presentable. They were also responsible for the personal hygiene of family members, which included caring for clothes. European propaganda had long portrayed slaves as unclean and filthy, and perhaps some slaves were demoralized by their oppressed state and thus indifferent to filth. Yet Africans were familiar with the importance of cleanliness. West Africans had a reputation for personal
Figure 1.5 Preparing Lace Bark, Jamaica, c.1890s. Photograph taken from nineteenthcentury postcard by Astley Smith.
Courtesy University of the West Indies Library
Figure 1.6 A Piece of Prepared Lace Bark, c.1890s. Photograph taken from nineteenthcentury postcard by Astley Smith.
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cleanliness, whereas many Europeans, especially the English, for a long time “suffered from the reputation for avoiding soap and water”.133 Africans, accustomed to bathing daily, could hardly believe the filth of their European enslavers. The Industrial Revolution brought social changes in Britain, and people began to take washing more seriously. The demand for soap increased, and palm oil from West Africa became the major ingredient in the manufacture of soaps. African slaves and freed persons took care of their personal appearance, and they enjoyed looking good and dressing up for special occasions. Slaves regularly surprised their owners by their indifference to their appearance during the work week and their attention to their appearance for festivities, religious ceremonies and market day. Their attention to clothing suggests a positive attitude towards their appearance.134 The process of caring for clothes was often tedious and lengthy, depending on the quantity of clothes and the colour and types of fabrics. Slaves turned to their environment for tools, including plants to make soap and to assist in the care of their clothes. Edward Long reported that vegetable soap was made from the coratoe cactus and the broad-leafed broomweed, and that perfume, for the body and the clothes, was obtained from muskwood and rosewood. Some plants, such as soapberry bush and soapwood, were popular for their natural soap properties and easy availability.135 Soapwood leaves, when rubbed against clothes in water, produced thick, sweet-scented suds that left clothes smelling and looking clean. The green leaves did not stain the garments, and after use they were shaken off the clothes. These plants were also used in bathing. Other plants used as soap and to create suds were the lignum vitae leaves, which prevented colours from fading, and choppedup or broken-up young ackee pods.136 The planter’s clothes were cared for by washerwomen, who were elite slaves and worked in the great house, sometimes under the supervision of the mistress. The white elite did not allow their clothes to be mingled with those of their slaves; their clothes were washed separately, usually on specific days. Garments were often sorted for washing according to colour, and undergarments were washed separately. As in Africa, slave women in rural Jamaica washed clothes in rivers and streams; they beat the clothes on rocks with a paddle or stones to get rid of heavy dirt and used carved coconut husk as a brush to get out difficult stains (see Figure 1.7).
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Courtesy National Library of Jamaica
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Figure 1.7 West Indian Washer Women, c.1779, by Agostino Brunias. Note the washerwomen beating the clothes with paddles.
The white elite viewed the process of beating clothes on rocks as backward and primitive, and some felt that this treatment damaged the clothes.137 Most white settlers preferred their clothes to be washed in tubs with a scrub-board as was customary in Europe, and the practice was adopted in urban Jamaica. White clothes were usually scalded (stirred in boiling water) and then hung in the bright sunlight to bleach. Dried and crumpled clothes were pressed with a hot iron heated on a coal or wood stove.138 In some areas of Jamaica, clothes are still washed this way, although natural plant soaps are no longer popular. In 1823, the visitor Cynric Williams described an encounter as follows: The Crossing
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I overtook a girl on the road with a veil over her face, which I thought at first to be lace, but found to be made of the bark of a tree; it is drawn out by the hand while the bark is green, and has a very pretty effect. I slackened my pace for the pleasure of conversing with her. She was mounted on an ambling pony, and was attended by a negro boy on foot. . . . She was herself free, and the negro boy was her slave.139
Williams’s experience with this veiled girl brings up several thoughts about dress and class in Jamaican colonial society. The girl’s veil was most likely made from laghetto bark (see Figure 1.8), and it apparently was not only pretty but also very thin in texture, like regular lace, so much so that Williams was deceived at first glance. What is most interesting, however, is that the girl was wearing a veil. Evidence of slave or freed women in the British Caribbean wearing veils is rare. Williams apparently was captivated with the veiled woman and perhaps found it pleasant to converse with her. His curiosity may also have been aroused because he had not seen a veiled woman before
Figure 1.8 Freed woman wearing lace-bark veil. Illustration by author, based on interpretation of Cynric Williams’s account.
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during his tour of the island, which would suggest that veiling was not common in Jamaican society. The young woman could have been wearing a veil for one of several reasons. Perhaps she wore it to cover facial scarring or disfigurement. It may have been an adaptation of the mantilla, which was popular among female immigrants from the Spanish colonies. It may have been a reflection of Islamic influence in dress brought over by early Muslim slaves from Africa or early Spanish slaves of Moorish descent and adopted by some Jamaican women over the years. She may herself have been a Muslim who embraced this Islamic custom. Although we know very little about Muslim slaves in Jamaica, we do know that there was a Muslim community in the nineteenth century, and that some Muslim slaves, like Muhammad Kaba in the parish of Manchester, corresponded with Muslims in Africa.140 Through correspondence, Muslims in Jamaica were made aware of Islamic dress customs in Africa and could introduce them to the faithful in Jamaica. In any case, the girl’s veil set her apart as an elite woman or a person of some social standing among the freed black and free coloured population. Although this form of dress was not common, the evidence suggests that some Jamaican slave and freed women may have worn veils as a mark of their status and wealth, as was customary among some classes of Muslim women in West Africa.141 The girl’s veil and her possession of a slave boy and a pony were signs of some affluence. We know nothing about this veiled girl travelling to Black River, apart from Williams’s reference to her. He did not mention her name but did state that she was free. He did not refer to her in his usual manner of describing mulatto women as “brown girls”, which suggests that she was of African descent or black. If he had requested more information from her, he might have appeared inappropriately “familiar”. Despite this, he managed to learn that her journey was to “lodge a complaint against a white man for having threatened and even offered violence to her person” and that she “thought it very wicked and very unlike a gentleman, for the King George to take away people’s negroes [slaves] without paying them”.142 The veiled girl’s ability to travel to report her problems to the authorities again suggests a privileged status, and her argument for compensation to slave owners for the freedom of their slaves reflected her own interest as a slave owner. Freed persons who possessed slaves and money were materially and socially superior to the slave community and sought to maintain their status. The Crossing
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Courtesy National Library of Jamaica
Like many African women, Jamaican slave women liked beads. The planter Matthew Gregory Lewis stated that enslaved women were “Decked out with a profusion of beads and corals, and gold ornaments of all descriptions.”143 And another planter, William Beckford, stated: “They [slave women] are particularly fond of beads, coral, glass and chains with which they adorn their necks and wrists.”144 The illustration Negro Mode of Nursing (see Figure 1.9) shows one example of slave women’s dress and their fascination with beads. The woman seems to be leaving the plantation. She is depicted holding her young child in one arm, and in the other hand she carries what appears to be a calabash water holder, perhaps to quench their thirst on the journey. In the background another woman can be seen carrying a
Figure 1.9 Negro Mode of Nursing, Barbados, c.1830, by R. Bridgens
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bundle of what appears to be either grass or cane on her head, in African fashion. In the nearby distance, a man is seated, smoking, by the slave cottage. The scene evokes an image of the tireless, hardworking woman. The relaxed posture of the man and the quiet background suggest that work in the fields is over, but the woman’s work within the slave household continues. The woman’s dress is simple, consisting of a blouse and a piece of striped fabric wrapped around her waist in typical West African style. Her dress is not typical work garb; instead, she is clearly dressed up for her journey. She wears a headwrap and is barefoot. Planters did not distribute shoes to their slaves; they were therefore uncommon except for long journeys and special occasions, if one could afford it. In this case, the woman in the illustration may not be going far. Those slaves who travelled over rocky roads made themselves sandals from oxhide bound with thongs.145 The most outstanding feature of the woman’s dress is her necklace of layered beads. The child in the picture is dressed in a floral-print fabric wrapped around the waist and tied at the back. It is interesting to note that the artist depicted the child with monkey-like facial features. Offensive graphic representation of Africans was common during slavery and was an attempt to dehumanize the African race. Slave women in Jamaica obtained beads by various means. Some were purchased or bartered for in the local markets. Some were smuggled over on slave ships, and slave owners and managers gave some as gifts. Edward Long mentioned that slaves’ clothing rations included “small glass, ribbons, beads, thread . . . all or most of them of British growth or manufacture”.146 Realizing that slave women were fond of beads, planters sought to facilitate this aspect of their dress in the hope of pacifying them, thus making them better workers who were less likely to rebel. During the archaeological dig at the slave village on Drax Hall plantation, glass beads were the second most common clothing artefacts found (buttons were the first). Of all the beads found, 42 per cent were located in house areas and 7 per cent in shed areas. The beads were of diverse colours. It is believed that beads were placed in slave burials, as was done in Barbados. The large number of beads found during the dig at Drax Hall suggests that they were highly valued as items of personal adornment.147 Enslaved women also wore beads for reasons other than personal adornment. They were used in slaves’ religious practices, and sometimes The Crossing
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as a form of protection or to ward off evil spirits. In contemporary Suriname, for example, this custom has survived in several Maroon communities. In Jamaica, red beads were worn as protection against duppies (ghosts), and amber beads were a common talisman in the AfroJamaican cult of Myalism. Beads were strung on strings, cords, thread and even wire. Other types of beads found at Drax Hall plantation included turquoise and deep-blue “ultramarine” beads.148
Creole Dress, European Dress and the Planters’ Perspective on Slave Clothing Fashion has dualities in its formation, a reputation for snobbery and sin. . . . It is obsessive about outward appearances, yet speaks the unconscious and our deepest desires. – Juliet Ash and Elizabeth Wilson, Chic Thrills: A Fashion Reader
The commingling of European and African dress customs within the colonial space resulted in the development of a Creole style among the slave population. Dress was one element of creolization, a process of complex interactions, contacts, successive conflicts and osmosis that led over decades to a synthesis of European and African cultural characteristics. The development of a Creole culture led to cultural expansion, expression and diversity based on the life experience of the enslaved and colonized. The emergence of a Creole dress as part of Creole culture did not represent the abandonment or the entrenchment of African dress customs among slaves but rather led to new creations that were strongly influenced by African aesthetics. Edouard Glissant, for instance, argued that “Creolization is not an uprooting, a loss of sight, a suspension of being . . . we do not mean cross breeding, because creolization adds something new to the components that participate in it.”149 The addition of “something new” strengthened the African characteristics against the Europeans’ attempt at complete cultural annihilation. Furthermore, Creole dress was the product of a conscious effort to maintain, preserve and support the African elements in dress brought to the Caribbean. This conscious effort enabled African slaves to successfully adapt to their new and ever-changing environment (see Figure 1.10). 60
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Courtesy of the National Library of Jamaica
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Figure 1.10 Creole Negroes, c.1830s, by I.M. Belisario, printed by Adolphe Duperly. The individual sketches provide a sense of the different fashion styles for men and women during the period. The outfits are predominantly European except for the African-inspired hat of animal skin and the women’s headwraps.
Creolization, however, was not simply a mere cross-cultural mixing of various styles, but a complex process that required compromise on the part of African slaves and their descendants. Slaves, for example, had to accept the loss or erasure of some of their cultural practices, as is the norm in any form of cultural amalgamation. Creolization by its very nature guaranteed the survival of African slaves, including women, and it was subversive. For instance, creolization prevented one component, in this case European customs in dress, from taking over the whole. The battle for dominance between two cultural norms was played out on the
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surface of the African body, which, as metaphor for cultural space, was the desired target of the enslaver, because to control the slave body was to control the culture of the slave. Many Europeans did not find Creole dress appealing, regarding it as a ludicrous parody or caricature of European fashion, which included clashing styles. In the mid-eighteenth century, for instance, Philo Scotus, a Scottish gentleman and member of the local militia, was intrigued by the display of Creole dresses at the races; he also noticed the reactions of his fellow Europeans. He remarked: The excitement amongst the mulatto and negro population who were present was most graphic and entertaining; dressed in the extreme caricature of English fashions, the females in muslins and ribbons of the gayest colours with caps and turbans of the smartest silks and stuffs, silk stockings and always red shoes, to which the shortness of their dresses gave ample display, and above all, the gay parasols of green or pink, which the sable beauties displayed with infinite pride. . . . Their grotesque attempts to imitate the manners of the higher orders were most amusing . . . afforded me endless amusement and mirth.150
Scotus’s description of the colonized women’s dresses revealed both European and African aesthetics, while the styles reflected creativity and innovation. The women’s ability to dress up and “make fashion” by blending bright colours of red, green and pink was reminiscent of the vibrant colours typical of West African dress. Moreover, their shortening of their dresses and showing off of their red shoes with “ample display” was symbolic of the women’s rejection of European etiquette at a time when women were expected to wear long skirts that covered their ankles. For these women in their Creole dresses, the racetrack was a place to perform, to parade in their European-inspired styles, to compete with each other and display their outfits with pride. However, both Scotus and his contemporaries failed to recognize the creativity of the women’s dresses. Nor could they see beyond their biases that this dress style was a product of creolization and the reflection of a vibrant Creole culture among non-whites. The ruling elite regarded the Creole dress as a poor imitation of superior European fashions and saw these outfits as socially unacceptable and inappropriate for slaves. Therefore, the outfits became a focus of ridicule during slavery and beyond, a sort of entertainment and, in the eyes of whites, extreme. Slave women were able to “make fashion” and be creative with their Creole dresses. There were no sumptuary laws to prevent or limit such 62
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cultural expression, and the women were very much aware of the various styles of dresses worn in Europe. They observed what their mistresses wore and were able to adapt these clothes to their tastes and particular circumstances. Their dress styles reflected creativity and innovation on the part of slave and freed women. House slaves who were seamstresses and washerwomen had the best opportunity to study the clothes that their mistresses received from London; they could easily examine them and copy the styles in their owners’ absence. This creative process was the reflection of a fashion consciousness and sense of style among slave women that was borne out of their experiences as slaves. They took great delight in dressing up in fashionable clothes when possible, and some became fashion “experts” who were not afraid to criticize the dresses of their white mistresses. Speaking of Caribbean slave women in this regard, Mrs Carmichael stated that she was “Very amused by observing what connoisseurs the Negro women are of dress. . . . Standing near me, at one time, I heard them criticize every thing I wore, both in the materials and make.”151 Just as Africans brought their dress customs to Jamaica, so did the Europeans transplant theirs from Europe; however, Europeans were very slow to adapt their dress styles to their new environment. European dress in Jamaica for the most part was elaborate and unsuited to the climate. As Edward Long revealed, “The cool easy dress of the eastern nations . . . is much easier and better fitted for use in a hot climate than the English dress which is close and tight.” He further added: “But such is the influence of fashion and custom, that one may see men loaded, and half melting under a ponderous coat and waistcoat, richly bedaubed with gold lace or embroidery on a hot day.”152 Long gave a detailed analysis of European dress during the eighteenth century in Jamaica, and he asserted that Europeans refused to modify their dress for the sake of comfort. He even proposed that Europeans in Jamaica follow the examples of their Spanish neighbours. He argued that “All their clothes are light” and went on to state that the Spanish women dressed appropriately for the weather. “Spanish women wear a type of petticoat called a pollera made of thin silk without any lining, and over their body a very thin white jacket.”153 However, colonial settlers, especially English European women, were determined to maintain their customs in dress. According to Edward Long:
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Our English belles in Jamaica differ very widely from their madonas [Spanish ladies]. They [British women] do not scruple to wear the thickest winter silks and satins; and are sometimes ready to sink under the weight of rich gold or silver brocades. Their headdress varies with the ton [prevailing mode] at home; the winter fashions of London arrive here at the setting of hot weather.154
Unlike African slaves and their descendants, who had to rely to a large extent on local resources and rations for dress, Europeans ordered their clothing directly from their homeland. The process of obtaining clothes from Europe was not always reliable, and the long distance often led to delays in shipment. As a result, the dress was so inappropriate that Edward Long remarked: “nothing can be more preposterous and absurd than for persons residing in the West Indies to adhere rigidly to all European customs and manners”.155 Hairstyles among European ladies mimicked those in Britain during the period. For instance, hairstyles in early eighteenth-century Jamaica included: half a yard perpendicular height, fastened with some score of heavy iron pins, on a bundle of wood large enough to stuff a chair bottom, together with pounds of powder and pomatum . . . grew into vogue with great rapidity . . . [and it was] impossible to avoid stooping and tottering under so enormous a mass.156
This elaborate and ornate dress style was not only uncomfortable and cumbersome in the tropical heat but was also unhealthy. Although Edward Long was not a medical doctor, he apparently recognized the health risks in wearing such inappropriate dress in hot weather, and therefore suggested several changes in the dress customs: The waistcoat and breeches should be of cotton (corded or India dimity for example), in preference to linen, as it prevents catching cold . . . [and] wear linen drawers in preference to linings, for the sake of cleanliness . . . Ladies’ hats or bonnets should be lined with black as not reverberating on their faces those rays of the sun which are reflected upwards from the earth and water and cause occasion [sic] freckles.157
The excessive heat and inappropriate dress would have made many Europeans susceptible to all kinds of diseases that contributed to the staggeringly high mortality rate among them.158 European dress throughout the colonial period did change over time, but only to reflect the summer fashions in Europe. Although European 64
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dress may have seemed preposterous to some, like Edward Long, the elaborate dress of colonial settlers (including planters) did serve a purpose. The British colonial rulers had long believed that “proper” dress, regardless of location or climate, was required for the task of governing subject people. The incongruous image of Europeans strolling around in heavy, ornate clothing was a visual reminder of privilege and elitism that emphasized white dominance and British colonial rule.159 Europeans in Jamaica, including the planters, regarded their dress customs as superior to those of enslaved persons. Nevertheless, many Europeans also believed that enslaved Africans and their descendants were well dressed and therefore content. Some planters justified the institution of slavery by stating that since slaves were well clothed, slavery was not so bad after all. Stipendiary Magistrate R. Madden wrote: “The negroes we are told [by planters] were so happy . . . so comfortably provided for, so much better fed, clothed, and housed and so much less severely worked than the English labourers, that they could not change conditions with them.”160 Lewis also commented on the dress of his slaves: “They were all plainly clean instead of being shabbily fashionable, and affected to be nothing except that which they really were, they looked twenty times more like gentlemen than nine tenths of the banker’s clerks who swagger up and down Bond Street.”161 Long expressed similar views, arguing that slaves in their “habitation, clothing, subsistence and possessions . . . [were] far happier and better provided for than most poor labourers . . . in Britain”.162 Planters constructed these arguments to protect their own economic interests and status within the colonial state. However, the frequency of slave resistance in Jamaica and elsewhere was a clear signal that enslaved people did not consider themselves comfortable or contented.163 Slave dress was deceptive. To the European observer, a decently dressed slave was perceived as happy and contented. But for many slaves, dressing up was their way of escaping the reality of their suffering and of attaining some social mobility; it made them feel good and beautiful despite the adversity of their state. Decent dress among the enslaved population led to misconceptions among some European observers, who thought that the conditions of slavery were not as awful as the abolitionists in Britain had stated. In reality, slave labour, especially on sugar plantations, was intense and brutal. On many plantations, slaves worked from sunrise to sunset under constant threat of the whip. Some planters The Crossing
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who possessed decently dressed slaves may have assumed that the slaves were too well cared for and exploited them even more. It should not be assumed that all slaves in Jamaica were decently dressed. The Reverend R. Bickell, a local resident, pointed out in 1825 that “Some of the slaves in the country parishes . . . dress decently . . . at their own expense . . . but the greater part of the field negroes have no better clothing than the humble garb allowed them by their masters.”164 Slaves’ own efforts to control what they wore and to obtain additional clothing enabled some to be decently clad despite their owner’s meagre provisions. The issue of slave dress became an argument that both proslavery and anti-slavery advocates used to suit their political agenda. Reverend Bickell explained: I think the clothing of slaves have been much over-rated by the colonists; and on the other hand, somewhat depreciated by the advocates of the Africans or abolitionists; for what can be more absurd than to hear it constantly reiterated that the negroes in our colonies are . . . better clothed than the British peasantry.165
The absurdity in this context was that, unlike the peasants or the lower classes in Britain, enslaved Africans in Jamaica were not free. They were the objects of European exploitation and were often abused at the whim of the white planter. Despite their subjugation, African women were able to maintain and nurture their own customs in dress. They were also resourceful and creative in obtaining additional clothing, such as lacebark, from their environment. Nonetheless, slave women’s dress served other purposes than that of cultural retention. Dress was an essential means of both resistance and accommodation within colonial slave society.
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Chapter 2
Dress as Resistance
The essence of all resistance on the part of slaves was a fundamental tenacity for life, an appreciation of life itself . . . – Barbara Bush, Slave Women in Caribbean Society
African Origins of Slave Resistance in Jamaica West Indian slavery was based not only on inherent racism but also on Europeans’ attempt to isolate Africans from their social and cultural heritage. Europeans in slave-owning societies sought to maintain their dominance within the plantocracy by instilling concepts of inferiority in their slaves and by denying them rights and privileges so as to subordinate them within the broader society. Despite this, enslaved Africans who were brought to the Americas, and their descendants, did not accept their conditions of servitude humbly. Rather, they employed various means to express their anger and resentment towards the institution of slavery that robbed them of their status as persons. Slave resistance reflected the slaves’ “fundamental tenacity for life”, a deep yearning for their right to survive and to be free. Historian Rosalyn Terborg-Penn argues that to comprehend the role of slave women as resistors, there must be a cross-cultural perspective.
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Slave women’s contributions to resistance cannot be examined apart from the women’s ancestral home, Africa.1 Terborg-Penn explains that one needs to apply certain unifying methodological concepts when studying African women’s resistance in the diaspora. For instance, the study of African descendants abroad is, and should be, treated as an extension of African history. Therefore enslaved women must be examined within the African cultural context. Moreover, it is imperative to recognize and acknowledge the existence of a tradition for Africans in the diaspora to identify themselves with Africa. Such an approach negates the conventional Eurocentric interpretation of Africa as a recipient and not a donor of cultural heritage.2 This cross-cultural method of analysis is important because resistance activities found among African women in Africa, as well as in the Caribbean, show similar patterns. Some of these patterns or values, for instance, reflected the notion of self-reliance among women, who depended on each other for support and the creation of survival strategies. These strategies were designed by enslaved women to oppose social, economic and political oppression. The strategies that were used in the diaspora were the same ones that were needed and used to fight oppression on the African continent. In the Americas, including Jamaica, as in Africa, self-reliance encouraged bonding among those of African descent, while others relied on their inner strength, organizational abilities, cultural expressions and spiritual powers to resist the destruction of their communities.3 Elizabeth Fox-Genovese adds that any attempt to understand slave women’s resistance must also acknowledge the dreadful paucity of sources and the complex relationship between individual and collective resistance.4 Moreover, slave women’s tenacious spirit to resist slavery was part of a continuum that linked Africa to the Caribbean. Nor did resistance to oppression end with emancipation; in fact, women’s role as resistors continued throughout the colonial era and even into the present period. In many African societies, women, whether slaves or not, were willing and able to use both peaceful and militant tactics against their oppressors. Historian Edna Bay, among others, has revealed that some African women were great fighters and warriors, such as the Amazons of Dahomey, who were the personal guards of the king and were greatly feared. The explorer Sir Richard Burton, in the mid-nineteenth century, detailed the “Illustrious Viragoes” of the Amazon guards, and he recalled the fierce, warlike nature of the women of other West African ethnic 68
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groups, including the Yoruba.5 The freed Igbo slave Olaudah Equiano wrote that the women of his home village were warriors who fought side by side with the men.6 Perhaps the most famous African woman to resist colonial oppression was Nzinga Mbunde (1582–1663), who led four decades of warfare against the Portuguese in Angola. Nzinga formed her own army and allied her people with the Dutch, thus creating the first AfricanEuropean alliance against a European oppressor.7 African women also resisted oppression on an individual level. In their pioneering work on women and slavery in Africa, historians Claire Robertson and Martin Klein showed that some women resisted servitude by running away.8 Resistance to slavery by African women required great strength, which was often rooted in African religious concepts. Female deities were powerful and highly respected in many African religions. It was believed that women enabled spiritual forces to communicate with the people. Among the Yoruba, “Gelede dances are performed to pay homage to all women, who are believed to have innate power to benefit the community.”9 These dances honour spiritually powerful women who were elders, ancestors and deities. The Yoruba believe that women possess the secret of life itself, the knowledge and special power to bring human beings into the world and to remove them. This knowledge applies not only to gestation and childbirth but also to longevity. Women’s knowledge of life and death demands that Yoruba herbalists seek their support in preparing medicines.10 A Yoruba priestess explained: “If the mothers are annoyed, they can turn the world upside down. When an herbalist goes to collect a root at the foot of a tree, the mothers put it up. And when she climbs up for a leaf, the mothers put it down.”11 The belief in women’s spiritual strength is not limited to the Yoruba but exists among various peoples throughout Africa, many of whom were captured and eventually enslaved in the Americas, including Jamaica. In the diaspora, effective resistance to colonial oppression was often energized by the spiritual power of religious African women, which provided political unity. The religion was characteristic of precolonial Africa and many other pre-industrial societies.12 Slave owners in Jamaica were aware of the diversity of the enslaved population and often characterized the different ethnic groups on the basis of popular opinion and respective capacity to work. In 1823 J. Stewart revealed that slaves in Jamaica were like “The different nations Dress as Resistance
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of Europe, of various characters and dispositions. Some are mild, docile and timid – while others are fierce, irascible, and early roused to revenge.”13 He went on: The Coromantee is . . . fierce, violent and revengeful under injury and provocation, but hardy, laborious and manageable under mild and just treatment. The Congo, Papaw, Chamba, Mandingo are of a more mild and peaceable disposition than the Coromantee, but less industrious and provident than the Eboes.14
Stewart’s account clearly shows that all slaves were not alike, that some were aggressive and inclined to defend themselves against brutal treatment. Within the slave population, as well, there were conflicts and hostilities. The planter Matthew Lewis, for instance, revealed that “Africans and Creoles hated each other.”15 Lewis recalled an occasion on which a young slave woman had been punished for biting another enslaved woman. He asked the young woman’s mother “how she came to have so bad a daughter, when all her sons were so mild and good”. “Oh, massa,” she answered, “The girl’s father was a Guinea-man.”16 Creole slaves considered themselves superior to their African counterparts and did not hesitate to speak of Africans generally as “Guinea birds” and “salt water nagurs”.17 There is plenty of evidence that the slave population was not a cohesive group, nor was it passive, and that slaves did express their frustration and anger.
Women and Resistance to Slavery in Jamaica In Jamaica, resistance to slavery took many forms and was an integral part of slave society. The record of slave rebellions in the British West Indies confirms that enslaved people actively resisted the process of dehumanization and loss of personal autonomy. Edward Long described West Indian–born slaves as “irascible, conceited, proud, indolent . . . and very artful” and said that they were always trying to “overreach” their overseers by “thwarting their plans”.18 Other enslaved Africans, like the Coromantyn (Coromantee) were described not only as ferocious but also as the instigators of every rebellion in Jamaica.19 The rebellions often resulted in great loss of life among both slave owners and slaves. This created a financial burden for the colonial regime. The rebellion of 1760 under Tacky’s leadership, for example, brought about the death of sixty 70
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whites and four hundred slaves. The expense of putting down the rebellion was estimated at £100,000. During the last Jamaican slave rebellion of 1831–32, the cost of bringing it under control and the value of property destroyed exceeded £500,000. In addition, Parliament granted a loan of £300,000 to assist the planters whose plantations had been destroyed by the slaves.20 Excluding the territory of St Domingue (Haiti), the largest slave rebellions in the Western Hemisphere were in Jamaica and Demerara Essequibo (the Guianas). These areas averaged one major revolt every two years between 1731 and 1832. One reason for the high incidence of revolts was the absenteeism of plantation owners, which led to greater depersonalization of slaves and more estrangement between whites and slaves than in the US South. Slave revolts were more common where African slaves outnumbered Creoles (native-born slaves).21 The planters in these areas lived in a state of perpetual insecurity, under constant threat of slave insurrection. The high African-to-white ratio, combined with extremely harsh conditions for slaves on the sugar plantations, fostered an atmosphere especially conducive to slave revolts. Slave resistance, whether conscious and organized or not, challenged the colonial regimes. However, resistance in itself was complex and diverse. Sociologist and historian Orlando Patterson has examined the psycho-cultural processes in slave societies that inspired slaves to resist. He argues that slaves employed various mechanisms to deceive their masters and to subvert the system of slavery. Resistance was sometimes overt and violent, like rebellions, and sometimes covert and subtle, like feigning illness.22 Enslaved women in the Caribbean employed both forms of resistance, and they participated with their menfolk in revolts and running away. The planter Thomas Thistlewood revealed that during Tacky’s rebellion in 1760, many of the prisoners (rebellious slaves) brought in by the militia were women, and Matthew Lewis often mentioned his slave woman, Marcia, who became infamous for always running away.23 A few slave women committed suicide as an act of resistance. The early historian Bryan Edwards remarked that Ebo (Igbo) slaves, in particular, had the reputation of killing themselves to avoid servitude.24 Some slave women chose to kill their children to prevent them from becoming slaves. Infanticide, however, was atypical among slave women, and the psychological trauma experienced by a woman before and after killing her child is unimaginable. Some of the women who committed Dress as Resistance
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infanticide were labelled as insane and may, in fact, have been driven to madness because of their brutal treatment. Others may have been falsely accused of killing an infant who actually died from some undiagnosed or unrecognized malady such as sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS).25 Nevertheless, for some slave women, infanticide seemed the only option; it provided a “final” way out of their suffering, if not for themselves then at least for their children. Other slave women feigned illness to avoid work. In 1815, Matthew Lewis was forced to “bounce” and “storm” because his slave women pretended to be ill. He exclaimed: Another morning, with the mill stopped, no liquor in the boiling-house, and no work done. The driver brought the most obstinate and insolent of women to be lectured by me; and I bounced and stormed for half an hour with all my might and main, especially at Whaunica. . . . They at last appeared to be very penitent . . . and engaged never to behave ill again.26
The mere fact that these slave women confessed and said that they would “never behave ill again” suggests an organized strike. By asserting their power as workers, enslaved women disrupted production, upon which the planter relied for economic and financial survival. Enslaved women not only knew how to frustrate and harass their owners; they clearly understood the process of negotiation and collective bargaining that is traditionally associated with industrial wage workers.27 Their obstinacy was evidence of a collective form of non-violent resistance. It was sometimes difficult for planters to tell whether their slave women were ill or pretending. In the case just described, Lewis recognized that the illness was orchestrated because it involved so many individuals. Slave women realized how essential their labour was for the smooth operation of the estate and sought to sabotage this process whenever possible. Slave women were more likely than their menfolk to succeed at feigning illness because they could use childbirth and the menstrual cycle to their advantage. Nonetheless, many planters refused to excuse a slave from labour even when faced with the most visible sign of illness. Many plantation owners had to deal with insubordination on the part of their enslaved women, and at times these confrontations were violent. Matthew Lewis reported that on the neighbouring estate a female slave attacked the overseer. He explained:
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The overseer upon a neighbouring property had occasion to find fault in the field with a woman belonging to a gang hired to perform some particular work; upon which she flew upon him with the greatest fury, grasped him by the throat, cried to her fellows, “Come here! come here! Let us Dunbar [kill] him!” and through her strength and the suddenness of her attack had nearly accomplished her purpose.28
Clearly, when pushed to the limit, slave women did not hesitate to express their anger – regardless of the consequences, even execution. One example of such determination to be free occurred in 1815. A servant girl of fifteen, named Minetta, was accused of poisoning her master. She was later sentenced and executed for her crime. Most striking about this case were the young woman’s refusal to express regret and her steadfastness until her execution, according to Lewis: Nothing could be more hardened than her conduct through the whole transaction. She stood by the bed to see her master drink the poison; witnessed his agonies without one expression of surprise or pity; and when she was ordered to leave the room, she pretended to be fast asleep, and not to hear what was said to her. Even since her imprisonment, she could never be prevailed upon to say that she was sorry for her master having been poisoned.29
Minetta’s actions may have reflected a dark reality rather than an unreasoning “hardened” attitude. Her merciless determination to kill her master and her lack of remorse suggest that she had suffered some awful injustice or abuse, perhaps sexual exploitation. Enslaved women like Minetta, who laboured in the great houses as cooks, servants and nannies, came in regular and direct contact with their masters. Their presence within the masters’ domain made them susceptible to sexual exploitation. Moreover, the remote location of the planter’s house on some estates made it difficult for these women to flee to safety. Some slave women fought off an attacker as best as they could, and undoubtedly many failed. Others, like Minetta, resorted to more indirect – and permanent – methods of resistance. Slave women who worked as cooks in the great houses had access to the food and therefore the opportunity to poison their owners. Some slave women went so far as to mutilate themselves in order to frustrate their owners, as in the case of Jenny. She was ordered to return to work in the fields, but her master later found that “As her wounds were almost completely well, she had tied packthread around them so as to cut deep into the flesh, had rubbed dirt into them, and, in short had Dress as Resistance
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played such tricks as nearly to produce a mortification in one of her fingers.’’30 Perhaps it was females slaves’ determination to be free that led Mrs Carmichael to remark in 1833: “I regret to have to say, that female negroes are far more unmanageable than males. The little girls are far more wicked than the boys; and I am convinced, were every proprietor to produce the list of his good negroes, there would be in every instance, an amazing majority in favour of males.”31 Mrs Carmichael failed to recognize that enslaved women suffered far worse exploitation than their men, and being uncontrollable was one way that they sought to gain their freedom. Despite the threat of severe punishments such as flogging, hanging, transportation off the island, imprisonment, branding, gibbeting, rape and dismemberment, enslaved women continued to resist the institution of slavery. Other resistance activities employed by women were malingering, lying, stealing, selfpurchase and running away.32 Few enslaved women ran away from the estates; runaways were usually men. Most women chose to stay because they did not want to leave their children, and making a successful escape accompanied by children was unlikely. Higman’s analysis of the Returns of Registration of Slaves in 1832 and various plantation records shows that women accounted for only 20 per cent of runaways. The majority of the women who did run away worked in field gangs, and many of them failed either to merge successfully and permanently into a free society or to isolate themselves. Most women who ran away, in fact, did so to visit kin rather than intending to remain away permanently. Another reason that women did not run away was fear of the ramifications if they failed, which could include separation from their children and even transportation to Cuba, to hulks (prisons) in England, or to the workhouse.33 Some runaway women received extremely severe punishments. Such was the case of the slave Priscilla, who attempted to escape in 1783 and 1784. As a consequence, both her ears were cut off, and she was placed in chains and sentenced to receive thirty-nine lashes on the first Monday of each month for a whole year.34 The female slaves who chose to stay on the plantations had to resort to alternative methods of resistance. Enslavers sought to suppress the slaves by controlling their bodies. Consequently, slave women realized that they had to protect their bodies from abuse and sexual exploitation. According to historian Verene Shepherd, this led to a unique, gender-specific set of resistance, with the 74
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whole body being utilized to full purpose. Shepherd argues that enslaved women did not willingly give their bodies over to the enslaver’s lust but used their bodies, minds and voices to resist the institution of slavery. For instance, they raised their voices in liberation songs as well as to curse those who bought them or oppressed them.35 Women used body language to mock and taunt their enslavers as well as to express their anger and resentment at slavery. Cynric Williams reported in 1823 that a young woman, part of a group of slaves brought before a magistrate, had complained about being harshly “used” on account of receiving 230 lashes. When the magistrate doubted her story, the “sable nymph without hesitation exposed her behind, whereupon there was no mark whatever; and it appearing that she had done so in derision and contempt, they ordered her a couple dozen [lashes]”.36 After the abolition of the Atlantic slave trade, slave women’s bodies became important to ensure the reproduction of slaves for labour and the continuity of slavery. To end the perpetuation of slavery and to resist the use of their fertility for the planters’ economic gain, some women resorted to gynaecological resistance, inducing abortion by drinking specific herbs. The planter Thomas Thistlewood, for example, revealed that a slave woman called Mountain Lucy drank contrayerva to abort her pregnancy.37 The knowledge of herbal concoctions to induce abortions was probably passed on from mother to daughter; in some cases, slave midwives administered the abortifacients. Several plants were recognized as abortifacients, including cassava, cerasee, wild passion flower and wild tansey. Strong emetics, such as the seed of the sandbox tree, were used to bring on menstruation.38 Slave women, whether mistresses of white men or not, used their bodies to express their discontent and to resist sexual exploitation. They refused to always submit to the advances of their enslavers, rejecting or ignoring some overtures. Thistlewood, for instance, learned that his slave mistress, Phibbah, was not easily seduced. On 2 February 1754, he wrote, “she did not speak to me all day”, and later that same week he stated, “Phibbah denied me.”39 Slave women like Phibbah exercised limited control over their bodies and thus experienced some power within the context of the relationship. The specific contribution of slave women to organized armed revolts is still unclear. The contemporary history of slave rebellions often focused on enslaved men, and the mass of slaves was depicted as a faceless, genderless mob. Higman revealed that some twenty thousand slaves Dress as Resistance
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participated in the revolt of 1831. During the revolt two hundred slaves were killed, and another 312 were later executed. Fourteen whites were killed, and property valued at £1,132,440 was destroyed. However, the most interesting feature of the records was that the active participants in the rebellion were almost exclusively male. Only six women were shot during the rebellion, and another woman was caught and executed for her role in the event.40 The invisibility of women in such a major rebellion could be an artefact of the cultural conditioning of the recorders. Eighteenth-century middle-class European women were culturally barred from politics or military service, as they were perceived as passive and weak. Enslaved women may have faced the same predicament, being considered not worthy of recognition, even though they may have been present. Recent scholarship by Verene Shepherd reveals that the invisibility of women in armed revolts could be due to the fact that many women played non-military supporting roles that were essential for success in the armed struggle. In the 1831–32 rebellion, for example, enslaved men led the armed assaults, while several women were involved in strategic manoeuvring. The women supplied water to the rebel fighters and acted as guides to provision grounds to obtain food for them; they guarded captives and acted as lookouts and even as go-betweens in the final stages of the rebellion. Some slave women tried to entrap the colonial regiments. On one occasion, an elderly lame woman tried to persuade the soldiers to consume her food. When the woman refused to eat the food that she had prepared, the soldiers’ suspicions were confirmed – the food was indeed poisoned.41 Although many enslaved women may have chosen other supporting roles in armed struggles, it should not be assumed that no women fought side by side with their menfolk. The story of Nanny, a legendary Maroon obeah woman, gives us some idea of the military role some women might have played in armed resistance. In the 1730s Nanny organized and led her warriors in successful battles against the British, taking English soldiers as captives with impunity. The British attitude towards Nanny at the end of the first Maroon treaty in 1739 perhaps explains, to some extent, why so little documentation exists about the active participation of women in slave revolts. The British refused to accept Nanny as a spiritual leader and, instead, insisted on recognizing only the authority of her headmen. This may be the reason that no other woman ever rose to Nanny’s prominence and power.42 76
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The absence of women in connection with many revolts was also rooted in the stereotypes that existed about slave women. As historian Hilary Beckles explains: “Black [slave] women were seen as superordinate amazons who could be called upon to labour all day, perform sex all night and be quite satisfied morally and culturally to exist outside the formal structures of marriage and family.”43 Slave women never fitted this mould; instead, as Beckles argues, they forged an anti-slavery ideology based upon their own experiences, consciousness and identity. It was this anti-slavery ideology that gave rise to Beckles’s apt term “natural rebel”, describing women who were not complacent but resisted the institution of slavery.44 Furthermore, not all slave women resisted in the same ways, and not all resorted to overt or violent methods. A few women did run away, as discussed previously, but most chose to pursue alternative methods of resistance that were not blatant or easily recognizable but rather subtle. Anthropologist James C. Scott argues that most slaves resorted to covert resistance because they realized that open insubordination, in almost any context, would provoke a more rapid and ferocious response than resistance that could be equally pervasive but never openly contested the formal definition of hierarchy and power.45 Subtle, nonviolent resistance included a variety of activities such as foot-dragging, false complaints, sabotage and cultural strategies in dress.46 African slaves’ responses to enslavement were greatly influenced by African cultural patterns. Historian Walter Rodney has argued that the culture of Africans was the “shield which frustrated the efforts of the Europeans to dehumanize Africans through servitude, and was an indicator of the tenacity and ability of the subordinate to survive, and resist the cultural imposition of their white masters by maintaining their unique identity”.47 The preservation of their cultural identity was essential to slaves’ survival, and dress was a principal means to that end.
Dress as Resistance in Jamaican Colonized Society If you wear the clothes of your enemy, the spirit of the enemy is weakened. You are then wearing the spirit of his brothers and then they are weakened. – Herero cultural commentator, Southern Africa
Jamaican colonial society did not encourage friendly social, economic and political relations between the colonized and the colonizer as well as Dress as Resistance
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between planter and slave. Instead, relations were founded on exploitation and force. Therefore, colonial domination was ultimately grounded in the notion of a face-to-face relationship between local co-residents. Dress, as the principal visible element in this face-to-face relationship, not only portrayed multiple ideologies of the “other” but also served as the medium within which colonial relationships were enacted and contested. Dress was a visually accessed language of the body, in that the way one dressed was constantly scrutinized and itself provided a narrative, especially in the absence of a shared spoken language, culture or religion. What was narrated was not mere fashion but rather style, the bodily representation of the aesthetic of the individual or the community. The significance of dress in colonial society provided possibilities for resistance, because the semiotic process was never fully controlled by the ruling elite. As a result, dress and the body, as signifiers of contrasting and complex meanings, enabled oppressed people (including slaves) to symbolically and covertly resist, to make satirical and politically subversive statements about their identities in relation to the dominant power. Dress and the body thus could be deliberately manipulated in an effort to alter social representation and relations of power. As such, they became persuasive agents of movement towards a moral ethic that would guarantee freedom, if not completely, at least temporarily.48 Dress as non-verbal resistance was not unique to Jamaica. In fact, dress has been a site of resistance and confrontation throughout history, and it continues to be so in many contemporary societies. During the French Revolution of 1789, for example, men and women signalled their allegiance to revolutionary change and their rejection of the old regime by wearing workingman’s trousers rather than the knee breeches of the wealthier classes (thus their nickname, sans-culottes).49 The concept of a revolutionary dress also arose in the United States of America. Benjamin Franklin’s countrified appearance as the American representative to the court of Versailles, in 1776, reflected a new dress style that embodied the industriousness and modesty of American society; his clothing bespoke a republican frugality that symbolized resistance to European domination and its extravagant, corrupting influences.50 In the arena of women’s attire, “alternative” dress styles, such as the loose-fitting knee-length trousers advocated by Amelia Bloomer in the 1850s, Coco Chanel’s short skirts and the bobbed haircut of the 1920s, afforded women greater physical mobility and freedom, and simultane78
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ously sent a visual message that the women who wore them were rejecting the patriarchal norms that had confined them for centuries.51 In more recent times, who can forget Mohandas Gandhi’s loincloth, and his use of the spinning wheel as a symbol of colonial resistance against the British?52 In the resistance movement after the 1973 coup, poor Chilean women adapted their traditional needlework to produce arpilleras, a type of appliqué and patchwork, which often depicted the ruling junta as vultures among doves.53 The politicization of dress was an expressive cultural characteristic that represented a means of obtaining some legitimacy and power. Such covert expressions of resistance, which were often disturbing or subversive, were common features in the lives of women who were dominated, silenced and marginalized. Enslaved women of African descent had the opportunity and the expertise to use expressive cultural characteristics in their form of dress to resist the institution of slavery. Such techniques were acquired in Africa and were maintained and nurtured in the diaspora. Among the Yoruba of Nigeria and Benin, for example, dress and cloth were important means of expressing both one’s situation in life – such as war or occupation – and one’s emotional state – such as anger, sadness or even defiance. The Yoruba proverb omo l’aso eda (children are the clothes of men) reflects the importance of dress by equating it with the Yoruba people’s most valuable possession – their children.54 Their cultural knowledge of the diverse uses of dress gave Jamaican slave women the means to resist oppression subtly. Although dress was a popular medium for expressing resistance by women, slave men also participated in these activities. Throughout Jamaica, on numerous occasions, clothes and fabrics distributed or owned by the enslavers were ritually ripped, destroyed or stolen by slaves. During Tacky’s rebellion of 1760 in Jamaica, great houses were attacked, and European clothes were taken and destroyed. The planter Thomas Thistlewood revealed that a “plunder [of ] ruffled shirts, laced hats, shoes, stockings, cravats, and fine mahogany chests full of clothes”55 was recovered. Much later, Bernard Senior, a visitor to the island, stated that during the 1831 rebellion, rebels broke into a house, “and each equipped himself with a portion of the wearing apparel”.56 Such actions were not restricted to periods of rebellion but also occurred during times of calm. In 1813, a slave named Peter was found guilty of having in his possession some clothing stolen from the “Negro houses” of Mr David Nicoll and of rescuing another slave who Dress as Resistance
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was concerned in the theft. He was sentenced to receive fifty lashes in public.57 Some slaves found creative ways of getting rid of clothes received from their masters. In a letter dated 4 October 1838, James Swaby of London reported to Messrs Sweet and Sutton of Lincoln’s Inn Solicitors that, when negotiations broke down over their wages, the apprentices (recently emancipated slaves) on Smithfield Estate in Jamaica immediately disposed of the clothes they had received from the planter “at the Huckster’s shops and the money spent in idle drunkenness”.58 Some slaves probably stole their owners’ clothes for themselves, while others sold them for money; some stolen clothes were used as disguises by runaway slaves. Others may have been used in religious rituals in which spells were cast to cause harm or suffering to a brutal slave owner.59 House slaves often tried on their owners’ clothes secretly, and during rebellions, slaves might use a planter’s clothes to ridicule him. This was the case in 1831 when the head driver of one estate allowed a party of rebels to burn the great house. He celebrated his newfound freedom by imitating his master, galloping around the property on his master’s horse and wearing the master’s hat.60 The “attack” on clothes gave slaves an opportunity to vent their anger and frustration at the planter class and the institution of slavery. Mary Ellen Roach-Higgins and Joanne Eicher argue that dress confirms “identities and communicates positions within societies particularly when the division of labour is complex”, as was plantation labour.61 The distinctly European dress of the planter and mistress in the great house reflected their status as colonizer, controller and oppressor within the plantocracy. Thus, to attack the dress of the planter and mistress was to attack the oppressor, metaphorically speaking. The slaves’ act of wearing their oppressor’s clothes was reminiscent of the belief among some Africans that clothing had potency and that dress was strongly connected to the spiritual world. Hence, clothing could be used to defeat the enemy. Among the Mawri of Niger, for example, clothes take on a life of their own in mediating relations between deities and people, and binding an amorphous spirit within the confines of the human body. In other words, clothes offer a space in which the spirits can become, in a tenuous and temporary way, substantial entities. In some cultures that believe in the potency of dress, like the Herero people, the spirit of an individual can be subdued by wearing that person’s clothes. As a result, if one wears the clothes of the enemy, then the spirits of the enemy and the enemy’s relations are weakened. Some enslaved 80
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Africans in the Caribbean, most likely, were aware of this notion of the potency of dress and sought to wear and destroy their enslaver’s clothes to weaken his spirit. Only when the planter’s spirit was weakened could the planter/slave-owner class be defeated, and slaves be freed.62 Some African slaves disguised themselves by cross-dressing to escape servitude. This activity was popular in both the US South and the Caribbean. Historian Joan Cashin points out that cross-dressing was one of the most effective methods by which both male and female runaways could elude capture. She adds: “like the Harrises in Uncle Tom’s Cabin, adults, teenagers, and children practiced. . . . women dressed as men and men as women; girls dressed as boys and vice versa, sometimes changing gender identities several times to evade slave-catchers”.63 According to Cashin, some slaves put outfits together as they made plans to escape, while others decided to change genders on the run. On one occasion, a black man cross-dressed and powdered his face to pass successfully as a white woman.64 Perhaps the most fascinating case of cross-dressing in Jamaica was that of the slave man Hurlock, as described by the traveller and retired military officer Bernard Senior. Hurlock was a “wretch . . . [who] actually prowled about the streets in female attire; but so quick was his movements and his eye, that he was no sooner seen than lost”.65 Senior reported that Hurlock had “many skulking accomplices; but none of equal note with himself ”.66 During the 1831 rebellion, Hurlock used his disguise for the benefit of the slave rebels. Dressed as a woman, he successfully deceived every guard in Montego Bay and in the process acquired strategic information that benefited the resistance movement. Senior explained: In disguise, as a water-carrier, seller of segars, and [by] amusing each guard with some marvelous tale of what was proceeding in the country; [he] learnt not only the strength of the different detachments, but in many cases, which were to be their probable routes the following day. Thus he was able to report to [rebel] headquarters; and the leaders took care that some of their best marksmen should be lying in ambush at convenient spots.67
The result of Hurlock’s efforts was that the rebels were able to defeat some of the militia before they could fire on the slaves. Hurlock’s subversive role as a cross-dresser was successful because he effectively deceived the whites; his activity may have been viewed by his peers as a strategic and necessary performance and was therefore acceptable to the rebellious slaves. Dress as Resistance
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Senior’s description of Hurlock’s “prowling” the streets and Hurlock’s apparent notoriety imply that he was comfortable in his disguise and used it on more than one occasion. Senior’s comment on Hurlock’s “skulking accomplices” suggests that other slaves cross-dressed. Since we know little about Hurlock, we do not know if cross-dressing was confined to periods of rebellion or whether it represented a sub-culture among slaves. Nor do we know if cross-dressing was an appropriation by a few enslaved men of the nineteenth-century “dandy” fashion that by 1830 was popular among certain wealthy white men.68 In any case, crossdressing was not limited to slaves. James Barry, for instance, was a brilliant and famous European doctor who lived in Jamaica for a while; he lived his life as a man but was found, upon his death in 1865, to be a woman.69 Hurlock’s ability to pass as the opposite sex suggests that gender might be no more than just that – a performance. This type of performance not only transformed the slave’s body into a bitter comic but also was an expressive covert activity that challenged, resisted and destabilized the colonial definitions of masculinity and femininity. For slaves like Hurlock, cross-dressing was an effective tool for obtaining information and even enabled the possibility of overt resistance. Hurlock’s use of dress reflected not just creativity, courage and ingenuity but also a strong desire to secure freedom and resist re-enslavement. Slave women, like their male counterparts, were also creative in their use of dress as a form of covert resistance. Those slave women who ran away sometimes disguised themselves by dressing as free or freed women and, as a consequence, were able to resist being caught. Others carried a bundle of clothing so they could change their disguise. Clothing was the most popular item carried by runaway slaves. Some of these clothes were stolen from their owners or purchased with saved-up money. Urban runaway slaves were more elaborately and better dressed than runaways from rural areas,70 since they had easier access to their owners’ clothes and often received second-hand European-style clothes from their owners. Although there were no laws that regulated dress for either freedwomen or slave women, certain norms of dress were associated with specific groups of people. For instance, slave women tended not to wear shoes, since shoes were not part of the clothing rations they received from their owners. Their clothing often consisted of the inexpensive fabric called osnaburg. Slave women were branded on the shoulder with their owner’s emblem or name. These characteristics would mark a woman as a slave. Yet if a slave woman was fortunate enough not to be 82
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branded on the face or another visible spot on the body, if she obtained shoes, stockings, and a dress of refined fabric and styled her hair in a certain manner, then, once outside of her familiar circles, she would be perceived as a freed woman. By selling their produce in the local market in their free time, slave women could obtain money to buy shoes and a nice dress for special occasions – and for a possible escape. So successful were female runaways at disguising themselves as freed women that advertisements in newspapers such as the Jamaica Mercury might describe them as “artful and very skilled in deception” and warn whites to be on their guard against them.71 One such success story was that of the slave woman Mary Sadler, who in 1779 ran away with her two young sons. The Jamaica Mercury advertisement described her in the following way: “She was a Creole sambo woman, has been marked [branded] MS on top, but is now defaced, on both shoulders, she is 34 and dresses as a free woman, with long earrings, wears shoes and stockings, and a high-crown hat.”72 Her master, Isaac Furtado, later discovered that, dressed as a free person, Mary hired herself out to one Jackson, who later died, and she then lived with a freedman as his wife.73 Women who ran away, dressed well and spoke good English were rarely caught. These women could move to the city and, if skilled, get a job. Although every slave was branded, in the city they could meld into free society unless identified. Moreover, constables were less likely to question them, assuming they were freewomen or mistresses of white men.74 The dress of runaway slaves over time reflected transformations in slave culture75 from an African mode to that of the Creole, which combined African and European influences – for example, Mary Sadler’s European-style high-crown hat and stockings and African-inspired long earrings. Runaway slaves like Mary Sadler were forced to rely on their inner strength, to be artful in their public performance, if they wished to escape servitude. Effective deceit required intelligence, ingenuity and bravery. Runaways provided credible reasons for travelling in certain areas. They had to look good and assume a friendly, polite demeanour when dealing with whites.76 Such deception, according to W.E.B. Du Bois, was a natural defence for the “weak” against the “strong”.77 Nor was the dress of runaway slave women a mere visual fantasy of female liberation. Rather, the ability of disguised runaways to assume multiple new identities was an act of empowerment, at least temporarily. But, the paradox was that to be free, slaves had to be cloaked in the garments of Dress as Resistance
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their oppressors. For women like Mary, dress allowed them to transcend the class boundaries of Jamaican society and simultaneously resist the institution of slavery. A unique case of dress being used as resistance was that of the slave woman Cubah. In 1760, a major rebellion was planned for the eastern part of Jamaica. The rebellion was to have involved nearly all of the island’s Coromante slaves. Prominent among the plotters was Cubah, who belonged to a Jewish woman in Kingston. Curiously, Cubah had a large following of slaves, and was crowned Queen of Kingston by her followers.78 Edward Long’s account of this serious rebellion of 1760 described Cubah as “of a peculiar nature” and stated that she was “dubbed . . . Queen of Kingston” at the slave meetings. Long wrote: “She sat in state under a canopy, with a short robe on her shoulders, and a crown on her head.”79 Cubah’s public ritual was condemned and she was warned to stop the “charade” by the authorities, but she refused. At the time of the plot, Queen Cubah carried a wooden sword with a red feather stuck to the handle – probably as a symbol of liberation. It was also believed that she performed the functions similar to those of a West African queen mother.80 She was later captured and shipped off the island – transported for life.81 However, she managed to prevail on the captain of the transport to put her ashore again on the leeward part of the island. Cubah remained there for a while but eventually was re-arrested and executed.82 Long’s dismissal of Cubah as “peculiar” reflected not just his own biased attitudes but also colonial society’s refusal to accept and acknowledge women’s role as resistors. Cubah may have been a mere figurehead, or a carnivalesque caricature and an object of ridicule for whites, but to her people she represented hope and unity. Her status as queen among the enslaved population suggests that she had created an African-style kingdom under the jurisdiction of an African-style aristocracy. The concept of an African slave presiding as a monarch was not unique to Jamaica, and enslaved men participated in this activity as well. In Antigua in 1736, a similar situation occurred. A male slave named Court was crowned king of the Coromantees in the presence of more than two thousand slaves. On ceremonial occasions he walked in procession and received the homage and respect due a king. Court, too, sat under a canopy of state and was dressed as an African king. He wore a cap made of green silk embroidered with gold, and a deep border of either black fur or black feathers.83 Cubah’s role, however, was signifi84
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cant: her active participation in the rebellion and her deep commitment to the liberation process are clear evidence of women’s contributions to the resistance movement. Her regal dress established her identity as an authoritative figure among her people, and the act of dressing as queen was a coded message that visually represented her rejection of the colonial order and signalled her resistance to European hegemony. Personal adornment and dress were regular features in slave society as in all other communities. Dress is considered an aesthetic act by many people; however, for some slave women the act of dressing was a way of communicating a message. These messages were often coded, covert expressions and were based on individual relationships with each other and their experiences within their environment. Coding allowed the transmission of subversive messages among the subordinate community, under the very eyes of the oppressor for whom they were either inaccessible or inadmissible.84 Dress thereby enabled slaves like Cubah and Court to express themselves in a way that reinforced their commitment to their African heritage and their fellow slaves. Cubah’s personal adornment, in this regard, was the embodiment of a recovered selfhood. Her royal robes enabled her to deal with slave life aesthetically, and simultaneously to convey her own customs, values and beliefs. Such regalia were symbols of state adopted from her African roots; she used them to support the legitimacy of her authority and to unite African slaves. In fact, Cubah’s dress was a symbolic cry for freedom from the patriarchal expectations that placed African women in a subordinate role and position of dependency within the colonial structure. The preponderance of African characteristics in slave women’s dress represented a vibrant form of cultural resistance that visually challenged white dominance and the denigration of African customs. Slaves transformed and utilized the fabrics they received from their owners to engage in this activity. On plantations, slaves continued to receive osnaburg linen from the planters until the end of slavery. On the Windsor Lodge and Paisley Estates, for instance, between 1833 and 1837, the estates purchased 2,676 yards of flax osnaburg, 20 yards of white flannel, 20 pounds of osnaburg thread, 12 pounds of blue thread and 24 dozen handkerchiefs for their slaves, including women.85 The fabrics received by slaves were styled, fashioned, and accessorized to reflect African modes or aesthetics. Women of African descent often appeared during their holidays “decked out with a profusion of beads, corals and gold ornaments of all Dress as Resistance
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descriptions”.86 It is not known where the gold came from, but it was believed that most of it was smuggled over on slave ships and accumulated over the years on the island. Mrs Carmichael added that the jewellery of the enslaved women in the Caribbean was “considerable and consisted of many gold earrings, and rings upon their fingers”.87 The resident William Beckford reported in 1796 that slave women “equip themselves with a certain degree of elegance. They are particularly fond of beads, coral, glass and chains, and with which they adorn their necks and wrists.”88 Others, according to Bryan Edwards, “proudly displayed their tribal marks [scarring] with a mixture of ostentation and pleasure, either considering them highly ornamental or appealing to them as testimonies of distinction [brought from] Africa; where in some cases, they are said to indicate free birth and honourable parentage”.89 On some occasions the “women used as beads the seeds of lilac, the vertebrae of the shark . . . and they sportively affixed to the lip of the ear, a pirdal or ground nut”,90 thus creating their own African-influenced decorations. Hairstyles consisted of plaits or braids or of combing the hair into “lanes” or “walks” like the “parterre of a garden”,91 as is still done in West Africa. This display of African aesthetics in dress served as a marker to keep these women, the members of the slave community, separate from the world, and to identify those who did not belong. This separate sphere for slave women, as mirrored in their dress, became a site, as bell hooks describes it, that “One stays in, clings to even, because it nourishes one’s capacity to resist. It offers to one the possibility of radical perspective from which to see and create, to imagine alternative new worlds.”92 Undoubtedly, the most popular garment in this separate sphere – the garment that represented the continuity of African heritage in dress and served as a symbol of resistance – was the African woman’s headwrap, or the tie-head, as it is commonly called in Jamaica. Edward Long, who was quite impressed with this headdress, even offered his own explanation for this practice: They dread rain upon their bare heads almost as much as the native Africans; perhaps their woolly fleece would absorb it in large quantities and give them cold. . . . They are fond of covering this part of their bodies at all times, twisting one or two handkerchiefs round it, in the turban form which they say keeps them cool in the hottest sunshine.93
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The headwrap was so popular that “even the mulatto women think themselves not completely dressed without this tiara and buy the finest cambric or muslin for the purpose”.94 Some white women, inspired by the African woman’s headwrap, created similar headdresses for themselves. According to Edward Long, “The Creole white ladies till lately adopted the practice so far, as never to venture a journey without securing their complexions with a brace of handkerchiefs; one of which being tied over the forehead, the other under the nose, and covering the lower part of the face, formed a complete helmet.”95 The white women’s helmet-like headdresses, though similar to headwraps worn by enslaved and freed women, reflected some innovation, as their purpose was to protect the wearers’ complexions from the sun. In Jamaica, this fashion trend was short-lived and seems to have been popular with only a small number of ladies. Some white women donned turbans or other headwraps as part of their costume at masked balls and carnivals. In the French Caribbean, white women began wearing headwraps after oriental fashions became popular in France, following Napoleon’s campaigns in North Africa and the Near East. During this period, fashionable French women delighted in exotic forms of dress, including, a turban that reached its peak of popularity between 1795 and 1799.96 Nevertheless, most white women believed that European dress was superior to African dress, and most continued to dissociate themselves from slave women. The fact that women of the ruling class imitated slave women’s dress indicates that the trickle-down theory of fashion does not fit all cultural contexts. Fashion trends are not always set by the elite; they can emerge from below and be picked up by the upper classes. (In the United States in recent years, this has occurred with a few styles – “grunge” and “street style”, among others.) White women may, in fact, have adopted a headdress similar to that worn by slave and freed women simply because it provided effective sun protection; others may have been influenced by the emergence of the Creole culture that included the merging of some African and European customs in dress. During slavery, many slave owners considered the headwrap a badge of enslavement. The stereotypical images of African women wearing a distinctive headwrap – personified by the “Negro Mammy” and “Aunt Jemima” of the US South and the “Black Nana” and “Quasheba” of the Caribbean – which were later popularized in advertising and films, were a result of the connection between the headwrap and enslavement. Slave Dress as Resistance
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women and their descendants, however, have regarded the headwrap as a “helmet of courage that evoked an image of true homeland – be that Africa or the new homeland, the Americas”.97 As Helen Bradley Griebel has remarked, “That tying a piece of cloth around the head is not specific to any one cultural group. Men and women have worn and continue to wear some type of fabric head covering in many societies. What does appear to be culturally specific, however, is the way the fabric is worn.”98 This head covering, according to Bradle Griebel, usually covers the hair and is held in place by tying the ends into knots close to the skull. Although women of African descent sometimes tie the fabric at the nape of the neck, their styling always leaves the forehead and neck exposed; by leaving the face uncovered, the headwrap usually enhances the facial features. The woman’s headwrap works like a regal coronet, drawing the looker’s gaze up rather than down. Thus, women wore the headwrap as a queen might wear a crown (see Figure 2.1). The effect is similar to the one achieved with a hairstyle worn by many African women, wherein the hair is pulled back to expose the forehead and often drawn into a high mass on top of the head. As in Africa, headwraps in the Caribbean were diverse in styles and colours, and some were very ornate. Some headwraps had specific names. Their style and artistry were determined by length of fabric and colours used, as well as cultural norms. Among the Yoruba, for instance, during Gelede performances, women wore elaborate headwraps in a spectrum of bright colours, tied in various ways.99 African women who arrived in the Americas as slaves retained particular styles of headwraps that may have been distinctive to their particular ethnic group. The style of a headwrap could be the product of an individual woman’s creativity and ingenuity, along with her ability to dye fabrics. This individuality would have contributed to a broad spectrum of ornamental styles and a rainbow of colours. In some areas of the Caribbean, as in parts of West Africa, headwraps were fixed by tradition: the way the fabric was tied and how it was styled on the head conveyed specific messages or meanings about the wearer to the observer. For example, in Martinique and Guadeloupe, the headwrap conveyed the woman’s occupation. There were specific headdresses for the cane-cutter, the laundress, the nurse, the house servant and the field worker. In St Lucia, the style of a headwrap reflected the marital status of a woman. Personal style and individual creativity did allow for subtle variations in each 88
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Figure 2.1 The simple headwrap. Illustration by author, based on interpretation of Helen Bradley Griebel’s description of the African woman’s headwrap.
design.100 Coded headwraps were also an important part of religious dress; these were often distinct in colour and style from the headwraps worn daily and at secular events. The codes or meanings in headwraps varied from country to country and even between regions in a specific country. The most fascinating coded messages associated with secular headwraps had to do with love and romance. The headwrap was considered part of a formal art of flirtation. In the French West Indies, for instance, a headwrap indicated whether a woman was available and single; it could mean that she was engaged but might change her mind, or that she might be unfaithful if she liked you well enough!101 These headwraps
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were so popular that, as late as the twentieth century, male travellers to these regions were warned not to get their signals crossed.102 In Dutch Guyana (Suriname) during slavery, headwraps were beautiful, ornate and diverse. They often consisted of several different brightly coloured fabrics tied together. Each style had a specific name and meaning – some of which were very funny. For example, the headwrap (also known as angisa in Suriname) called “Wacht me op de hoek” (see Figure 2.2) would be worn on special occasions such as the wearer’s birthday. This headwrap was tied so that after the head was wrapped closely with a scarf, the loose folds of the scarf were gathered and twisted together to stand out from the head. The result of this manipulation was a phallic symbol that was meant to evoke a sense of the erotic. When a woman wore this headwrap, it meant that she was going to meet her lover at the corner. The style called “Feda let them talk” (see Figure 2.3) consisted of wrapping the head closely with a scarf and leaving three corners of it loose and sticking out. Each corner apparently represented the human tongue, and the three
Figure 2.2 Surinamese headwrap: Wacht me op de hoek. Illustration by author, based on observations of and conversations with Surinamese women, as well as pictures in Ilse Henar-Hewitt’s Surinaamse Koto’s en Angisa’s.
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Figure 2.3 Surinamese headwrap: Feda let them talk. Illustration by author, based on observations of and conversations with Surinamese women, as well as pictures in Ilse Henar-Hewitt’s Surinaamse Koto’s en Angisa’s.
“tongues” implied chatter, idle talk or gossiping. The woman wearing this style sent a message to her admirers and observers – including her rivals or those who enjoyed gossiping about others – that “you can chat about me as much as you wish, I do not care”.103 Some headwraps that were popular throughout slavery can still be seen occasionally in Suriname, worn by older women, at festivals and national celebrations. In Jamaica, too, headwraps were diverse and ornate and reflected the stylist’s creativity. They were popular with both adult women and young girls. Several early illustrations of slave women’s dress portray some of the various styles that continued after slavery was abolished. The diversity of Jamaican headwraps can be seen in a captivating photograph, taken in the period 1865–70, of four Jamaican girls, dressed in what appears to be their Sunday best. One of the girls is clutching a large book, perhaps a Bible (see Figure 2.4). The simplicity of the girls’ dresses and the absence of shoes identify them as peasants. Each child is wearing a distinct style of headdress, perhaps suited to the personality and taste of the wearer. On two of the girls, the headwraps cover most of Dress as Resistance
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Courtesy David Boxer Collection of Jamaican Photography
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Figure 2.4 Four Girls, c.1865–70, by J.S. Thompson
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their hair and foreheads, while on the other girls these areas are exposed. The scarves of the two figures on the left are knotted on top and on the side of the head. The headdresses of the two girls on the right seem to be tucked in, possibly pinned in place. Although headwraps in Jamaica during slavery were diverse, there is no evidence to date that they were coded or had specific meanings and names, as in Suriname and the French West Indies. Nonetheless, the prevalence of coded headwraps throughout many areas of the Caribbean suggests otherwise. We also do not know if there were specific headwraps for children and young girls, separate from those for adults, but it is likely, since social custom required children to be dressed appropriately for their age. The photograph offers tantalizing evidence of headwraps in the post-emancipation era and perhaps also during slavery. In contrast to the slavery period, coded headwraps did exist in the post-emancipation era – for instance, the market woman’s tie-head, which will be discussed later. An illustration from the British Caribbean island of St Vincent provides more evidence of diverse headwraps, and a clue to what may have also existed in Jamaica (see Figure 2.5).104 In Slaves Merrymaking there are several types of headwraps, some of which are very ornate and extend from the base of the head high up into the air. The enslaved villagers seem to be celebrating the holidays with music and dancing; however, the most impressive features are the slave women’s dress and the headwraps displayed. The contrast in fabrics and bright patterns in their dress fosters a sense of lightheartedness and exuberance. The three principal social classes, based on race, are represented in the gathering. Those of African descent can be seen to the left, while in the background several Europeans observe the merrymaking. On the right, a group of mulatto women can be seen, wearing the most ornate headdresses in the group. The dress and elaborate headwraps of the mulatto women set The Language of Dress
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Courtesy National Library of Jamaica
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Figure 2.5 St Vincentian Villagers Merrymaking, c.1775–79, by Agostino Brunias
them apart from the rest of the merrymakers and convey their elite status. For slave women, and particularly mulatto women, acquiring the most expensive and elaborate dress was often a way of achieving differentiation and social mobility. The rarity of the outfit usually commanded social admiration within the community. The illustration portrays two types of dress styles. The first is Creole dress, achieved through the merging of European and African characteristics. On this occasion, the mulatto women are wearing long skirts and shawls, as was popular among working-class women in Britain, and one woman is wearing a laced-up corset. Most of the outfits have been accessorized with African-style headwraps. The second dress style represented reveals the continuation of an African aesthetic in dress. The semi-nudity, headwraps and draped cloth around the waists were all African customs which had been maintained and nurtured. The dress of these merry slaves reflects transformations in slave culture from a primarily African aesthetic to a Creole aesthetic. Creole dress was subversive by nature. In fact, Creole dress was fundamentally radical because it defied easy categorization. In essence, it visually and symbolically challenged the colonial regime’s apparent deep-seated desire to divide the colonial world into clear-cut opposites of black and white, or European and African. Dress as Resistance
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The headwraps depicted in the illustration are exquisite in terms of style and patterns. Headwraps, furthermore, were not exclusive to women in the Caribbean. Some enslaved men wrapped their heads with a scarf or handkerchief, as shown by the male slave dressed in knee breeches, dancing with a slave woman. The knee breeches were most likely received from the slaves’ owner. A few women imitated the European high style of some years before, wearing a straw hat perched on top of a headwrap – an interesting synthesis in dress customs. Such a headdress could have been a popular trend or a fashion statement among some slave women, or even a symbol of the wearer’s wealth, status and prestige within the community. For enslaved and freed women, the headwrap served many important and practical functions. Apart from adornment and its role in flirtation, it absorbed perspiration in the same way a bandanna tied around the neck does. The headwrap, or tie-head, was used to hide and protect, or prevent, injuries to the head, as well as to keep infestations of lice and other scalp conditions in check and under cover. It was an expedient article of clothing that could be used as a quick cover-up when there was not enough time to make the hair presentable. The headwrap also protected newly styled hair. For some women, a tightly tied headwrap cured headache or “pressure” in the head. Headwraps provided essential protection for women carrying loads on their heads. A piece of cloth or dried banana leaves would be coiled and shaped into a doughnut, called a cotta, and placed on top of the headwrap to assist with balancing loads. This was an African custom imported wholesale. Edward Long was so impressed with the ability of Jamaican slave women to carry loads in this manner that he remarked: This custom enlarges and strengthens the muscles of their necks, in an amazing degree; and it is really wonderful to observe, what prodigious loads they are able to carry in this manner, with the greatest apparent ease; in so much, that they will even run with them, and affirm, at the same time, with a laugh, that they feel no weight.105
According to Long, the cotta also served another purpose. When a couple decided to divorce, a cotta would be cut into two and each party would take half as a means of expressing the “eternal severance of their affection”.106 For some women, since hair exemplifies the sexual self, the headwrap served to evoke eroticism and sensuality, while for others it was closely associated with festivals and religious ceremonies. The head-
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wrap, including turbans, continues to be one of several special head coverings worn by women and men in Afro-Caribbean religions such as kumina and Revival. Headwraps were, and are, also worn to Christian services.107 The headwrap worn by millions of enslaved African women and their descendants in the diaspora served as a uniform of communal identity, but its most elaborate role was its function as a “uniform of rebellion”, signifying absolute resistance to the loss of self-definition and deculturation.108 The headwrap in Jamaica also served as an important emblem and tool in armed resistance movements. Among the Moore Town Maroons, women wrapped their heads in a specific way to signal an act or state of war when fighting the British. Their leader, Nanny, was said to have tied her headwrap in such a way not only to reflect her status as spiritual and political leader but also to use as a safe place to store her bullets during the Maroon wars. According to oral tradition, Nanny would use her magical powers in battle to catch the bullets fired by the British at her and her warriors; she then cooled them in a large bowl of water and stored them in her headwrap. Legend has it that she stored as many as a thousand bullets there.109 Nanny was able to use these bullets against her enemies and successfully defeated the British. The British militia could not figure out where Nanny got her bullets or where they were stored. The use of the headwrap in this way and the aesthetics of the slave woman’s dress were, as social scientist Gwendolyn O’Neal argues, “shaped by the particularities of the unique cultural experiences of being African, or of African descent, and surviving as a disenfranchised people in a Eurocentric culture”.110 The continuity of African styles of dressing, whether it be the headwrap or beads and coral necklaces, created and maintained a vital link to slave women’s roots and simultaneously helped them to resist the system of slavery that sought to rob them of their pride, their dignity and, most of all, their African identity. Besides the headwrap, there were other examples of dress being used as a form of communal or collective resistance. Bernard Senior, for instance, reported that the leaders of the 1831 slave rebellion in Jamaica “wore scarlet jackets”.111 Roach-Higgins and Eicher explained that “the fervour of a political campaign or a popular uprising or protest of some political act or policy may result in an individual’s flaunting of political affiliation by use of pins, badges, armbands, and other forms of identifying dress”.112 The dress of the resistance leaders was a uniform that Dress as Resistance
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functioned in the same way as contemporary military attire, in that it indicated group ties and status, while the red colour represented a state of war, as was customary in some West African cultures. This dress code for battle was important, because it signalled some level of organizational and military sophistication on the part of slaves, and it served as a uniform statement of resistance. In many societies, colours are important because of their cosmetic, artistic and symbolic functions. Red ochre and other ferrous oxide colours such as orange and yellow are probably the most widely used pigments in the history of humankind.113 In several African societies, red was not only symbolic of strength and courage but was closely associated with resistance and religious dress. The Yoruba priests who serve Orunmila, the god of divination, for example, wear red beads to reflect their religious status within the society.114 Among the Ashanti, red was associated with heat, anger, grief, mourning, witchcraft and warfare.115 The slaves in Jamaica partook of these symbolic meanings and used these colours in their dress as part of the resistance movement. Martha Beckwith reveals that in the slave religion known as obeah, red was worn by the obeah man (priest) for protection against all threats, from physical harm to duppies.116 Therefore, for Jamaican slaves to wear red in battle was not just an act of war but also an appeal to their religion for protection against white aggression. Some Jamaican women camouflaged themselves to resist capture and possible enslavement. Among the Moore Town Maroons, women joined their menfolk in tying the carcoon bush117 and leaves over their bodies so they could ambush their enemies or move their camp through the mountains without being detected by the British. The carcoon bush was used for this purpose because its leaves and branches remain green for several days after it is cut. Today, the Moore Town Maroons consider the carcoon bush a symbol of their people, and on special occasions both men and women tie or wrap it on their bodies to commemorate the Maroon victories over the British. These special occasions include feasts in honour of their ancestral founder and leader, Nanny.118
Slave Carnival: Jonkonnu and Set Girls Thanks to possession, the slave becomes a king or queen just as in carnival; the masque propels its wearer into the subjunctive world of vicarious royalty.
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The head adorned, magnified, enhanced, is the sign, or rather the embodiment, of a recovered selfhood, of a self, empowered by the dispossession of one self and its repossession by another. – Richard D.E. Burton, Afro-Creole: Power, Opposition, and Play in the Caribbean
Enslaved Africans and their descendants in Jamaica held Crop-Over fêtes and evening dances, and they celebrated Christian holidays with masquerade carnivals. These activities were a well-loved part of African slaves’ popular culture. Slaves travelled for miles after their daily labour was over to attend these festive occasions, and returned to their owner’s plantation the next day, ready for the usual labour in the fields. Festive spaces gave slaves the opportunity for fun and merriment – as well as a cover, both for organizing violent protests and for expressing antislavery sentiments in a non-confrontational way.119 Slave carnivals reflected the blending of traditions that included African and European masquerade along with British mumming plays and Shakespearean monologues. Carnival dress or costume was a mirror of creolization, or cultural adaptation, in action; queens and kings were often depicted among the characters. These carnivals were part of the play tradition in Caribbean culture that included tea meetings, Christmas mumming plays, sports and ritual speech-making. In each of these play elements a form of ritualized conflict is performed.120 During the performances, language, dress and the body became agencies for empowerment, ridicule and resistance. Many plantations and urban centres held carnival by law during three days of “free time” for slaves; Christmas Day, Boxing Day and New Year’s Day. These days were very festive and provided the enslaved with the opportunity to show off their best clothes. Matthew Lewis stated that carnivals were so important for the slaves “that they [slaves] reserve their finest dresses and lay their schemes for displaying their show and expense to the greatest advantage”.121 He further remarked on their festive nature: I never saw so many people who appeared to be so unaffectedly happy. In England, at fairs and races, half the visitors at least seem to have been only brought there for the sake of traffic, and to be too busy to be amused, but here [in Jamaica] nothing was thought of but real pleasure. . . . At eight o’clock, as we passed throughout the market-place, there was the greatest illumination [fireworks] and which of course was most thronged.122
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Lewis was clearly surprised to see such gaiety and celebration among the enslaved population – though it should not come as a surprise that slaves who were forced to labour intensely for much of the year wanted to make the best of the holidays. On these holidays many of the great houses were opened, and slaves were invited inside to drink and make merry with their masters and mistresses. African slaves and Europeans danced together to African music, and the enslaved often attended a banquet that included a ball or a theatrical event and masquerades.123 During carnival periods, the plantation was plunged into a “liminal state in which customary boundaries and constraints were nominally suspended”.124 These events were far more than mere entertainment. In fact, masquerades and carnivals provided controlled outlets for slaves’ aggression; they also allowed the slaves to mock or poke fun at whites and the colonial society and, in the process, subtly resist the institution of slavery. Carnivals illustrated forms of accommodation and therefore had ambiguous meanings. In Jamaica, carnival celebrations included masquerades, called Jonkonnu or John Canoe, that consisted of masked troupes, dancers, actors and processions of women, called Set Girls, in their finest dresses. They were accompanied by slave bands, which provided music for the spectators and the performers. The entertainers as well as the masked participants were usually slaves or freed persons of non-European descent.125 The carnivals were packed with the “sound of negro drums and horns, the barbarous music and yelling of different African tribes, and the more mellow singing of the Set Girls”.126 Aesthetically, the slave carnivals emphasized dress: the parade consisted of distinctively costumed segments, each with its own colours, style and floats. Such an image suggests communal harmony, but class differentiation was maintained based on race and dress. For some African slaves, carnival was an opportunity to return to their roots, to reminisce about the use of masks in mediating between the supernatural and human society. Michael Scott described a distinctly African aspect of Jonkonnu masquerade, pointing out that the masks and outfits worn in carnival were similar to those used in West African rituals and festivals: “Two gigantic men dressed in calf-skins entire, head, four legs and tails. The skin of the head was made to fit like a hood, the two fore-feet hung dangling down in front.”127 Edward Long remarked that some of the masqueraders wore “grotesque habits, and a pair of ox-horns on their head”. He added: “In 98
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1769, several new masks appeared with the Ebos, the Papaws, having their respective cannus male and female, who were dressed in a very laughable style.”128 The dress of the leading male street masquerader of the troupe, also known as Jonkonnu, consisted mainly of an elaborate headdress – a horse head, a cow head with horns, a model house or a tall hat – and a mask, with a tinselled or jingling multi-coloured outfit. During the dancing the leader of the troupe often rushed at or otherwise frightened onlookers.129 Jonkonnu has its roots in West Africa. Among the Mende, Igbo and Yoruba, masks were used in religious ceremonies, festivals and initiation rites. Yoruba ritual masks were very elaborate in design, consisting of human features frequently combined with animals, snakes or geometrical forms.130 In the Gold Coast (Ghana), Fante masquerade contained satirical critiques of the colonial regime. Slave carnivals existed throughout much of the Caribbean and other parts of the colonial empire, from Belize in the southwest to Bermuda and North Carolina in the north. Known as Junkanoos in the Bahamas, in some parts of the Caribbean these festivals were called Gombay or Goombay, since much of the dancing was done to the drumming of the gombay, a drum made of goatskin. These masquerades had a long and complicated history. However, the origins of the name Jonkonnu are still unclear. Long explained this celebration among the slave population as “an honourable memorial of John Conney, a celebrated cabocero at Tres Puntas in Axim, on the Guinea coast”.131 Conney, a successful Gold Coast merchant, ruled over three Brandenburg trading forts on the West African coast – Pokoso, Takrama and Akoda, on the coast of present-day Ghana. By 1724, the Dutch had taken control of his official residence, the Great Fredricksburg Castle. Conney moved inland and took up residence at the court of Opoku Ware, the Asantehene of Ashanti. Africans who arrived from the Gold Coast as slaves and were sold throughout the Caribbean retained stories of this celebrated African merchant. But the phonetic transformation of the name John Conney to variations such as John Connu or Jonkonnu is still a topic of debate.132 Richard Allsopp suggests that Jonkonnu is more likely related to the Yoruba word Jonkoliko (one elevated as a figure for fun or disgrace). This seems more logical, especially since many of the Jonkonnu masks in Jamaica were similar to the annual Yoruba masquerade festival Egungun.133
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One interesting feature of the slave carnivals in Jamaica was the Set Girls. In urban areas female slaves divided themselves into parties distinguished by colour, such as the Red Set and the Blue Set girls. The respective colours were worn in the form of tie-heads or headwraps, hats and handkerchiefs, along with white aprons. The women who attended but did not participate in the costumed parade dressed up in their finest outfits, which often consisted of calamanco or woollen coats, which they called daccasses. Some wore their own costumes which included white shirts or bed gowns of various kinds on which were sewed provocative representations of the human figure.134 Some of the representations may have been explicit or implicit coded messages meant for the members of a particular colour or set, or for lovers and friends. These codes would have reflected enslaved women’s experiences and an essentially female understanding of colonial society.135 Lewis described the origins of the blues and the reds as based on an old rivalry between British admirals who wore red and Scottish admirals who wore blue. This eventually developed into a fashion competition. Parties fought over the best outfits, and the floats sought to outdo each other with the most dazzling costumes. Lewis explained that “All of Kingston was divided into parties . . . the rival factions of blues and the reds who contend for setting forth their processions with the greatest taste and magnificence.”136 Despite the festive occasions, the social classes remained very much divided. Cynric Williams in 1823 argued that “On all these occasions of festivity the mulattoes kept aloof, as they disdained to mingle with the negroes. . . . Yet they seem to cast many a wistful look at the dancers.”137 There was a set for housekeepers who disdained to participate, while others did dance in the parade through the streets. Set Girls in urban centres considered themselves superior in taste, manners and fashion to those on the plantations.138 Far from being a cohesive group, some members of the enslaved community considered themselves better than others by virtue of their skills, occupation and even dress. Some free mulattoes allied themselves with a particular set and wore those colours, and also sent their own slave women to help out if necessary. This was the case with a Miss Edwards, who, according to Lewis, “was rank Blue to the very tips of her fingers, and had, indeed, contributed one of her female slaves to sustain a very important character in the show”.139 During the carnival the Set Girls progressed through the town with their bands and flags, halting only when invited into a house 100
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Courtesy National Library of Jamaica
to dance and sing. At nightfall the festivities would end with a ball and splendid entertainment.140 Analysis of an 1836 illustration by I.M. Belisario provides some insight into the magnitude and splendour of these slave events and the nature of the costumes worn. The costumes retain African elements but also show definite signs of accommodation in their predominantly European character. In the illustration Set Girls and Jack in the Green (see Figure 2.6),141 slave women can be seen parading in their costumes as Set Girls. The Set Girls in the illustration are dressed in similar style, with broad-brimmed hats, feathers, shoes and parasols. During the parade the Set Girls proceeded two by two, the tallest first and then tapering down to the smallest child, all dressed in the same colour. Each set was dressed alike, and carried parasols or umbrellas of the same colour and size.142 This was reminiscent of women’s “age set” solidarity rituals in many West African societies. Captain John Adams described a parade in 1823 in which the Fante women dressed in their best garments and paraded through the town.143 Today, Set Girls are still observed at festivals along
Figure 2.6 Red Set Girls and Jack in the Green, c.1837, by I.M. Belisario. From Sketches of Character in Illustration of the Habits, Occupations and Costume of the Negro Population in the Island of Jamaica.
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the West African coast. During the Igbos’ Njenji (masked parade) in Afikpo, age set members compete among themselves for the first position in line. These Igbo girls usually dress elaborately and carry Westernstyle handbags. Unlike most other Igbo performers, who go barefoot, the Set Girls wear shoes. Due to the intense competition among the Igbo sets, the costumes of each set are usually made in secret.144 In Belisario’s illustration, the slave women performing as Set Girls are depicted in shoes, unlike their fellow masquerader, Jack in the Green, who has none. In the centre of the dancing Set Girls, Jack in the Green can be seen wearing a costume composed of coconut-palm leaves. This costume has distinct African resonances. The women’s costumes, however, with their puffed sleeves and tapered shoes, resemble the styles popular in Britain during the 1830s. The same sort of European influences can also be seen in Belisario’s figure of the queen, or Ma’am, of the Set Girls, created in 1837 (see Figure 2.7). Each set of girls was led by a queen elected for the occasion. In this illustration, the queen, or Ma’am, is more elaborately dressed than the Set Girls. Instead of a sceptre, she carries a whip decorated with ribbons, and her hat has a huge, imposing plumage. The intricate roses and decorative rosebuds sewn onto her dress make her costume even more fascinating. Unlike the other women, she is wearing stockings, and she carries a Western-style handbag. The queen’s hat and her dress, with its broad-shouldered silhouette, heavily puffed sleeves and low neckline, were imitations of British styles of the 1830s.145 Further observation of the queen’s dress indicates that she is wearing numerous petticoats underneath her skirt to maintain its fullness and flounce. In both illustrations, the women’s dresses end well above their ankles; they may have been shortened to allow freedom of movement while dancing. The queen’s dress, with its elaborate designs, clearly sets her apart from the other women and signals both her role as a leader in the parade and her wealth and prestige. Many of the carnival costumes and even the parades themselves were sponsored by planters and wealthy European residents. Lewis pointed out that “Several gentlemen [white men] in the neighbourhood at Black River had subscribed very largely towards the expenses of the show; and certainly it produced the gayest and most amusing scene that I ever witnessed, to which the mutual jealousy and pique of the two parties against each other contributed in no slight degree.”146
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Courtesy National Library of Jamaica
Figure 2.7 Queen or Ma’am of the Set Girls, c.1837, by I.M. Belisario. From Sketches of Character in Illustration of the Habits, Occupations and Costume of the Negro Population in the Island of Jamaica.
The funding provided by white sponsors and slave owners enabled the slaves to go all out with their dress and create elaborate outfits and masks for the occasion. It also heightened the fashion competition between the various groups of enslaved women, and fostered intense loyalty to their respective colours. Similarly, the competition between the Set Girls was so fierce that a Red Girl remarked that “though the Reds were beaten, she would not be a Blue girl for the whole universe!”147 Dress as Resistance
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Europeans sponsoring these slave carnivals had the opportunity to influence the dress of the masqueraders, especially since some slave women received their costumes directly from their owners. Belisario confirmed this, commenting on the queen of the Set Girls: “The Queen was invested with absolute authority, which . . . she exercises with unsparing severity. . . the ornaments displayed are probably the loan of her mistress, the remainder of the dress invariably purchased by herself.”148 Cynric Williams explained that the queens were “decorated with ornaments, necklaces, earrings, and bracelets of their mistresses, so that they carry much wealth on their persons for the time”.149 It is also possible that slaves purchased their entire outfits with the money they saved up from selling their ground provisions in the market, or from gifts received during the previous year’s festivities. Festival masqueraders received a ritual gift, usually money, from spectators (similar to the Aguinaldo received by masqueraders in Spanish territories). The planter Matthew Gregory Lewis remarked that during one such carnival, Mr John Canoe carried off “a couple of his dollars” and that “It was usual for the master of the estate to give them [performers] a couple of guineas apiece.”150 Some slave owners probably benefited from the financial gifts received by their masquerading slaves during these festivities. The strong European influences on Jonkonnu masquerade contributed to its ambivalence in terms of representation of resistance and accommodation (see Figure 2.8). Art historian Judith Bettelheim has argued that because of European sponsorship, Jamaican Jonkonnu and its associated activities were increasingly transformed to embrace characteristics of British folklore.151 Slaves and freed women embraced these European influences as a survival strategy that allowed them to appropriate the symbols of their colonizers while appearing to assimilate, and then using the symbols against them. Members of the slave community appropriated British symbols in their costumes and floats. On one occasion, there was a “Nelson’s Car” and a “Trafalgar”, and a slave dressed as a “Strange uncouth kind of glittering tawdry figure, all feathers, and a pitchfork and painted pasteboard . . . turned out to be no less a personage than Britannia herself, with a pasteboard shield covered with the arms of Great Britain, a trident in her hand, and a helmet made of pale-blue silk and silver.”152 The fact that Europeans, many of them slave owners, sponsored the slaves’ masquerades suggests that they got something out of these events; 104
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Courtesy of the National Library of Jamaica
Figure 2.8 Koo, Koo or Actor Boy, c.1837, by I.M. Belisario. From Sketches of Character in Illustration of the Habits, Occupation and Costume of the Negro Population in the Island of Jamaica.
they also simultaneously contributed to the rivalry between slaves. Wealthy European residents may have put up the funds for carnival because they found it funny and entertaining. The subsidies further objectified the slaves and provided the white elite with their own dancing clowns. There may also have been rivalries between white sponsors Dress as Resistance
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anxious to outdo each other. Undoubtedly, different sponsors had different motivations, but we really do not know what they were. We also do not know to what extent the sponsors controlled the content of the costumes or, in fact, the behaviour of slaves themselves. Regardless, slaves were able to be creative and culturally expressive in their carnival attire. Carnival dress among slaves was ambiguous in its meanings; it is difficult to determine exactly what slaves’ intentions were. Satire is, in itself, ambivalent. Slaves who dressed as their owners, caricaturing their owners’ dress and actions, may have been criticizing the system and also reflecting a desire to assume the role and power of their owners. Some slaves may have embraced European characteristics during carnival to experience power and control. Others may have seen carnival simply as an opportunity to have fun and enjoy the festivities. The concept of dress as both resistance and accommodation was rather complex. Accommodation and resistance were not polar opposites but melded together or overlapped. In fact, accommodation, or the embracing of European symbols and aesthetics in carnival dress on the part of a few slaves, represented not a desire to be like whites but an act of escapism that allowed slaves to resist their status as slave – at least temporarily. Carnival dress, therefore, had multiple layers of meaning, functioning both as resistance and as accommodation to European culture. Carnival dress also functioned as a mask that transformed the persona, permitting individuals to do wild, uninhibited things, such as mocking their owners with antics, taunts and pelvic gyrations.153 Michael Scott described an occasion during a slave carnival when a masquerader skipped up to us with a white wand in one hand and a dirty handkerchief in the other, and with sundry moppings and mowings, first wiping my shoes with his mouchoir [handkerchief ], then my face, (murder, what a flavour of saltfish and onions it had!) he made a smart enough pirouette, and then sprung on the back of a non-descript animal [masquerader].154
In 1823 Williams recalled, “Slaves sang satirical philippics against their master, communicating a little free advice now and then; but they never lost sight of decorum.”155 Although such carnivals were in themselves a satire, they also provided a performance space that allowed slaves, including women, to contest and resist the norms of the colonial society. Slaves sang satirical and subversive songs, and they could also be verbally aggressive and abusive in the name of fun.
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Likewise, some slaves used the occasion of carnival to plan armed revolts and to celebrate aspects of their African heritage. This type of subversive activity was not limited to Jamaica but was widespread throughout the Caribbean. In Antigua in 1776, whites were shocked to learn that a slave masquerade had been the organizing opportunity and the means of concealment for an attempted overthrow of white rule. In Cuba, cabildos – church-sponsored confraternities for the religious instruction of urban slaves – that emerged in the late sixteenth century evolved into all-purpose associations that offered Afro-Cubans the opportunity to worship the orichas of Africa, under the guise of the Catholic saints, with music, dance and carnival procession.156 Behind the mask of fancy dress, slaves could act freely and sometimes even mimic their owners. They could be outrageous, going beyond the normal strictures of buckra’s “morality”. Moreover, carnival facilitated the creation of elaborately dressed kings and queens – an African aristocracy – as part of the entertainment and street parades. This was a conscious symbolic inversion of the plantation and colonial hierarchies, placing African slaves in a position of prominence and subordinating the planter class. In this manner, slave women experienced some control, if only temporarily. Being queen for a day was a way of having a taste of power, even if it was mock power and fleeting. As in West Africa, the colours of the masqueraders’ outfits were both symbolic and closely associated with slave religion. Among the Yoruba Gelede masqueraders, red was used principally to represent heat and aggressiveness and to reinforce the notion of warriors. The use of red was an integral part of the rituals in honour of powerful spiritual mothers.157 Knowledge of symbolic colours among African slaves and the importance of red as a resistance colour may have contributed to the term liberation colours, which was popular with some slaves during carnival festivities.158 A second factor that may have led to the notion of liberation colours was the influence of refugee servants from Haiti whose masters fled that country during the French and Haitian revolutions. These Haitians established their own Set Girls, called the French Set Girls. It is surprising that the ruling class allowed the licence that was associated with carnival activity. Slave carnivals became boisterous as masqueraders “spanked their long whips” and “whistled loud and long”. Emblems and implements such as the whip, swords, axes, hatchets, flags and drums were fundamental to the procession as symbols of power.159 The most pervasive and emotionally infused emblem in the parade was Dress as Resistance
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the whip. For the slaves, who were often stripped of their clothes and lashed on their naked bodies by their owners, the whip represented torture and the planter’s sadistic lust. During the symbolic role-reversal of planter and slave within the confines of carnival performance space, the whip, once possessed by the planter, was now possessed and controlled by the slave. In the process, the slave was liberated and empowered. This was not a benign activity but a symbolic method of chipping away at the institution of slavery. Energetically and creatively, slaves used their free time for fun to express their resentment at their enslavement and to exasperate their owners. A few Europeans noticed this and were, perhaps, uncomfortable or concerned for their safety. The writer Michael Scott, for instance, called carnival activities “an insurrection of the slave population mayhap . . . especially since every man and officer in the regiment had a tumbler [of beer] . . . at his head”.160 In most cases, the slaves got away with this carnival activity. Folklorists Joan Radner and Susan Lanser explain that “interpretation is a contextual activity”.161 Therefore, what in one environment may seem clear or unambiguous, in another is not. For example, slave women’s use of fancy dress as a form of resistance may have gone unnoticed or been dismissed because it was read in contradictory ways. Many planters – like Lewis, who described these carnivals as “very gay”162 – may not have recognized any threat to their established social order. However, as anthropologist James C. Scott argues, “Resistance is greatly influenced by the existing forms of labour control and by beliefs about the probability and severity of retaliation.”163 Therefore, masking allowed slave women the chance to ridicule the political establishment while not threatening the essential equation of the colonial society and thereby risking the wrath of the slave owners. Scott says, “Their safety lies in their anonymity.”164 It is also possible that planters saw slave carnivals as a way of controlling dissent – what Victor Turner has called the theory of liminality.165 The planters may have thought that if the slaves were allowed to have some fun and vent their grievances in harmless satire, they might diffuse their anger and be ready for work at the end of the holiday. As the Reverend H.M. Waddell stated in 1829, “It was hoped that the result of this free time and license would prepare slaves for another year of toil.”166 Nevertheless, dress as a form of masking contained subtexts that were not obvious to whites but were expressive of what is known today as the politics of subalternity. For some slaves, dress carried a discreet message 108
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of resistance so hidden that when they were face to face with their enslavers, their motives and thoughts were concealed.167 For many slave women, dress as resistance was not a frontal or destructive attack on the colonial system, but rather an opportunity for specific advantages – the celebration and maintenance of their African heritage and the possibility of transgressing boundaries. In this study, resistance and accommodation are discussed separately for the purpose of analysis. Nonetheless, the separation should not be exaggerated. Dress had layers of meaning; carnival dress, with all its ambiguity, allowed accommodation to be used for resistance and vice versa. Resistance was a continuous process in the daily lives of slaves; all slaves, including women, resisted servitude. Despite the contributions of women to resistance movements in Africa, their role as resistors in the Caribbean was often denied or dismissed. Vincent Harding argues that this was partly because, from early in their enslavement, women were seen as no threat. On the middle passage, for instance, “The men, except for prescribed times, were kept chained in the communal hole between the decks and the women were allowed to move around the upper decks by day . . . why? Partly because they were judged less dangerous than the men . . . [therefore] white men from captain to the cook’s helper could unleash their lust against them.”168 But these women were not passive beings who lacked feelings; they expressed their anger and frustration at slavery in various ways. Indeed, they were “natural rebels”. As Beckles claims, “The slave mode of production by virtue of placing the black woman’s ‘inner world’ – her fertility, sexuality and maternity – on the market as capital assets, produced in them a ‘natural’ propensity to resist and to refuse was part of a basic self protective and survival response.”169 Women played central roles in the slave community. They were wives, mothers, healers and spiritual leaders. It was the threat to their community that forced women to the front of cultural resistance. Slave women realized that to resist European attempts at deculturation and dehumanization, they had to retain their African cultural heritage and adapt it under slavery. As historian Barbara Bush states, “If the cultural base of any community is threatened, then resistance becomes essential to survival.”170 Cultural alienation for slaves certainly meant psychic annihilation,171 or even social death. In order to justify slavery, the planters dismissed the vitality of AfroCaribbean culture and instead perpetuated stereotypes about people of African descent, particularly characterizing female slaves as passive and Dress as Resistance
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promiscuous. This provided a convenient rationale for the adulterous activities of white men with their female slaves.172 Nonetheless, slave women refused to accept these stereotypical images. The persistence of African aesthetics in the Jamaican woman’s dress represented not only her pride and dignity but also her rejection of the colonial order and its moral judgements. Furthermore, the use of dress as resistance guaranteed slaves’ survival by enabling them to express their anger at slavery without disrupting the social hierarchy. As James C. Scott says, “The goal, after all, of the great bulk of resistance is not directly to overthrow or transform a system of domination but rather to survive – today, this week, this season . . . .”173
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Chapter 3
Dress as Accommodation
I have always thought that fashion resulted to a large extent from the desire of the privileged to distinguish themselves, whatever the cost, from the masses who followed them. – Fernand Braudel, The Structures of Everyday Life
Dress, Accommodation and the New Social Order Emancipation in 1838 gave rise to a new social order in Jamaica that affected the lives of all ex-slaves. The social structure created new challenges for freed persons and established its priorities based on white supremacy. The hegemony of British culture derogated the African heritage of Jamaican people, including their appearance and physical attributes. European entitlement spawned racial images that contributed to the subordination of an entire population. As a consequence, large numbers of the colonized in Jamaica realized that the only way to escape their subordinate status was to embrace or accommodate European culture and standards. Frantz Fanon’s famous title Black Skin, White Masks1 alludes to the phenomenon of accommodation. Although Fanon universalizes his arguments and treats colonized societies as a monolithic group, his work nevertheless provides a useful frame for this discussion on dress as 111
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accommodation. Fanon argued that colonized people of African descent had to wear a “white mask” to survive, or to “be somebody”, within the white-dominated society. Accommodation occurs once the colonized person has been culturally alienated and is forced to confront the culture of the colonial power. Fanon stated: “Every colonized people – in other words, every people in whose soul an inferiority complex has been created by the death and burial of its local cultural originality – finds itself face to face with the language of the civilizing nation; that is, with the culture of the mother country.”2 Susan Gubar elaborates further on Fanon’s argument and suggests that accommodation was, in fact, “Racial impersonation and masquerading in a destiny imposed on colonized black people who must wear the white mask – of customs and values, of norms and languages, of aesthetic standards and religious ideological – created and enforced by an alien civilization.”3 Thus, for colonized people, the reality of their lives was a complex one in that “Not only must the black man [or woman] be black,” Fanon claimed, but “he [or she] must be black in relation to the white man.”4 Furthermore, for many colonized people, wearing a European mask was a way of whitening the African race, making it more Europeanized and simultaneously preventing Africans and their descendants from “falling back into the pit of niggerhood”.5 To fully comprehend the complexities of racial subjectivity and interactive categories in post-slavery Jamaican society, some analysis of the white mask and its cultural ramifications is necessary. Susan Gubar emphasizes that masking was more than an attempt to elevate people of African descent. Embracing European culture was also a way to experience or “taste” a bit of the Other and to pursue the promise of recognition and reconciliation.6 In post-emancipation Jamaica, dress was symbolic of this mask that reflected freed persons’ ability to accommodate or to embrace European culture. In every society there are aesthetic patterns that reflect that society’s ideal of beauty. They are based on cultural standards that members of society use to evaluate each other. But as Harry Bredemeier and Jackson Toby explain, the existence of standards also means that some people are considered desirable while others are rejected by the community for not conforming or not being beautiful enough.7 Dress as a reflection of cultural standards is important because it signals identity and differentiation, as seen earlier.8 It does not, however, always make this distinction. In other words, dress can transcend class boundaries and can be decep112
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tive. Mary Ellen Roach-Higgins and Joanne Eicher state that “Just as verbal language can be deceptive, so can the language of dress. Individuals can assume disguise to deceive the observer.”9 Many runaway slaves, of course, accommodated to European attire to escape servitude. In that context, dress as accommodation not only deceived the observer but also tested the boundaries between racially defined identities and reinforced as well as challenged the social norms of Jamaican colonial society. After emancipation, creolization continued among some groups of people, while others rejected Creole elements in favour of complete imitation of, or accommodation to, European standards. Furthermore, the freed women who chose to “wear a white mask” did so for a variety of reasons. The use of dress as accommodation cannot be examined based solely on the social changes in Jamaica but must be placed in the context of Jamaica’s relationship with Britain and the influence of British cultural and social forces on the lives of Jamaican people. The new social order in Jamaica consisted of three socio-economic groups, which correspond to the tripartite racial division of the plantation economy. At the top of Jamaican society was the white minority. They owned most of the land and were accustomed to controlling the Jamaican economy. They were the ones who set all social and cultural standards. This group was diverse, consisting of locally born whites, colonial officers and a few white immigrants. As during slavery, there were rich whites and poor whites. The members of this group considered themselves to be British, and most supported the representatives of the Crown in ruling Jamaica. Whenever possible, the members of this class sent their children to schools in Britain, and they made every effort to maintain cordial relations with the colonial power.10 The large brown-skinned group called mulattoes or coloureds made up the majority of the emerging middle class. Over time, prosperous Afro-Jamaicans were included in this class. Though mulattoes were the products of sexual relations between slaves and their white owners, this group was not a homogeneous body but was divided by profession, education and economic status. It should be noted that in Jamaica the general pattern of miscegenation was the forced subjection of enslaved women to the sexual desires of white males; however, it must be acknowledged that mulattoes also resulted from sexual intercourse between white women and slave men.11 By 1820 this group outnumbered the white population. For the middle class, colour and phenotype were Dress as Accommodation
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key characteristics that distanced them from the lower classes. Mulattoes were usually born into the legal status of slaves since they inherited the status of their mothers, but their white parents sometimes granted or purchased their freedom and provided for their education and upkeep. Some mulatto women who were the mistresses of their owners also received their freedom. In 1780 it was decreed that after three generations, a mulatto had all the privileges and immunities of white subjects.12 Some mulattoes who received financial backing from their white parents or sexual partners got involved in some type of economic activity. Some coloured or mulatto women offered health-care services to sick travellers and strangers,13 while others worked as managers and housekeepers of lodges, inns and taverns. A few mulatto women owned their own inns and became wealthy. For instance, in the census of 1844, the total number of boarding houses in Jamaica was 157; of these, women owned 88, men owned 26 and the sex of the owners of the rest was not identified.14 Meanwhile, references to female lodging-house keepers were many. The planter Lewis, for example, was cared for by several of these “brown girls” – women like Miss Cole, Judy James and Miss Edwards.15 Lady Nugent, the Americanborn wife of the governor of Jamaica from 1801 to 1806, often sent her guests to a lodging house owned by Charlotte Beckford, a mulatto woman.16 The men of this class, according to James M. Phillippo, were “of talent and accomplishment who would do honour to any community”. He added: “They fill the public offices, practice as solicitors and barristers in the courts of law; they are found among our tradesmen, merchants, and estate proprietors; are directors of our civil institutions; and are enrolled among our magistrates.”17 As they had during slavery, mulattoes continued to see themselves as a separate and distinct group and therefore dissociated themselves from the lower classes of Jamaicans. In fact, mulattoes themselves owned fifty thousand slaves on the eve of emancipation.18 In post-emancipation Jamaica, the mulattoes began to challenge the white elite for political and economic power, and they allied themselves with the Jews.19 The majority of Jamaicans lived in another world, rooted in slavery, deprivation and African heritage. Emancipation freed 320,000 slaves, who were then forced to provide for themselves without the advantages of property, skills and education. Nevertheless, many managed to acquire land with the assistance of missionaries who created free villages, and they earned wages from seasonal work.20 The newly emancipated
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became members of the labouring and peasant class.21 This group was not a cohesive class, and not all its members were involved in agricultural labour. After emancipation, on plantations and in urban areas women continued to serve as cooks, domestic servants, seamstresses, washerwomen, midwives, nurses, healers and milkmaids.22 During slavery, slaves’ cottages, gardens or provision grounds, medical care and clothing were provided by the planter who owned them. The end of slavery meant the end of the planters’ responsibilities for their slaves’ well-being. Many freed persons stayed on the plantations to work for wages as either regular or seasonal labourers.23 Women, who constituted the main field-labour work force, were often ejected from regular estate work when wage labour was established after emancipation. They were evicted from their cottages and provision grounds and were the first to be taken out of regular employment and used instead as casual labour. This was evident at Worthy Park Estate, where out of the 145 female ex-slaves retained on the estate through the apprenticeship period of 1834–38, only 77 women were kept on; well over half were no longer on the estate list by 1842.24 However, not all women who left the estates were evicted. Some women chose to leave because of the brutal treatment they had received under slavery, while others preferred to perform agricultural labour for their families rather than for an employer. The Reverend Bean Underhill observed that some women in rural areas worked as traders in markets and as street vendors, selling fish and produce for their families. Those freed women who were evicted and could find no work migrated to urban centres, where many entered domestic service or got involved in trading. Some women became prostitutes, entertainers, barmaids and waitresses. In Kingston, freed women also worked as washerwomen and bakers, while others broke stones for road construction and loaded and unloaded vessels on the wharves.25 Urban freed women, according to Douglas Hall, often “looked for husbands to save them from dire economic straits and they languished in towns when they could find none”. Hall added that lower-middleclass women were those “whose husbands had left them with little financial provisions for the future and were incapable of work and too ashamed to beg”.26 Urban centres became a showcase for the middle and lower classes to display their social standing, and more specifically their accommodation to British culture. As these urban centres took on a more British character, a wedge developed that divided the classes, giving rise to two distinct sets of Dress as Accommodation
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social features – what Philip Curtin has described as the “two Jamaicas”27 – and this class difference was reflected in dress. On one side there existed the elite and the middle class, who were considered “civilized”; on the other side were the labouring and peasant class, the “uncivilized”, whose universe included a Christian God that coexisted with African beliefs and practices. The process of adaptation and melding of various African ethnicities went on for hundreds of years and was key to producing a vibrant Jamaican Creole culture, which was passed down to each new generation just as it had been passed on to new arrivals from Africa.28 Many Jamaicans, for instance, continued to nurture and maintain African spiritual systems such as obeah and myalism.29 For many, Afro-Jamaican religions not only maintained a link with the ancestral homeland but also offered some hope in a colonized world. Emancipation did not end class conflicts; white supremacy was maintained. The ruling oligarchy considered white hegemony to be an integral part of the social order and believed that, to maintain social stability, the freed population needed guidance. Many also believed that progress was linked to race; therefore, descendants of Africans could not achieve success without the help of whites. The large exodus of planters from Jamaica after emancipation and the decline of many estates forced the few remaining white elite to concern themselves with the “instruction” of the newly emancipated ex-slaves. In a letter to Prime Minister Gladstone in 1850, the Honourable E. Stanley stated: “Where the white proprietor has failed, the negro will not succeed, more especially if deprived of the instruction and example of Europeans by their gradual abandonment of the island, he is left to retrograde, as there is but little doubt that he will do, into his pristine condition of African barbarism.”30 Similar sentiments were held by Herbert George De Lisser, who wrote that “the negro, if left altogether to himself will make no progress”.31 Emancipated and freed Jamaicans were now seen as “subject” people to be assisted and civilized, and as historian Patrick Bryan has argued, “their [freed persons’] environment had become the mission frontier”.32 Britain’s desire to civilize the newly emancipated Jamaicans was embedded in the social and intellectual climate of the period, specifically in the notions of social Darwinism and positivism. Bryan has argued that social Darwinism was an appropriate companion of positivism, since the former explained white hegemony as a product of physical or biological fitness to survive and to dominate the weak, while the latter 116
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justified the social structure necessary for one class to dominate another.33 These ideological tools not only justified empire and the push to civilize subject people; they also reaffirmed and endorsed European hegemony. The ruling planter class in Jamaica believed that to successfully civilize the freed population, specific policies had to be implemented to maintain the former slaves’ customary obedience and subservience. Therefore, the planters kept firm control over land resources and added to the labour force immigrants from India. In addition, they sought to control freed persons by encouraging values that legitimized the system of colonial rule.34 These values affected all aspects of people’s lives, particularly their appearance and how one dressed. Those who kept the old plantation styles and African cultural characteristics in their dress were relegated to the realm of the uncivilized, while those who dressed according to European standards of beauty were seen, in some cases, as civilized. But how did one become civilized, and what were the social and cultural forces that made it possible to do so?
The Rise of a Consumer Society and the Commercialization of Fashion Popular consumerism swept through England during the early modern period, centering first on appropriate apparel. Clothing in a wider breadth of fabrics and fashions was increasingly the article of choice among a range of classes well below the social median. – Beverly Lemire, Dress, Culture, and Commerce
The birth of a consumer society and the commercialization of fashion in Britain triggered similar activities in Jamaica. In Britain, a consumer revolution accompanied the Industrial Revolution that began in the third quarter of the eighteenth century. Wealth from the colonies poured into Britain to help fund a rising standard of living for much of the British population. More men and women than ever before enjoyed the experience of acquiring material possessions. Particular styles of dress, which for centuries had been achievable only by the privileged rich, could now be emulated by the larger society. What men and women had once hoped to inherit from parents they could now buy for themselves. In Dress as Accommodation
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addition, what was once bought at the dictate of need was now bought at the dictate of fashion. Goods that had been available only on specific days from markets, county fairs or street peddlers could now increasingly be bought from shops. This change in British society saw large numbers of women entering the clothing manufacturing industry, and many participated as traders and sellers of ready-made and recycled apparel. The desire to consume was not an eighteenth-century concept; what was new was the increased opportunity and ability to consume.35 The consumer revolution in Britain included the commercialization of fashion. Many in Britain believed that no other nation in Europe could match the British in luxury of apparel. The Britons’ great fondness for dress was described as the “characteristic folly” of the age. But the folly was so epidemic that many spent all they had earned on ribbons, ruffles, necklaces, fans and hoop petticoats.36 The democratization of fashion allowed many of the lower classes in Britain, in both town and country, to imitate in their leisurewear the styles developed by the upper classes, but work clothes still reflected class differences. One contemporary reported that “a hat, a coat, or a shoe, once deemed suitable to be worn only by a great grand sire, is now soon put on by a dictator of fashion”.37 The popularity of the British fashion doll and mass production of fashion magazines, along with an increase in numbers of clothing shops, contributed to new levels of consumption in the growing market.38 The dress styles that emerged in Britain throughout the period of this study were diverse, elaborate and indicative of class differences. The disparity between men’s and women’s clothes in terms of comfort and ornamentation is perhaps a reflection of the period’s vast difference between male and female roles. The Industrial Revolution had created the need for a large labour force of men whose clothing was standardized, tailored and reasonably comfortable, as in the case of the business suit or work overalls. In contrast, the new class of women who were nonworking housewives could wear nonfunctional clothing, unsuitable for the servants who performed the household chores. Women’s clothes of the upper and middle classes became display pieces, like furniture, intended to reflect wealth and social standing. Dress styles over time became ensembles, increasingly and overwhelmingly ornamental, accessorized, stuffed-looking and very uncomfortable.39 The Napoleonic era popularized the relatively simple classical look, with a bustle just below the waist, symbolizing traditional order within the context of democracy. The classical woman applied rouge freely and 118
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wore curly wigs over short-cropped hair. By the 1820s the classical or Grecian style was transformed into Romantic dress. During the early 1830s in London, the popular Romantic dress had elaborate details consisting of daggered sleeve trim and a broad-shouldered silhouette, accessorized with a hat with lavish plumage (see Figure 3.1). This ankle-length dress disguised the body with tight lacing, padding and fussy trimmings. The Romantic dress represented lightheartedness, and made the woman appear to bounce rather than glide, and the dress seemed much larger than the body. The ensuing long Victorian era of respectability, prosperity and middle-class strength saw increasingly diverse dress styles over time. By the 1840s the broad-shouldered silhouette and enormous sleeves of the Romantic style had been replaced by tight, fitted sleeves. The distended bell-shaped skirt was extended by four or five inches and reinforced with petticoats and sometimes padding placed just over the back of each hip. Later crinolines of the 1860s were accompanied by bell-shaped pagoda sleeves, inspired by a renewed interest in the English Tudor period of Elizabeth I. Dress styles of the 1840s to the 1860s became known as sentimental dress in the United States of America. This dress reflected the mingling of various European styles of different periods. Victorian leg-of-mutton sleeves gave way to short, tight sleeves that often restrained the arms; skirts became fuller and waists were cinched. For the Victorian woman in her sentimental dress, rouge became unfashionable, heeled shoes went out of style and gloves grew shorter. Parasols, muffs and folding fans shrank in size but remained popular accessories.40 In 1856 the collapsible steel-cage hoop was invented. The hoop enabled skirts to be even wider, and increased flounce was achieved by adding numerous underlayers of heavily starched or otherwise stiffened crinolines. Vast amounts of material were gathered into the plainest of skirts, and elaborate ones were often layered to create a tiered effect. This layered motif was often repeated in bell sleeves that hung loosely over intricate lingerie. The use of Dress as Accommodation
Figure 3.1 The Romantic dress. Illustration by author, based on interpretation of dress styles observed at Fashioning the Future: Our Future from Our Past, exhibition at Ohio State University’s Snowden Gallery, April 1997.
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so much material for both under- and outer garments reflected the affluence of the wearer, who could afford not only the fabrics but also the long hours of dressmaking labour and fittings required to construct each garment.41 The hoop skirt quickly took over British fashion. The skirt was popularized by the Empress Eugenie of France, and was designed by Charles Frederick Worth. Gowns inspired by the empress were noted for their variety of ornamentation including lace, tulle, velvet ribbons, feathers and jewels.42 The dresses of the 1870s and 1880s were perhaps the most garish and least comfortable. The garish effect was produced by the often inexpert use of many colours and textures. It was not unusual for garments during this period to be constructed of five or six different materials in three or four different colours, including one with a shiny or glittery surface, several types of lace, tulle and various vertical and horizontal trimmings. The dress of the 1870s often included a long, heavy train; occasionally, the result was a work of art (see Figures 3.2 and 3.3).43
Figure 3.2 Dress of the 1870s. Illustration by author, based on interpretation of dress styles observed at Fashioning the Future: Our Future from Our Past, exhibition at Ohio State University’s Snowden Gallery, April 1997.
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Figure 3.3 Dress of the 1880s. Illustration by author, based on interpretation of dress styles observed at Fashioning the Future: Our Future from Our Past, exhibition at Ohio State University’s Snowden Gallery, April 1997.
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Towards the end of the nineteenth century, separates became popular, consisting of skirts, blouses, sweaters and jackets. Simultaneously, the dress lines became less complicated, and the visual image was more relaxed compared to earlier dress styles. The dresses of this period had bustles and draping, which allowed the skirts to fall smoothly over the hips and slant out to the hemline. Bodices were now trimmed with a simplicity, and the emphasis on the puffed sleeves created a leg-of-mutton image. Nonetheless, skirts were excessively long and tight around the hips, and full sleeves immobilized the arms (see Figure 3.4).44 With the re-introduction of the corset from several decades earlier, women’s dress became even more confining. Several women lost their lives in house fires as a result of wearing skirts too full or too tight to run in, and certainly unfit for performing any work.45 The corsets of the nineteenth century created an image of curves flowing out in both directions from a tiny waist. Small waists had a special erotic significance, related to the potent suggestions of idleness, fragility, dependence and, more perversely, bondage.46 The corset, made with fabric inserts called gussets, helped give roundness to the bust and hips. A broad piece of whalebone (later steel), called a busk, was inserted up the centre front of the corset as a shaping device. Narrow pieces of whalebone were also inserted up the centre back and sometimes in various positions along the sides. The corset was usually laced tightly up the back to avoid disturbing the dress line in the front. Corset styles did change over time, and by 1878 the less time-consuming buttoned corsets had become popular.47 Ladies of fashion required their servants’ help to don their corsets, whether buttoned or laced. The dresses of British women reflected contemporary views about their place in society and the ways in which they were expected to behave and were perceived. More than almost any other material item, dress acted as “material manifestation of an amalgam of expectations and Figure 3.4 Dress of the 1890s. Illustration by author, based on interpretation of dress styles observed at Fashioning assumptions”.48 Women were expected the Future: Our Future from Our Past, exhibition at to follow the dictates of fashion, which, Ohio State University’s Snowden Gallery, April 1997. Dress as Accommodation
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by virtue of the confining styles of the day, presumed women to be fragile creatures, subordinate to men. Similar dress styles adopted by white women in the Americas, including Jamaica, raised concerns among women like Elizabeth Cady Stanton that the restriction of movement placed on women by their dress contributed to their dependency on men. Stanton commented in 1859: Woman’s dress . . . how perfectly it describes her condition! Everything she wears has some object external to herself. The comfort and convenience of the woman is never considered; from the bonnet string to the paper shoe, she is the hopeless martyr to the inventions of some Parisian imp of fashion. Her tight waist and long, trailing skirts deprive her of all freedom of breath and motion. No wonder man prescribes her sphere. She needs his aid at every turn. He must help her up stairs and down, in the carriage and out, on the horse, up the hill, over the ditch and fence, and thus teach her the poetry of dependence.49
Other women of the period saw their dress as more than just a social problem. Some saw it as a health risk. Elizabeth Stuart Phelps remarked in 1870: [Physicians] assure me of the amount of calculable injury wrought upon our sex by the weight of skirting brought upon the hips, and by thus making the seat of all the vital energies the pivot of motion and centre of endurance. . . . I see women’s skirts, the shortest of them, [when the wearer is seated] lying inches deep along the foul floors, which man, in delicate appreciation of our concessions to his fancy in such respects, has inundated with tobacco juice, and from which she sweeps up and carries to her home the germs of stealthy pestilences.50
Further risks to women’s health could have resulted from tight corseting; social norms prescribed corseting even for obviously pregnant “respectable” women, which posed the risk of injury to both the foetus and the mother. Very tight corseting sometimes resulted in broken ribs and spinal injury.51 The need to dress according to fashion demonstrated an allegiance to social order and the desire to fulfil the European concept of feminine beauty. For the Victorian woman in the age of respectability, ideal beauty was often based on “appropriate” dress, regardless of its discomfort or health risks. No other garment reflected or embodied the British notions of beauty, civility and femininity more than the long skirt, held out by numerous petticoats. The age of popular consumption and the 122
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commercialization of fashion in Britain articulated contemporary ideals of beauty, and the colonial elite abroad followed the trends. The British concepts of beauty eventually affected the lives of vast numbers of colonized people. Sailors, travellers and colonists throughout the Caribbean routinely arranged for shipments of garments from British suppliers; when more goods arrived than they could use, the excess was sold locally. The clothes of European settlers could well have been provided by the few local contractors; however, there was no distribution centre for readymade wearing apparel equal to that of London. In Jamaica, a readymade apparel industry did not develop until after emancipation. Cities such as Bristol were major shipping ports for garments that included the latest styles from Britain. Large quantities of shoes, hosiery and hats were exported to the colonies from the seventeenth century onward, increasing steadily to meet the demands of growing populations.52 The Atlantic trade between Britain and her colonial possessions did not include just the exchange of manufactured goods for raw materials and plantation products but also acted as a conveyor of British cultural characteristics, including those associated with dress and feminine beauty.
Dress as Accommodation during Slavery Clothing, right from our first direct evidence twenty thousand years ago, has been the handiest solution to conveying messages visually, silently, continuously. – Elizabeth Barber, Women’s Work: The First 20,000 Years: Women, Cloth, and Society in Early Times
Throughout slavery, some enslaved women sought to accommodate to European standards of beauty in their dress as a way of improving their social standing, and some enslaved “brown skin” women went as far as bleaching their skin to complement their European dress.53 Some slave women were able to buy European dresses with money they had saved up from selling their produce in the local markets. Cynric Williams stated in 1823: “I was surprised to see so many Negroes purchasing finery [cloth and clothes] for the approaching holidays.”54 A decade later, Theodore Foulks remarked: “A slave in the parish of St Dorothy asked Dress as Accommodation
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permission to go to a ball, adding that she hoped to be allowed to attend, as she had bought a gown for the occasion for the sum of three pounds.”55 Other slaves received hand-me-downs from their owners as gifts. In 1801, for instance, Lady Nugent wrote in her journal that she “distributed to the women gowns, petticoats and various presents”56 so they could attend her wedding celebration. Some whites took steps to make sure that their house slaves were dressed well as a reflection of their own wealth and prestige. The dress of these house slaves signalled their elite status in the enslaved community. Earlier, we saw that some slave women received European-style dresses from their owners in exchange for sexual favours, as in the case of Phibbah, who received numerous gifts of clothes from the planter Thomas Thistlewood, including “six pairs of shoes and much cloth for herself ”.57 Enslaved women like Phibbah were able to combine European-style clothes with African aesthetics in dress. Enslaved women imitated and appropriated the dress styles of white women in Jamaica, but they transformed and restyled these dresses to reflect an African aesthetic, both to suit their taste and, consciously, to make their own fashion. The dress styles of white women in Jamaica were based primarily on summer fashions in London. However, the summer weather in Jamaica was so hot that even the London summer fashions that arrived required minor alterations. Bernard Senior in 1835 advised European ladies visiting Jamaica for the first time during the summer months to wear “the lightest summer dresses, but principally white, and the coloured ones ought to be such as require washing but seldom, as the exposure to the tropical sun by negro washer-women, will ruin the prettiest patterns in a single operation; bonnets of leghorn, chip [wood or woody fibre split for making hats] . . . to shelter the face . . . boots and shoes of jean [twilled cotton cloth]”.58 Senior and others blamed the inevitable fading of clothes under the tropical sun on the washerwomen. Tropical mildew could also easily ruin clothing that was not dried and stored properly. Those slave women who were fortunate enough to know how to read were able to gain information about European dress from the local newspapers. Some women also observed dress styles in pictures in fashion magazines and advertisements. Some relied on others to inform them. Various local newspapers such as the Falmouth Post were full of advertisements of goods for sale, including clothes from London.59 The latest dress styles in London for each month were published regularly in 124
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Jamaica. In September 1831, the Royal Gazette described the London fashions for August: Morning dress included a white jaconet muslin dress; the corsage square and gathered round the top into a band which is lightly embroidered at each edge . . . while evening dress consisted of a dress of mousseline de soie [silk], white figured in gold colour, the corsage cut plain and square behind, and in crossed drapery and very low in front. For carriage, dress was of white muslin dress, the corsage made low but not extremely . . . A walking dress was a printed muslin dress; a white ground with perpendicular wreaths of foliage interspersed with bouquets of violets . . . And for the Opera – A dress of citron colour gros de Naples, printed in detached sprigs of foliage.60
Such advertisements were geared towards elite urban white women who aspired to maintain their social standing in the colonial society, and who could afford the luxury of changing clothes several times a day, according to the activity of the moment. The elite ladies of fashion were envied by other women; however, to be fashionable required a large wardrobe with dresses for every occasion and activity. Upper-class women were constantly on the run between dress changes and social activities. The large numbers of dresses required to be fashionable were expensive, and several styles were not easily available in Jamaica. Elite women who were fortunate enough to be married to absentee landlords had access to fashionable dresses during their residence in Britain. Some white women who resided year-round on isolated plantations in Jamaica had little opportunity to see and emulate new styles – which were often inappropriate for the rigours of plantation life. Newspaper and magazine advertisements provided a window on the world of London high society, and perhaps some excitement and wishful fantasy for women who lived far away in the colonies. These advertisements mirrored the reality of women’s lives during the period, illustrating how women’s bodies were controlled and confined by the dictates of fashion. Only a few enslaved women had access to European-style dresses. The visitor (and, later, resident) J. Stewart pointed out that all who can afford it appear in very gay apparel . . . the women in white or fancy muslin gowns, beaver or silk hats and a variety of expensive jewellery. But only a small portion can afford to dress this finely . . . but all of them who can afford to buy a finer dress, seldom appear, excepting when at work, in the coarse habiliments given them by their masters.61
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While most slave women could not afford European dresses, some white women in Jamaica ordered their apparel from local merchants and from British manufacturers in London. They ordered elaborate gowns for special occasions, such as the dinner and ball held at the governor’s residence, King’s House, in Spanish Town. On several occasions Lady Nugent received cargoes of European clothes, including French designs, directly from London.62 Consequently, she was able to entertain in clothing appropriate to her role and status within the colonial order – that of the governor’s wife. Several slave women relied on their ability to copy the British dresses of their white mistresses. This was not always easy, since ready-made European clothes and refined fabrics available for retail purchase locally were limited and often prohibitively expensive or unsuitable for the hot weather. Some slave women managed on what was provided for them by their owners. After 1838 all this changed.
Freed Women’s Education for Accommodation A stitch in time saves nine. – Popular proverb
In post-slavery nineteenth-century Jamaican society, beauty was defined based on idealized images of European attractiveness. As a result, colonial institutions urged citizens to conform. Some members of the ruling white elite embraced the popular mid-nineteenth-century doctrine of physiognomist Johan Lavater, who professed that physical beauty and moral excellence were firmly connected. Lavater’s creed required “respectable and moral ladies” to be physically beautiful by wearing “proper” European attire, and to cultivate a beautiful complexion, not with rouge or cosmetics but by ablution, exercise and temperance in food and drink. This regimen would allow women’s beautiful thoughts and sentiments to shine through their skin. The “blush of honesty” and the “glow of love”, however, could be perceived only in white skin.63 Some women with dark complexions bleached their skin to be perceived as moral; others thought that morality could be achieved, if not by complexion, then by proper dress. The London dresses worn by white women in Jamaica established the acceptable standards of beauty, and colonial newspapers with their European fashion advertisements enticed the literate members of the freed population to conform. 126
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Christian missionaries also developed schools that taught European concepts of feminine beauty and dress norms as part of their policy of Europeanization. Although missionaries preached against the vanity of an excessive preoccupation with grooming, a presentable appearance was considered very important. Many believed in the precepts of religion that insisted on the duty of living cleanly in dress and person. For the missionaries, purity ruled appearance and piety ruled thought. Thus, nothing was more disgusting than to see a person with dirty hands or face or, more shocking, a girl in dirty clothes. Missionaries considered their schools to be the final triumph of civilization, instruments necessary to spread Anglo-Saxon morality and a Christianity that preached “cleanliness is next to godliness”.64 During slavery, the ruling planter class had neglected the education of enslaved and freed persons in Jamaica. Education of the slave population was discouraged by the planters on the grounds that it would make slaves unfit for labour and more likely to revolt. They followed the policy of keeping enslaved Africans servile through illiteracy. Post-emancipation attempts to establish a public educational system suffered from the fact that people with means sent their children to Britain for all but the most elementary education. The staggering task of providing basic education for the freed population was left to the Baptist, Methodist, Wesleyan, Moravian and other missionaries who had worked among the slaves. A few schools were established in Jamaica through the assistance of London missionary societies, with trust funds left by some wealthy European settlers, and through British government grants given directly to the missionaries. In 1841 there were 186 day schools for children, 100 Sabbath schools, and 20 or 30 evening schools primarily for adults. Of the day schools, twenty-five were established by the Wesleyans and sixtyone by the Baptists. Curriculum was left to the missionary organizations, which emphasized religious instruction as well as deportment and dress based on European customs. These early schools were unable to meet the educational and practical needs of the entire freed population.65 Middle-class Jamaicans who could afford it sent their children to Britain for education, though some who sent their children off to Europe later found themselves unable to continue the payments. Girls were more often educated at home than boys. A few wealthy families hired governesses; in other families, other arrangements were made for Dress as Accommodation
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teaching reading, writing and deportment at home. By 1890 there were a few special schools for girls, such as the Trelawny Girls’ School. English ladies in Britain promoted the school, where the course of instruction embraced all branches of a thorough English education for girls. This included French, drawing, needle and fancy work, dressmaking and other domestic skills. European music and dancing were also encouraged as part of a young lady’s education.66 Children of working-class parents who were fortunate enough to get into a missionary school, such as the Saint Catherine’s Ragged Schools, sometimes received second-hand European clothing, and girls were taught British techniques of sewing and needlework.67 Some young ladies of this social class were encouraged to join self-help projects to learn further sewing skills. In schools affiliated with the United Brethren Church of Jamaica, teachers were rewarded with additional funds for providing extra instruction in sewing. Several missionary societies published magazines, such as the Jamaican Moravian: A Christian Monthly Magazine and the Moravian Messenger, that extolled the virtues of the obedient wife and occasionally offered domestic advice on such activities as sewing. A few missionary societies also established self-help and outreach centres for women, like the Upward and Onward Society of the Women of Jamaica, founded by the Moravians at the end of the nineteenth century to unite all women and promote womanly virtue and family purity. Upward and Onward, as its name implies, sought to uplift the freed population out of a state of degradation by teaching young women domestic skills. These skills were expected to instil in the home purity, temperance, righteousness, high thinking and proper living. It was believed that these qualities would eventually spread and influence the entire freed population. In Upward and Onward classrooms and group meetings across Jamaica, women were taught, among other things, laundry skills, hat making, Victorian dressmaking and needlework crafts that included intricate stitch designs, baby boots, crochet and embroidery for tea cloths and pantry towels. The crafts and clothing the women made were exhibited on special occasions, along with well-ironed shirts.68 A few of these outreach centres were founded by influential individuals. In 1879, Lady Musgrave, wife of the governor of Jamaica, established an organization for Afro-Jamaican women known as the Women’s Self-Help Society, in which elite white women taught freed women shell crafts, needlework, appropriate dress styles and decorum. Crafts using bark128
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cloth and lace-bark were also included by the society ladies in their instruction of Victorian needlework and dressmaking skills.69 The self-help societies, outreach centres and missionary schools all influenced freed women’s dress and encouraged them to conform to British cultural standards. They taught basic skills that enabled some freed women to gain employment as seamstresses – a profession that was becoming redundant. The main aim of these institutions was to foster virtuous, moral young women who would in turn uplift the freed population, as Fanon put it, out of the “pit of niggerhood”. The paternalistic attitudes of missionaries and white women were a result of their own racist conditioning and a firm belief in British cultural, racial and religious superiority, which they impressed upon their “inferiors” through educational efforts. Colonized women of all classes sought this education because no one wanted to be stigmatized for ignorance or miss out on the opportunity for social mobility. Freed women were now perceived by missionaries as the beacons of hope, the uplifters of their race and the ones who could bring salvation to the freed population. In fact, African women have long been the uplifters of their people. In Africa and in the diaspora, their roles as guardians, healers, resistors and conveyors of African culture were all meant to better their race.
Dress as Accommodation after Emancipation Fashion is the voluntary slavery which leads us to think, act, and dress according to the judgment of fools and the caprice of coxcombs. – Godey’s Lady’s Book70
Economic changes after emancipation rapidly transformed the social fabric of Jamaican society. The disappearance of many sugar estates, the introduction of wage labour and increased urbanization all contributed to the emergence of a consumer society and a vibrant middle class that demanded more material possessions. This group also wanted greater access to British goods such as clothing. The visitor W.P. Livingstone revealed that, as a consequence of this demand, there was [sic] now springing up everywhere stores stocked with the common necessaries of life. Many provincial merchants began to import their own goods and to open up small branches wherever the opportunity occurred.
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This process went on until the entire country was dotted over with sources of supply.71
Courtesy David Johns Collection
As Britain had earlier, Jamaica began to experience its own commercialization of fashion, and many freed persons, both men and women, regardless of their class, became more fascinated with European dress. The demand for European-style clothes was so great that some stores could no longer wait for weeks for their goods to arrive. The industrial age saw the building of larger and faster ships that could carry larger quantities of goods and deliver them in a shorter time. New markets were established and old ones were revitalized. A large group of urban merchants emerged, rivalling the planter class in wealth and political ambition. This group included wealthy mulattoes, Syrians, Lebanese, and a powerful Jewish contingency that had long dominated commerce, money lending and foreign currency transactions.72 Since British policy discouraged colonial industry, these merchants operated as entrepreneurial middlemen in the selling of manufactured goods from Britain to the colonies. The new economy was now oriented towards wholesale and retail commerce. As early as the 1870s, merchants began to import larger quantities of clothing from major North American cities such as New York and Philadelphia. These new imports complemented the London supplies and offered customers a wider variety of goods at competitive prices.73 Most large clothing shops were located in Kingston, along King Street, Duke Street and Harbour Street (see Figures 3.5 and 3.6). This area became the centre for fashion and for buying fashionable readymade as well as custom-made clothes.
Figure 3.5 King Street, Jamaica, c.1900, by A. Duperly and Sons. Reprinted from Jas. Johnston, Jamaica, the New Riviera: A Pictorial Description of the Island and Its Attractions.
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Figure 3.6 Harbour Street, Jamaica, c.1900, by A. Duperly and Sons. Reprinted from Jas. Johnston, Jamaica, the New Riviera: A Pictorial Description of the Island and Its Attractions.
Most shop clerks were white, coloured or Middle Eastern men. Store employment was considered a respectable job for men of the upper classes, who dressed in suits and ties for work. Shop employees were expected to be professional and abide by the rules of store etiquette. Many large stores were furnished with chairs for customers to sit on while being served. Store employment, however, was restricted for women. Although some stores hired a few single women to work in their ladies’ clothing departments, Victorian mores prevented upper- and middle-class married women from working.74 Stocks in these stores included suits and ties for men and dresses for ladies, as well as hats, gloves, hosiery, corsets, fabrics, shoes and drapery. Some of the popular stores that emerged in the mid-nineteenth century were Waterloo House and Excelsior House on Harbour Street, famous for their fancy flowered silks, corsets and embroidery trimmings; Metropolitan House, also located on Harbour Street, well known for its fashionable millinery, Parisian dresses and white mariposa stripes (mariposa flower and butterfly design on striped fabric); Eureka House, considered the pride of King Street; and D’Azevedos and Alexandra House, which stocked a wide selection of footwear, from canvas shoes and sturdy leather boots to exquisite court shoes (see Figures 3.7, 3.8 and 3.9).75 Store owners enticed potential customers with regular advertisements in various local newspapers such as the Falmouth Gazette and the Daily Gleaner. For example, in 1879 the store Dick and Abbott had the “best suit of tweed for 10s. 6d., and beautiful serge suit at 12s. 6d.”, while the Dress as Accommodation
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Figure 3.7 Nathan, Sherlock & Co. Ltd, Metropolitan House, Shoe Department, c.1890s–1900. Note the height of the shelves, the employees’ dress and the chairs for customers to sit while being served. Female clerks are noticeably absent. Reprinted from Jas. Johnston, Jamaica, the New Riviera: A Pictorial Description of the Island and Its Attractions.
Figure 3.8 Alfred Pawsey’s store advertisement, c.1890s–1900. Reprinted from Jas. Johnston, Jamaica, the New Riviera: A Pictorial Description of the Island and Its Attractions.
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Figure 3.9 Nathan, Sherlock & Co. Ltd, Metropolitan House, Dress Goods, c.1890s–1900. Reprinted from Jas. Johnston, Jamaica, the New Riviera: A Pictorial Description of the Island and Its Attractions.
Metropolitan had printed delaine, striped and checked mohair, cashmere and silk at 6d. per yard. Stores required payment in cash, but some trustworthy and well-known customers could open an account or purchase clothes on credit.76 Most of the fashionable stores catered to members of the upper class and others who could afford their high prices. Many who could not afford the prices in these high-end stores, except for special occasions, shopped for clothes and fabrics in less elegant shops in other areas of the Kingston central business district – along Luke Lane, Princess Street and Haywood Street. These stores catered to the needs of their lower-class customers and rarely advertised in the major papers, unlike the larger stores with more financial resources.77 Haberdasheries across the island supplied much of the rural population with clothes and textiles. There were also peddlers who sold ribbons, laces, cloth and trimmings out of grips78 tied to their bicycles, and small cloth traders who sold textiles obtained from wholesale merchants. In some markets like the Jubilee, a few vendors sold accessories such as laces, buttons, squares of tie-heads (scarves) and handkerchiefs.79 These retail enterprises represented the emergence of a vast local network in textile and clothing commerce that must be factored into the development of the post-emancipation economy. Some members of the white elite did not view the growth of clothing facilities favourably. Livingstone, for instance, was concerned with its Dress as Accommodation
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impact on the social attitudes of the lower classes: “These facilities [shops] were leading them [freed persons] unconsciously into higher habits. Their supreme desire was to appear well in the eyes of their superior classes, and they were thus tempted to spend a large part of their money on dress.”80 Livingstone stated that shopping for clothing had become a consuming pastime for emancipated persons: “dress [was] at present their chief social passion”.81 During the period of transformation from slavery to freedom, clothing continued to be an important commodity in the material and social lives of ex-slaves. A decent wardrobe enabled a more pleasing public appearance, while in banking and business, dress and appearance often served as a visual confirmation of one’s credit and financial success. Livingstone’s assessment of this spending spree reflects both his racist attitude towards freed people and a reluctance to accept the democratization of fashion. Although Livingstone may have been surprised by the uncontrolled spending of the lower classes, he seemed more concerned with the lower classes’ desire “to appear well in the eyes of their superior classes”. Most likely, ex-slaves were seduced by the material goods once denied to them and the ease with which they could now purchase these objects. The fact that ex-slaves now had easier and greater access to European clothing meant that the old class distinctions reflected in dress were disrupted and white privilege threatened. One of the most interesting phenomena of the early post-emancipation era was that many freed women, particularly those in urban centres, began to embrace European styles of dressing and the Victorian concept of feminine beauty. Although accommodation to European cultural characteristics in dress was not new, what was different after emancipation was the large number of women, far more than before, who chose to accommodate. Since the ultimate definition of beauty, civility and femininity was based on European values, those who accommodated were attempting to become “presentable” within colonial society. If land was inaccessible to many, at least clothing served as a tangible object that could improve status. As during slavery, dress in the post-emancipation era continued to convey class differences and status. For some, spending on education, which also became popular, had the same effect. By the 1840s in Jamaica, many freed persons, especially among the new middle class, had abandoned the old plantation ways of dressing. James Phillippo’s illustrations of 1843, depicting women of the period, reveal that the osnaburg or checked linen pull-skirt and other slave gar134
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ments had been discarded. Mulatto women in the emerging middle class now wore full skirts, long enough to hide their feet, held out by numerous petticoats. As in Britain, bonnets now hid the face except from a frontal view. The neck was covered by a veil attached to the bonnet, the shoulders by large shawls when outdoors, and the hands by gloves to protect them from the sun.82 Emancipation had increased Eurocentrism, and the new social order incorporated dominant white values. The more European one looked, the more “civilized” one became. As Rex Nettleford points out, “Eurocentrism placed everything European in a place of eminence, and things indigenous or of African origin in a lesser place.”83 As a result, many African dress characteristics – for instance, women’s headwraps, dyed fabrics, and beads or necklaces made from shells and corals – were now abandoned by vast numbers of women, especially among the middle class. Freed women who wanted to be socially acceptable and “civilized” did not want to be associated with slave dress and therefore adopted European-style clothes. A fine example of the use of dress as accommodation to British cultural standards in beauty is the illustration Betty of Port Royal by an unknown artist (see Figure 3.10).84 The setting appears to be the garrison at Port Royal, since soldiers carrying rifles are in the background. Betty is beautifully and elaborately dressed in an ensemble consisting of a shawl, gloves, jewellery and handkerchief, with ribbons in her hair, which has been neatly pulled back and possibly straightened. Her dress mirrors the British fashion of the late 1850s to 1860s known as the sentimental dress. The neckline is low, and the small, Vshaped waist implies a tight corset beneath. Whereas the previous dress style in Britain, classical dress, had focused less attention on the body, the sentimental dress distended and contrived body shapes; the sentimental Figure 3.10 Betty of Port Royal, c.1860s, illustrator unknown. woman’s form was rigid, slender and Betty’s dress reflects European influences and a high degree of accommodation to European ideals of beauty. fragile (see Figure 3.11). Dress as Accommodation
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Betty’s arms are severely constrained, her legs and ankles are invisible and her face is free of make-up. The line and ornamentation of her dress are simple compared with previous European styles, and quietly harmonious in hue. Accessories were small or few, and jewellery was kept to a minimum. The sentimental dress abandoned the fussiness of the Romantic style, and the sentimental woman, like Betty of Port Royal, did not bounce but glided in an attitude of drooping restraint. The style of the dress prohibited active physical movement, and women like Betty were less active than at any other period in the century. Betty’s dress exemplified the art of expressing emotions by graceful attiFigure 3.11 Mrs Louis Verley, c.1860s, photographer tudes rather than by movement. Social unknown. A member of the Jamaican elite in a fashionable dress of the period, and similar in style to the dress worn dictates required women like Betty of by Betty of Port Royal. Port Royal to behave in a genteel manner and to avoid boisterous behaviour. Instead, it was fashionable to be ostentatiously emotional and to succumb to the occasional fainting spell in a moment of crisis.85 In spite of her constricted waist, Betty appears quite poised. Her wide, bell-shaped skirt suggests that she is wearing the collapsible steelcage hoop invented in 1856. Such a skirt, as was customary in Britain, required several underlayers of heavily starched petticoats, called crinolines, for extra stiffness. Betty’s dress reflects her identity and social standing within the community. The grandeur of her dress compared with that of the washerwoman in the background implies that Betty was a middle-class woman of wealth and leisure. Her dress also reflects her accommodation to the Victorian concept of feminine beauty. The absence of Betty’s last name is also interesting. Slaves and servants were referred to only by their first names, so this may be a put-down by the artist, possibly a European: “she may look grand, but she’s only coloured Betty”. By contrast, white women at this time were referred to by title and last name (Mrs William T. Armbruster or Miss Rose Williams, for
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example) or by “Madam”; to refer to them otherwise would have been a breach of etiquette. Women, like Betty of Port Royal, who accommodated to Europeanstyle clothing were sometimes viewed by whites as improved and civilized. James Phillippo expressed these sentiments when he described these women as a group during the early emancipation era: Relieved from those proscriptions by which they had been enthralled and bowed down, they as a body immediately began to advance in the scale of civilization. . . . In their houses, dress, personal appearance (complexion excepted), general deportment . . . [they] are on an equality with the most respectable of whites.86
Phillippo not only believed that these women came one step closer to being civilized because of their dress but also compared them to his white contemporaries. He suggested that this change was good, and added: “As an evidence of the improvement which has taken place, the decencies of society are no longer outraged by insufficient and filthy apparel . . . in every respect [it is] as good as that worn by persons of the same class during the summer in England.”87 Phillippo’s statements were perhaps meant as a compliment to the freed women who accommodated, but his views only reflected his own biases. By using white standards to measure the level of civilization among freed persons, he discredited and dismissed the rich legacy of African culture in Jamaican society. His views illuminate a sad truth for those who chose to be part of the new “civilized” Jamaica: that they must reject their African past and adopt an alien white culture. Freed women who rejected their African past in favour of expensive and elaborate dresses, like Betty of Port Royal, were sometimes viewed as extravagant and excessive in their taste. Freed persons who resisted Europeanization often considered those who accommodated as sellouts, traitors to their race and even collaborators with the colonial oppressor. Debates over European standards of dress and appearance in relation to identity and race were very divisive during the period, particularly over the notions of hair care. By the twentieth century, products by Madam C.J. Walker, founder of the African-American hair-care industry in the United States, and her successors had affected the lives of freed women throughout North America and the Caribbean. Jamaican women, especially rural peasants who could not afford the luxury of manufactured hair-care products, used natural resources from the
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environment in the care of their hair as they had during slavery. They used extracts from the aloe (sempervive or single-bible) and tuna cactus, as well as castor oil from the oil-nut tree to wash their hair and to obtain sheen and softness.88 Many women who straightened their hair were criticized for trying to look white. Women who treated their hair to get rid of its nappiness and kinkiness89 reaffirmed the white supremacists’ notion that African hair is “bad”. Yet, for some women, this process became a way both to make their hair more manageable and to re-invent themselves during the transitional years after slavery. Since dress and appearance were important symbols of freedom, plantation attire and hairstyle were simply not appropriate for their new lives as freed women. The debate over hair straightening continued into the twentieth century and beyond. Back to Africa Movement founder Marcus Garvey, for example, denounced hair straightening in the 1920s as an affront to race pride, even though many Garveyite women continued to use hair-straightening products; and the “black consciousness” movement proponents in the 1960s also felt that the African hair-care industry in the Americas promoted white ideals.90 Not all freed women accommodated for the same reasons. Some chose European dress not necessarily to reflect Europeanization of the person but to reflect style choices in a multicultural society. Some women may have been tempted by the thought of wearing expensive fabrics and dresses, while others wanted to be seen as “civilized” and thus equal to their white colonizers. Others saw accommodation as a means of uplifting themselves within the colonial structure, and in the process creating their own privileged space in a society that had long exploited them and denied them basic rights. Whether as slaves or as freed people, African women and men were marginalized in that their ideas, beliefs and culture were dismissed and the values of the privileged white planter class were celebrated. The constant attack on African heritage, beauty and intelligence gave rise to negative self-images and stereotypes that included characteristics such as laziness, worthlessness, unreliability and backwardness.91 Many women therefore sought ways to elevate their position in society and, in the process, receive some validation for themselves and their race. Although the negation of Africanness encouraged large numbers of freed people, especially the middle class, to accommodate to British standards in dress, accommodation was not merely an attempt to elevate the freed race out of the “pit of niggerhood”. It also provided the oppor138
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tunity for freed persons to experience the Other, to play the role of whites, and to show that they too could be beautiful. Freed persons, who had encountered invisibility and namelessness during slavery, now sought to show that people of African ancestry were like whites except in skin colour, thereby attempting to eliminate differences between the races.92 It could be argued that since expressions of wealth and status like elaborate houses and land ownership were denied to most freed persons, dress, being more accessible, became that much more important (see Figures 3.12 and 3.13). For the middle class, skin colour, class, money and dress were socially important status symbols. While women whose complexions were light enough could pass as white, others took the extreme step of bleaching their skin, to increase their social standing and their attractiveness to potential suitors. A freed man, in contrast, might try to marry a woman of more European appearance and lighter complexion than himself, in order to raise the status of his family and advance socially.93 Women who bleached their skin could choose from a wide selection of cosmetic creams on the market for this purpose. In 1882, for example, Jamaican women who used Barry’s Pearl Cream were assured in newspaper advertisements that “dark skin [would be] made clear, pure and white as alabaster, and youth restored”.94 The economic and educational successes of mulattoes or “browns” led many to seek closer identification with whites in appearance. The obsession of middle-class Jamaicans with social standing and light or brown complexion indicated the importance Figure 3.12 Fun day for a group of middle-class Jamaicans, c.1900–1905. Photographer unknown.
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to them of making themselves part of society. As E. Franklin Frazier explains, “Society [status] is a phase of the world of make-believe which represents in an acute form the Negro’s long preoccupation with social life as an escape for his [or her] subordinate status.”95 The “world of makebelieve” was a place where one pretended to be the Other – in this case, European or white. Freed persons who accommodated hoped for affirmation in the dominant culture and the possibilities of material and mainstream success. The white establishment, on the other hand, saw the mulattoes as allies against the threat of the African masses. Dress as resistance and as accommodation were not polar opposites, as we have seen seen with carnival dress. In fact, these paradigms continued to reflect complexiFigure 3.13 Mrs A. Bush, middle-class Jamaican ties in meaning as they had during slavery. woman in European dress, c.1900, by A. Duperly and Some women, for instance, saw accommoSons. Mrs Bush’s dress is accessorized with a fan and charming hat, while her hair appears to have been dation and adaptation of European cultural straightened and curled. standards not as reflecting a desire to be like whites but as resistance in itself, because to accommodate was a political act that marked them as not slaves. In other words, resistance required accommodation. Many freed people did not want to be seen as slaves – a downtrodden, subordinate class. Obviously, some freed persons sought to rid themselves of all the negative representations associated with them during slavery. They were now free people, no longer in chains, and they wanted to share the rights and privileges of their white colonizers. Cornel West summarizes this point nicely: “Europeanization was their way to resist misrepresentation and caricature of the terms set by uncontested, non-black norms and models, and [to] fight for selfrepresentation and recognition.”96 Those who resisted and those who accommodated were not necessarily different people but often the same people using different strategies to suit the occasion. As Verene Shepherd has argued, “resistance and accommodation were often the same coin, just different sides; not that dichotomous”.97 140
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Figure 3.14 A View of King Street, c.1844. Adolphe Duperly, Daguerrian Excursions in Jamaica.
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Freed women were not the only ones who sought self-representation and recognition. Freed men also used dress to accommodate to European standards. Livingstone wrote: “The men wear ordinary English attire, even sometimes the top hat and frock coat.”98 Adolphe Duperly’s prints and lithographs of urban lifestyles, done in 1844, depict freedmen dressed in the finest of British attire (see, for example, Figure 3.14).99 This form of resistance on the part of freed women and men was a widespread community activity based on the desire to be completely free of the segregated past. This battle, according to Cornel West, was moral in character, because it was a fight to dispel the stereotypes used to suppress African people and to win positive representation and legitimacy. West goes on to argue that, in spite of that, this form of communal resistance was problematic because the “response rested on the homogenizing impulse that assumed that all people of African descent were really alike, thus eliminating differences in class, gender and sexual orientation”.100 Nor was accommodation always physically easy for the middle class or for Afro-Jamaicans. The rigours of regular hair and skin treatments were costly, tiresome and, at times, even dangerous. The way clothing was cared for also changed, and the process of doing laundry became
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industrialized, especially among the urban elite. The old ways of caring for clothes – washing them in the river, using plant products to create suds and to brighten colours – gave way to the new: cleaning them at home with industrial soaps, chemicals and solutions. The middle-class and peasant women who embraced these new customs in their laundry appeared well-dressed and advanced in the eyes of the white elite, but for washerwomen and domestic servants, the task may have seemed more daunting than before. Newspapers and ladies’ home journals, such as Good Housekeeping, regularly ran articles that offered useful tips on how to care for clothes, while missionary outreach centres offered classes in these new laundry techniques to young women. The new procedures were not always safe, as was revealed in an 1888 article published in Good Housekeeping: Delicate blues may be saved from fading by putting an ounce of sugar of lead into a pail full of water. Let the article soak in it for an hour or two, then dry it . . . but be careful and do not put your hands into the water. If there should chance to be a scratch or cut, or the skin off the hands, the sugar of lead will poison you. Put the cloth under the water with a wooden spoon or clean stick. Take it from the water in the same way, and throw it across the line out of the sun. When it is drained a few moments, pull it out smooth on the line by a prudent use of the fingers.101
The number of women who could have been accidentally burnt or harmed by harsh chemicals while doing their washing is unimaginable. Other tips included cleaning mildewed linen by soaping the spots and covering them while wet with powered chalk, and removing paint from clothing by saturating the spots with spirits of turpentine, letting it remain several hours and then rubbing it out. Powered borax mixed in water prevented the fading of red stockings and bright-coloured calico or muslin dresses. Imported commercial soaps for washing clothes were also available, including Sunlight Soap, which was said to be used in the royal laundries in London, and the peculiarly named Monkey Soap. These soaps became very popular as a result of advertising campaigns in local newspapers.102 Rural peasant women who continued to wash in rivers and streams, as during slavery, were viewed by the elite and middle class as backward. As late as 1890, they were thought to be recklessly destroying clothes by pounding them and grinding them between stones. It was believed that clothes should be treated with more tenderness while washing (see Figure 3.15).103
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Figure 3.15 Washing Day on the White River, c.1890s–1900. Reprinted from Jas. Johnston, Jamaica, the New Riviera: A Pictorial Description of the Island and Its Attractions.
By the 1850s through to the 1880s, accommodation was so widespread that it changed the physical appearance of many urban centres in Jamaica. Middle-class and elite white women became the embodiment of leisure. The middle-class women who lived in the hills surrounding Kingston, on the plains, became known as the “hill ladies”. They delighted in slipping on their riding skirts and visiting their neighbours for lunch, or entertaining officers from Camp with tea and iced claret cups.104 Despite the leisure activities of middle-class and elite women, however, they were still governed by the rigid expectations of the Victorian era. At the end of the nineteenth century, little had changed in this respect. Gentlemen did not tell off-colour or lewd stories in front of ladies, and family prayers were still said in many homes.105 While the dresses of upper- and middle-class women reflected a social standing and a life of leisure, women in the labouring class, such as higglers, traders and domestic servants, made a clear distinction between working clothes and Sunday best. The photograph by Adolphe Duperly titled Nineteenth Century Negro Woman, Lydia Ann, depicts a workingclass Jamaican woman in her glamorous Sunday best (see Figure 3.16). Lydia Ann’s dress is an excellent example of the Creole dress that harmoniously merged European and African aesthetics. Her AfricanDress as Accommodation
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Figure 3.16 Nineteenth Century Negro Woman, Lydia Ann, c.1864–65. Photographer identified as Adolphe Duperly by David Boxer, National Gallery of Jamaica. Lydia Ann’s dress is a fine example of the Creole dress style.
inspired tie-head, made of bandanna fabric, is covered by a decorated straw hat of the type fashionable among white women during the period. Her headdress complements her European-style dress, which is held out by a stiff crinoline underneath, and her shoes and socks are exposed. This shorter dress style was not typical of the period (compare with Figure 3.11) and therefore represents her own, and perhaps other Jamaican women’s, adaptation of the European fashion of the 1860s. 144
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Lydia Ann’s dress is accessorized with a small parasol that was fashionable at the time. James Phillippo remarked that the very best clothes among workingclass women were worn on “the Sabbath, at funerals, as at meetings of friendship and during public holidays”.106 For the workday, these women created their own fashion; they would “Tie a handkerchief round their hips, and draw their skirts through it thus forming a furbelow round their waists . . . and they step out in a style which would gladden the heart of the most exacting drill sergeant.”107 In addition to working-class women’s work attire, there were special uniforms for professionals and certain labourers. Uniforms portrayed a person’s occupation and affiliation to the place of employment, as well as status or rank within the profession. Specific types of dress were prescribed for servants of particular categories, and the clothing was usually supplied by employers. Coachmen, for instance, who worked for the elite, wore tall boots, tight white breeches, a long black coat, a top hat and gloves (see Figure 3.17). In the 1870s bowler hats became popular with elite and middle-class men, later to be replaced by the homburg of the 1890s. Men who were day labourers, however, wore a jippi-jappa (fine-textured straw) hat and coarse blue dungarees with large patch pockets, called “shall I” or “old iron”.108
Figure 3.17 G.M. Campbell and Servants, Spanish Town, c.1890s, photographer unknown. The servant women are dressed in Creole style, while the manservant’s attire reflects dominant European influences in dress, as seen by his top hat and long coat.
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As in Britain, the local militia wore uniforms based on rank, while in the courts and the judicial system, judges and barristers dressed in robes and wigs according to their station. Women who were nurses wore white dresses and white caps and were differentiated in their dress from their superiors, matrons and sisters, who wore “falls” (a type of headdress). Whiskers and beards were an important feature of men’s appearance; they were heavily groomed, and mustaches were waxed. Coloured and Afro-Jamaican solicitors and tradesmen wore morning coats, waistcoats and bowler hats. There were no wristwatches yet, but those who could afford them wore pocket watches. Even in sports, dress played a major role. The game of cricket, for instance, once considered the gentlemen’s game, required a bleached white shirt and white pants. Such appropriate dress enhanced the image of the perfect gentleman in Jamaican colonial society.109
The Glory of Wearing Hats We just know inside that we’re queens. And these are the crowns we wear. – Felecia McMillan on hats, in Crowns: Portraits of Black Women in Church Hats I know inside that I am a queen . . . and so a hat completes me. – Lady Junie, Jamaican singer Hats are like people: Sometimes they reveal and sometimes they conceal. A hat expresses something about a woman, but it can also mask something. – Shirley Manigault, in Crowns: Portraits of Black Women in Church Hats
In post-slavery Jamaican society, hats became popular for the entire family, including children. A woman’s hat was considered her crowning glory. During slavery the ruling elite wore hats as in Britain, and on some estates hats and caps were distributed to slaves as part of their annual clothing allowance. Edward Long recalled that slaves received hats and caps, and slaves on the Radner coffee plantation received Kilmarnock caps. Early illustrations depicted some slaves wearing 146
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broad-brimmed straw hats, suggesting the existence of an informal cottage industry in straw-hat making within the enslaved population.110 Slaves also made hats from lace-bark and from animal hide. In Figure 1.10, for example, one of the male figures is wearing a hat of unusual design made from animal skin. Some slaves received second-hand European-designed hats and caps from their owners, and others stole fashionable hats to use as part of their disguise to run away. Most European-style hats and caps worn in Jamaica during and after slavery were manufactured in Britain. London was one of the world’s principal sites of hat production from the seventeenth century onwards. Hats were made from felt, fur (obtained primarily from the Hudson’s Bay Company) and satin. Chip hats (hats made from wood or woody fibre) were covered with appropriate material.111 The distinction between a cap, a bonnet and a hat is sometimes blurred. For many, however, hat was a generic term that referred to any type of head covering that was not a head-cloth or headwrap. This included caps, visored hats and bonnets. A cap was made of soft material and fitted closely to the head, often without a brim. A bonnet was usually tied under the chin by a ribbon, and in some cases had no brim at the back. The word bonnet was rarely used in association with enslaved women in Jamaica; however, after emancipation the term was embraced by middle-class women. Eventually, bonnet was replaced by the more general term hat. Some women considered a bonnet less stylish than a hat, while others felt the opposite was true, and in some areas, women wore bonnets and men wore hats. As hairstyles in Britain changed, so did hat styles, and colonized Jamaican women followed the latest trends.112 For women there were two types of bonnets. One was a simple work or garden hat. This bonnet had a large brim, usually woven from plant fibre, and was commonly called a straw hat or a sun bonnet. The second type was the trimmed bonnet, made from refined fabric, that was worn on special occasions. These bonnets changed with the fashion trends over time. Until the mid-nineteenth century, fashionable bonnets were lavishly trimmed with flowers, feathers and bows or loops of ribbon. The bonnet of the mid-nineteenth century drew attention to the face by framing it with a simple oval line. Bonnet brims progressively became smaller and more circular, and the high, distracting crowns, designed for the elaborate hairstyles of earlier decades, got smaller. One of the most popular designs of the period was the poke bonnet, which had a Dress as Accommodation
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brocaded gauze veil that covered the bonnet but not the face. During the 1850s other bonnets emerged, including the bibi or cottage bonnet, the spoon bonnet, the gipsy bonnet and the chip straw bonnet, named after their shapes and the materials used in their manufacture. By the later part of the nineteenth century, broad-brimmed or visored hats, lavishly decorated with ostrich plumes and large bows and ribbons, became popular. These hats were kept in place on the head with ornate hatpins.113 The photographs by A. Duperly and Sons of sisters Marie and Josephine Gray provide evidence of hat styles in Jamaica (see Figures 3.18 and 3.19). In both photographs the women are wearing dress styles popular at the end of the nineteenth century. The women’s dresses have tight bodices and elephant sleeves, and Josephine Gray’s small waist implies tight corseting underneath. The most fascinating and visually captivating aspect of each woman’s appearance is her hat. In both portraits, the hats are lavishly decorated with heavy plumage that beautifully complements the rest of the outfits to create a sense of elegance and grace. The ladies’ hats, along with their charming dress styles, identifies them as members of the middle class.
Figure 3.18 Miss Marie Gray, c.1900, by A. Duperly and Sons. Marie is wearing a fashionable hat of European design decorated with plumage.
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Figure 3.19 Miss Josephine Gray, sister of Marie Gray, c.1900, by A. Duperly and Sons. Josephine is wearing a lavish hat that harmonizes beautifully with her dress. Her appearance identifies her as middle class.
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Numerous hat shops emerged in Jamaica during the post-slavery era. On Harbour Street in Kingston, shops such as The Hepburn and McCarthy and Company sold ladies hats in the most approved designs; and Metropolitan House captivated its customers with stylish trimmed hats, ornate bonnets and toques direct from London and Paris. Most millineries in Jamaica carried gentlemen’s beaver hats, straw sailor hats, trimmed chiffon hats and bridal hats with lace. The popularity of hats and bonnets led to hat-making classes organized by Christian ladies’ organizations such as the Upward and Onward Society. Among middleclass and elite women, hats reflected wealth and social standing, and women in polite society competed with each other for possession of the most stunning hat. Heavily trimmed hats were worn on special Figure 3.20 Middle-class Jamaican woman in a stylish hat, c.1900–1905, by J.W. Cleary
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occasions – church services, the races, garden parties and afternoon teas (see Figure 3.20). Less lavish hats were worn for leisure activities like gardening, lounging by the sea or relaxing at the mineral baths.114 Labouring-class women of some financial means wore less expensive hats, and locally woven cream-coloured straw hats called jippi-jappa, or panama, hats were very popular (see Figure 3.21). These hats were worn over a tie-head during workdays. Peasant women also wore straw hats; however, they reserved their hats for baptisms, weddings, funerals and especially Sunday services, and during the week they preferred their tieheads. Women wore hats to church services for several reasons: to “shine” or compete with other women, to make a statement, to “make fashion”, and because their hats made them feel good about themselves and instilled a sense of pride and dignity. Hats also served practical uses. A
Figure 3.21 Native Jippi-Jappa Hat Maker, c.1890s–1900. Reprinted from Jas. Johnston, Jamaica, the New Riviera: A Pictorial Description of the Island and Its Attractions.
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hat protected the head; it also concealed the hair on a bad-hair day and hair that had turned brittle or that was short and uneven. On a Sunday, one could wear a hat all day. Hats reminded some women of their African ancestors’ tradition of covering the head during religious events. Hats were thus considered appropriate dress in the context of Sunday services. Some saw hats as part of traditional church dress, as in Britain; for others, wearing a hat was rooted in the Christian scriptural teaching that a woman’s head should always be covered in church during services.115 Wearing a hat to Sunday services is still an ingrained custom in Jamaican society, especially in rural areas. While lower-class women were fixated on hats, some members of the middle class were preoccupied with the latest fashionable swimwear. Swimsuits for recreational bathing became popular in Jamaica with the middle class and elite during the late nineteenth century. During the pre-emancipation era, both slaves and members of the elite enjoyed recreational and public bathing in freshwater streams, at waterfalls and rivers, for hygiene and for fun. Since slaves were not given swimwear and had no access to bathing dress, they often bathed nude or in their undergarments. On washdays, slave women and washerwomen working by the rivers entered a world of their own, where they bonded together and escaped the harsh realities of plantation life through the ritual of washing and public bathing. Most members of the plantation elite also preferred to bathe nude because British bathing costumes were of coarse, heavy material and of similar style to their normal clothes – most uncomfortable when wet. In Europe, by the mid-eighteenth century, recreational bathing in the sea had become popular, as it was advocated for health reasons. As a result, bathing dress in Britain became increasingly more comfortable. After emancipation, the new middle class in Jamaica embraced fashionable bathing dress and wore it when going to the seaside, a mineral bath or a pool. Seaside holidays in Jamaica did not become popular until much later, in the early twentieth century. Early tourists to Jamaica did not visit the island for its beaches but rather for its scenic beauty. Most early visitors were naturalists, and their favourite destination was Port Antonio, famous for its lush vegetation and vibrant urban centre, energized by the banana trade.116 Most elite and middle-class Jamaicans preferred to vacation in the mountains, and by 1890 the town of Mandeville was a well-known resort area for those who “spend a month or two in the summer at a pretty villa or at the excellent hotels . . . enjoying the Dress as Accommodation
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cool mountain air and the magnificent scenery of the vicinity”.117 Although the concept of seaside holidays became popular much later in Jamaica than in Britain, the few members of the middle class who went swimming wore the appropriate outfit. In the 1880s swimwear for men consisted of a striped knee-length body suit with short sleeves; women wore a blue serge bathing costume consisting of a thigh-length dress with short sleeves, gathered at the waist, over a pair of knee-length bloomers. The costume was completed by shoes, stockings and a cap with lace and braid trimming.118 Those who did not swim but preferred to enjoy the sand and the sun wore their normal clothes. For ladies, this consisted of a dress of light fabric with flounces, underlain by petticoats, crinolines and bustles, and a flowered, beribboned hat. For men, boots and a three-piece suit with a stiff collar and tie were required. In 1870, a rubber-soled canvas shoe for wear on the beach was produced in Britain and adopted in Jamaica. This footwear was called sand-shoes. At the end of the nineteenth century, bathing dress had changed very little. In Jamaica bathing suits for men still had sleeves to the elbows and shorts down to the knees. Ladies wore stockings to sea-bathe, and lots of skirts and frills to hide their figures from the bold masculine gaze – though mixed bathing was not yet popular. Gentlemen swam across the Kingston harbour on Sunday mornings despite the risk of sharks. While the middle class donned the latest swimwear from Britain, many members of the lower class, especially in rural areas, continued to bathe nude or in the least cumbersome garments possible, such as underwear.119 Many aspects of urban society in post-emancipation Jamaica had taken on a British flair; to complement their physical appearance some members of the middle class acquired an exaggerated British accent, pompous speech and mannerisms.120 The emphasis on dress, especially among the middle class and elite, was taken so seriously that some men wore jackets and tails and women wore evening gowns for all formal occasions, including dinners and society balls. No event reflected this rapid transformation in Jamaican society better than the Royal Jubilee celebrations, held annually to commemorate the coronation of Queen Victoria. At Jubilee events, especially balls held at the governor’s residence, King’s House, freed women and men of means wore their finest European outfits. The centre of attention at these functions was the governor, the queen’s representative and a figure of pomp and ceremony. 152
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When he entered or left the room, the guests rose. The governor was often dressed in his Imperial uniform, which was bedecked with medals and other decorations, to impress the colonized (see Figure 3.22). Events hosted by the governor were attended by whites, mulattoes and privileged Afro-Jamaicans, who themselves became caricatures of Imperial display. Men had to wear full evening suits with starched shirts and standing collars, white waistcoats and tails. Women wore the latest British fashions direct from London, and were able to exercise some choice in colour, textile and design as long as they kept to models appropriate for the occasion. The royal court dictated the appropriate dress for events, and all subjects of the Crown were expected to abide by the dress code. Privileged individuals invited to state and royal events received formal invitations, or Royal commands, that literally stated the dress code for the particular occasion. Official events throughout the colonial era were characterized by parades and ceremonies, where the women were ultra-feminine and the men ultra-masculine in their form of dress.121 Such public display of colourful pageantry and grandeur in dress may have attracted some Afro-Jamaicans to accommodate to European dress. Imperial domination, with its policy of divide and rule, was full of spectacles, rituals and mass ceremonies that displayed the authority of the British and yet subtly incorporated those subordinates who were
Figure 3.22 Governor of the Leeward Islands and officers in Imperial dress, c.1900. Photographer and date unknown.
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Europeanized enough to be part of such a cultural display. Imperial rule developed a culture that included not only these special ceremonies but also patterns of discipline and order, best displayed by appropriate dress. Elaborate dress became a significant way of displaying authority in colonies. In 1887, for instance, at the opening of Jubilee Market in Kingston, the governor appeared in his Windsor uniform, which distinguished him from all others present. Many of the gentlemen wore their navy and army uniforms, while others wore sashes and aprons trimmed with gold lace to reflect their affiliation with specific social orders and clubs.122 The symbolism of dress served to maintain social exclusiveness by visibly reflecting distinctions of rank and position. Moreover, the uniforms and appropriate dress at these gatherings served as a reminder of British rule and emphasized British supremacy. As the privileged classes indulged their fantasies in Imperial displays, many Afro-Jamaican women continued to combine African and European aesthetics in their dress, as during slavery. The African headwrap remained a key feature of the dress of many lower-class and urban working-class women. Phillippo noted of this synthesis of European and African elements in dress: “The dress of the women generally consists of a printed or white handkerchief tied in a turban-like manner round their heads and a neat straw hat trimmed with white ribbon; while some especially the young women wear straw bonnets and white muslin dresses.”123 In Adolphe Duperly’s A View of King Street (see Figure 3.14), women are portrayed wearing ankle-length skirts without numerous petticoats, a shawl over their shoulders, somewhat in the manner of European working-class women, and the headwrap. Other figures in the illustration wear a straw hat over their headwrap, as was done sometimes during the days of plantation slavery. This Creole style of dressing continued through the post-slavery era, as seen in Duperly’s photograph of Lydia Ann in the 1860s. The Creole dress had class-coded content; in general, the higher the social aspirations, the fewer the African elements in dress. Moreover, this dress had long represented cultural retention, and it also portrayed a continuum of overlapping and competing cultural norms, battling for control of cultural space. Edward Brathwaite, however, saw these cultural norms not as a struggle over cultural space but more as the combining of European and African qualities to create a new culture and a new way of seeing society: not in terms of white and African, planter 154
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and slave, but as contributing parts of a whole. Brathwaite argued that the estrangement between the white elite, the middle class and the mass of Jamaican people during slavery made it difficult for Creole culture to be absorbed by the higher classes, so it never gained dominance.124 Edouard Glissant agreed, adding that creolization does not mean mere suspension or lack of belonging; in fact, it was a process that had unpredictable results. What was more important, according to Glissant, was that this process was a way for the subordinate to survive and try to maintain their identity in the face of cultural alienation imposed by the oppressor.125 Brathwaite and Glissant provide some insight into the nature of creolization, but both their arguments fail to address the social contradictions and conflicts implicit in creolization. For example, as the colonial regime promoted the policy of Europeanization or the whitening of the African race, hybridization became more of a contradiction, in that it strengthened the polarization between the upper classes, who rejected anything African, and the peasant class, whose dress remained predominantly Creole. Creolization did not lead to social acceptance, even though it was a new cultural form and included some accommodation to European characteristics. For the mass of Jamaican peasant women, Creole dress continued to reflect selective appropriation of African and European styles; it symbolized both their devotion to their African heritage and their desire to be part of the new “civilized” Jamaica. Furthermore, Glissant and Brathwaite do not acknowledge the complicated discursive processes involved in creolization, which included innovation, erasure, embellishment and even fragmentation of some African elements, as seen in the selective dress elements mentioned by Phillippo, to blend with other cultural norms. Creolization included appropriation, as in the case of carnival costume, and also accommodation, which saw African slaves embrace aspects of European dress to create their own fashion. Likewise, the emphasis on the creation of a new cultural unity that was neither African nor European, for the purpose of supporting a new wholeness, risked the danger of masking the tensions between European and African. We know that these tensions existed and were the basis for slave resistance. Tensions were also played out on the body surface, where there was no pure dress custom but rather a compromise, achieved through amalgamation of African and European cultural aesthetics. This compromise in dress both differentiated the creolized from the elite and became a marker of advancement in the Dress as Accommodation
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colonial society, perhaps far more than before. As we have seen, during slavery, slave women who mixed styles were never accepted because their dress placed them along the spectrum divide between whiteness and blackness, African and European, civilized and primitive. Emancipation, however, encouraged freed persons to choose where to position themselves within the dual society dominated by white values. This positioning both shaped and determined the survival and success of individuals. Positioning might have included holding onto the cultural characteristics that were rooted in slavery, poverty or Africa, or it might have consisted of adapting, embracing or accommodating European cultural beliefs and norms. Cornel West suggests that for some colonized people there was a middle road that included “selective appropriation, incorporation and re-articulation of European ideologies, cultures and institutions alongside an African heritage”.126 The desire of many mulattoes to accommodate to European standards in dress at first led to a surge in the number of seamstresses in urban areas. During slavery, seamstresses were elite slaves who were highly valued for their skills both in the great house and within the slave community.127 The status and prestige of seamstresses changed drastically in post-emancipation society. Seamstresses and needle workers who flocked to urban centres after emancipation sought opportunities other than agricultural wage labour. Some used their skills to establish independent businesses, while others became domestic workers. These women became members of the respectable lower middle class, but their status was greatly undermined by their growing poverty.128 The Reverend Edmondson of Kingston, in a letter to Mr Austin at the Colonial Office on 20 April 1865, expressed concern over the plight of seamstresses. He wrote: There is another class whose circumstances should be represented . . . and have not a friend who can afford them help. . . . Hundreds of females in this city avoid other parishes [and] are obliged to eke out a miserable existence by sewing, and of this very little can be obtained even at low rates of remuneration. This is well known to those [who] occasionally visit them in their homes, habitually miss them in places of public worship and witness the eagerness to obtain employment when offered by public institutions.129
Douglas Hall noted that their wages were extremely unstable and sporadic, and substantial only during the holidays.130 Wages were low because of the oversupply of women who chose this profession and the 156
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limited clientele. The number of seamstresses in Jamaica had increased from 14,565 in 1871 to 18,966 by 1891.131 There was yet another factor that affected the lives of seamstresses – the sewing machine. Edmondson explained: “The importation on a larger scale of ready-made clothing, the introduction of the sewing machine, and the contracted income of better circumstanced families militate seriously against the comforts of this class.”132 Despite the hardships caused by the introduction of the sewing machine and ready-made clothes, seamstresses continued to produce excellent work and were praised for their sewing skills. Miss B. Pullen-Burry, a resident of Jamaica, remarked that the dressmakers were very smart and “excellent copyists and clever machinists”.133 She went on to say: Provided they have a good pattern they will turn out a well made skirt for about six shillings and a blouse for a little less. Many people coming out from England employ them and there is this to be said in their favour, they do not keep you waiting long for your dresses, but generally send them back to you in two or three days.134
Many seamstresses kept track of the latest styles in London and produced similar styles for their local clientele. It was this sector of highly skilled women who first developed home-based businesses; they later worked in the textile manufacturing industry.135
Peasant Women and Dress They too had waited longingly for the gift of a Sunday morning. Now they stroll up and down the aisles of the church, stars of splendor, beauty beyond measurement. Black ladies in hats. – Maya Angelou When I get dressed to go to church, I’m going to meet the King, so I must look my best. – Addie Webster
While middle-class women were imitating British culture and wearing European attire on a regular basis, the mass of Jamaicans who were peasants (including rural labourers, domestic servants and road-builders) Dress as Accommodation
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lived in a world of poverty. Peasant women’s dress reflected their status within the broader society, and it was primarily among this class that Afro-Jamaican religions were kept alive and African characteristics in dress were maintained. Despite their poverty, peasant women accommodated to European aesthetics in dress when they could afford to, usually only on special occasions. For many of this class, the ritual of dressing up was important. In the fields and on the few surviving estates, unlike the urban areas, peasant women still wore osnaburg clothing as everyday dress. In other areas, cotton fabric had replaced osnaburg, but the pull-skirt and the tiehead remained popular among peasant and rural labouring-class women, as depicted in the fascinating portrait Nineteenth Century Negro Girl, Celia by Adolphe Duperly (see Figure 3.23). Likewise, bark-cloth production and the use of bark-cloth for clothing continued among this class, but unfortunately, very little is known about the industry during this period. It appears that as ready-made European clothing became more accessible and affordable, the demand for bark clothing declined. Moreover, as bark-cloth was not considered a viable commercial item by major stores, it was never embraced by the retail industry that emphasized European imports. Eventually barkcloth production evolved into a form of folk art geared towards the emerging tourist market. The Maroons continued to make clothing from bark-cloth for a while, but overuse of the tree made it scarce, bringing an end to the industry.136 The contrast between rural and urban dress was vast. In the 1890s, W.P. Livingstone commented on the dress of the rural population: “In the field their dress was of ordinary material, Oznaburgh or white drill and caps in the case of the men, printed cottons and bandannas in the case of women.”137 Like urban women, peasant women emphasized appropriate dress, reserving their best clothes for Sunday church services and special events. Missionaries often encouraged the members of their congregation, especially women, to avoid bright colours and to wear white clothing to church and religious events as a symbol of their devotion and piety. On the eve of emancipation, for instance, at the religious service in Fairfield, the superintendent recalled, “About 1,800 negroes, clad in white, stood in the ranks, in the greatest order and silence imaginable, such a sight I had never before witnessed in the open air.”138 Livingstone also remarked that, “On Sundays the majority appear in white, relieved by coloured ribbons or sash, or a spray of flowers.”139 158
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Figure 3.23 Nineteenth Century Negro Girl, Celia, c.1864–65. Photographer identified as Adolphe Duperly by David Boxer of the National Gallery of Jamaica. Celia is barefoot, dressed in a cotton print pull-skirt and a tie-head. Her dress marks her as a member of the peasant class.
While white dress was preferred for church services, wedding celebrations provided an occasional break from the austere religious principles that guided church dress. A wedding also provided the opportunity to purchase a new outfit. Labourers and peasants, who could not afford a new dress, wore their Sunday best or a special frock kept for such an event. Weddings created another space in which people of all classes could compete with each other and simultaneously enjoy the festivities. Wedding dress among the peasants, for both men and women, was
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elaborate and formal in design, compared to their work overalls and daily attire, but restricted by affordability. This form of dress reflected high levels of accommodation to European styles, as a result of missionary influences. In most situations, women getting married were encouraged to wear a white dress and veil, as was customary in the Anglo-Saxon Christian tradition (see Figures 3.24 and 3.25). Undoubtedly, peasants found white appealing because of its close association with African religions. Among the Ashanti, white represented innocence and rejoicing. White clothing also became a main feature of Afro-Jamaican religions. For some women, wearing white enabled them to move freely and undetected between the established church and the Afro-Jamaican religions. White is the dominant colour for church attire in Jamaican religious circles to this day. Many peasants rarely wore shoes except on special occasions like funerals, weddings and religious services. Many of the rural poor felt that if they had only one pair of shoes, it should be reserved for church, and they therefore chose to go barefoot the rest of the time.140 The emphasis on wearing one’s Sunday best for religious services and special events has its roots in Africa. Within the Yoruba and Ashanti communities, ritual dress, whether for religious or initiation rites, was considered the most important dress. Ritual dress required the finest
Figure 3.24 A Negro Wedding in the Country, c.1900, photographer unknown. The wedding guests and couple are members of the peasant class; their dress-up clothes reflect European styles.
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Figure 3.25 Native Wedding Party, c.1900, photographer unknown. The guests and couple are members of the rural labouring class; their dress portrays strong European influences.
woven cloth available, in the right colours, and accessories appropriate for the occasion. Africans brought to the Americas maintained the importance of ritual dress and eventually integrated it into the AfroCaribbean religious experience.141 Since evangelical church dress in the British tradition was also formal, these customs were easily combined. The disparity between the dress of the peasant and labouring classes and that of the middle and upper classes was great. In the illustration Task Workers Breaking Stone (see Figure 3.26),142 a group of labourers, mostly women, is depicted breaking stones to be used in road construction by the roadside. A white woman dressed in the European fashion of the period observes the labourers. Her dress contrasts sharply with the dress of the women labourers. They are wearing the pull-skirt and headwrap, while she is dressed in Victorian dress of the 1880s, with crosswise draperies extending from the waist to the knee. The white woman’s stylized dress, along with her position in the scene, both differentiates her from the workers and signals her status as a member of the elite. Peasant women who were market traders wore garments that reflected their social standing and occupation. They also wore the pullskirt and headwrap. Once crops were harvested, women travelled for miles either by foot (without shoes) or by donkey to the nearest market
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Figure 3.26 Workers breaking stone by the roadside, c.1880s, photographer unknown
to sell their produce. Goods for sale were often carried on the head, balanced with the aid of a headwrap and a cotta. The headwrap worn by lower-class women had changed by this time. The tie-head was now made from red or yellow and orange checked cotton and was commonly called a bandanna. The cotton was Madras cloth, originally an Indian fabric that British manufacturers copied and mass-produced for the colonial markets. It was very affordable and was worn in Jamaica by both indentured labourers from India and peasant women. Madras cloth was available by the yard and in square pieces in select stores, while peddlers and vendors sold squares of the fabric in some urban markets, for use as handkerchiefs and tie-heads. Madras cloth was also popular in West Africa, several areas of the Americas and other Caribbean territories including the French West Indies. The cloth was used to make dresses and blouses but became most associated with headwraps. Unlike during slavery, where headwraps varied in style, in post-emancipation Jamaica, bandannas became increasingly similar in style and colour among day labourers. This is evident in early illustrations of peasant women (see Figures 3.27 and 3.28).143 The new tie-head fabric became a fashion trend that peasant women found most appealing and suitable for daily wear. Among market 162
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Figure 3.27 On the Way to Market, c.1900, photographer unknown. Many of the peasant women are wearing similar tie-heads and pull-skirts, and are walking barefoot.
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women in Jamaica, bandanna headwrap was a coded dress form that conveyed marital status and occupation. It was a uniform marker that identified these women as traders and labourers, differentiating them from others. The headwrap was made by folding a squared piece of starched Madras cloth, as much as a yard in length, into a triangular shape and then placing the cloth over the head and knotting it at the back of the head. The knots were tied so as to leave two folds of the
Figure 3.28 On the Road to Market, c.1902, photographer unknown. The peasant women are dressed in the pull-skirt and bandanna tie-head.
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fabric draped to the shoulders or centre of the back. The upper fold would be peaked and then curved to hang, suggesting the shape of a rooster’s tail. Some market women called this style the “peacock”, but the most common name was the “cock’s tail”144 (see Figure 3.29). The stiffer the fabric, the more pronounced the style and the easier it was to obtain the desired shape. To help stiffen it, cassava juice was boiled for a long time and used as a starch.145 The cock’s tail was usually reserved for married women, while single and younger women in the market tied their heads more tightly, with the knot or bow to the side of the head, without hanging folds. This bandanna style reflected their single status and signalled their availability to potential suitors. Older, or “big” market women wore a more pronounced cock’s tail with a high peak, symbolic of wealth and social standing in the market domain.146 Most women reserved their expensive fabrics and elaborate headwraps for special occasions, especially for AfroJamaican religious rituals in kumina and Pocomania (Puk kumina). These headwraps reflected the individual’s creativity, status and role in the religious community.147 While the bandanna cock’s tail is no longer seen in most markets, bandanna is one of the fabrics used in national costumes and even in some people’s dress.148 In the marketplace, in addition to their pull-skirt and bandanna, peasant women who were traders wore a “bib”. This was a long apron consisting of two pockets for holding coins during trading, similar to the “cover cloths” worn by East and West African women over their skirts. One pocket was reserved for silver coins and the other for copper coins. Paper money was placed either in the woman’s tie-head or in a small cloth money-bag called a Figure 3.29 Jamaican Market Woman with Basket, tred-bag, which was tucked into the c.1900–1905, photographer unknown. The market woman’s attire identifies her as a trader and a member of trader’s bosom.149 Contemporary West the peasant or labouring class. She wears the coded African market traders often secure their Madras bandanna style called the cock’s tail, a bib and a necklace of beads. money in a piece of cloth tucked into 164
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their bosom. For many of these Jamaican traders, the marketplace was their world and, like women in West Africa, they dominated the market.150 As mulatto and elite women in towns pursued a lifestyle of leisure, most peasant women led strenuous lives. In 1872, Rob Morris described the hard life of these women: The little work which is accomplished is done mostly by the women. Barefooted and bare-armed, with their frocks wrapped in a roll round their bodies [pull-skirt], and their heads tied in the handkerchief usually worn by both sexes, they toil from morning till night at the severest labour, and never seem to repine at their lot. They may often be seen carrying head loads of fruits or vegetables to market, while the men ride after them on otherwise unburdened mules. I saw a dozen black and brown women mending the carriage road . . . and, besides their ability as road-makers, they are excellent hands at coaling ship.151
Morris indirectly chastised the men for not doing more, but this type of women’s activity as labourers was not unique to post-emancipation Jamaica. During slavery women made up a large segment of the plantation work force, toiling side by side with slave men doing the same types of work.152 Jamaican women’s role as hard-working labourers is part of a legacy that stretches beyond the shores of Jamaica, back to Africa. In various African societies women did most of the agricultural labour and were highly valued for their productive capabilities.153 Although peasants’ style of dressing had not changed much since slavery, their physical appearance was considered good. Commenting on the conditions of this class six years after emancipation, Sir Charles Metcalfe, governor of Jamaica, stated in 1842: “Their behaviour was peaceable and in some respects cheerful. They were found to attend divine services in good clothes.”154 This construction of the peasant woman as peaceable and unthreatening to whites was based on her accommodation to British standards of dress. Peasant women sought to imitate their white “superiors” when they could afford to do so, because they wanted to increase their social standing. Livingstone stated that some “imitated the ladies of the upper classes” and further noted: “During the Christmas season gay costumes are common” and “More money is spent on the adornment of the person than in the gratification of the appetite.”155 The Honourable S. Mais of Port Royal added: “Upon a Sunday it is a matter of great astonishment to see those in a very
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humble sphere of life closely imitating their superiors. Domestic servants in particular stint themselves of necessary food and clothing for the gratification of a flimsy fashionable extension.”156 These women realized that to progress within the new social order and to escape the negative images long associated with them, they had to adopt some European characteristics. As Fanon explains, “The colonized is elevated above his jungle status in proportion to his adoption of the mother country’s cultural standards. He [or she] becomes whiter as he renounces his blackness.’’157 To be elevated above their “jungle status”, Jamaican peasant women had to be fashionable, even if it meant wearing some “flimsy . . . extension”. Yet at the same time, accommodation provided the peasantry with the opportunity to adorn their bodies, to feel good, and to temporarily escape their poverty and subordinate position. Roach-Higgins and Eicher explain that, although dress confers identities on individuals as it communicates positions within social structures, these identities are not always easily recognizable.158 Thus, if a labouring-class or peasant woman wore a nice dress outside her familiar circles, among strangers she may have been perceived as upper-class. In this manner, dress functioned as a mask that shielded and concealed the wearer’s identity and at the same time deceived the observer. Labouring-class women regularly stinted on necessary food and basic clothing to purchase expensive fashionable dress, a reflection of the importance of appearance in enhancing social status. The old Jamaican proverb “Brown man wife nyam cockroach a corner, fe save money fe buy silk dress” illustrates how far some women went to accommodate. In other words, some women went hungry so they could save their food money to buy pretty clothes. The proverb also suggests that there were women who suffered from lack of food because what little money they received was needed to clothe themselves, an experience shared by many women in poor communities today. Some of these women really had no choice, since nice clothes were necessary to secure decent employment. Depriving oneself of food was not restricted to the poor, though it had severer implications for the poor than for the upper classes. Many elite women of the period often gave up certain foods in order to keep their figures and fit into their corsets and the latest European-style dresses. Accommodation to British-style clothing among the peasant class was restricted by their lack of money. By the 1860s the living conditions of lower-class women had worsened, and their ability to purchase 166
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European clothes became increasingly difficult. Jamaica was thrust into a deep economic depression, culminating in a major rebellion in 1865. The Sugar Duties Act of 1846, combined with growing competition from sugar beet and other countries that produced sugar, weakened the Jamaican sugar industry. Significant price drops in Britain also began to have an impact. The price of sugar, excluding duty, fell from £26 10d. per hundredweight in 1860 to £23 5d. in 1861 and continued to fall for the next two years.159 To complicate matters further, the American Civil War affected regional commerce, especially the textile trade, and hampered the flow of supplies from North America. Wages fell, while the increased influx of indentured labourers from India, which had begun in 1845, led to a reduction in estate jobs offered to Afro-Jamaicans. The situation worsened when, in May and June 1864, the annual spring rains were heavier than usual, resulting in floods that damaged crops, roads and bridges. This calamity was followed by a severe drought, and the price of provisions rose in almost every parish of the island.160 No other group of Jamaicans suffered as much from these catastrophic events as the peasant class did. Their inability to earn good wages or to afford goods such as cloth and ready-made clothes greatly affected their physical appearance. The situation among the lower class was so dire that concern over their plight was expressed by local ministers and magistrates. In a letter dated 3 March 1865, the Reverend M. Davidson informed his bishop of the appalling conditions of the lower classes: Labourers very commonly find great difficulty in providing themselves and their families with clothing. . . . Their work-day raiment is often ragged and dirty. . . . I am credibly informed that young persons are sometimes kept within doors for the want of clothes fit to appear in. Attendance at church and school has been unfavourably affected by this circumstance.161
The Honourable Rich Hall echoed these sentiments in a letter to the Colonial Office in 1865 addressing the impact of the American Civil War on the clothing trade: The cost of clothing is enhanced to more than double it was before the American War. . . . Five years ago the Bale now imported at £97 was invoiced at £33. Common cotton prints are nearly trebled in cost by the yard . . . and Osnaburgh’s, a hempen fabric used [by] the old and the young has been increased in price from 42 to 92 [4 to 9 pence].162
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So bad had things become for the Jamaican peasants that some literally had to go naked. This horrifying situation was described by Mr Justice Kremble, who informed the governor that, as a consequence of “the present high prices of cotton goods, it is as far as my observation enables me to judge and not an exaggeration to say that vast numbers of the people have been reduced to such abject poverty as to have become ragged and even naked”.163 Despite economic hardships, not all Afro-Jamaican or peasant women suffered extremely. Clothing conditions among the poor varied across the island. Some women were still able to save their best clothes for church, and in urban areas the conditions of the poor may have been masked by the affluence of the elite and middle class. The Honourable S. Mais of Port Royal explained: “The peasantry attend [church] neatly, but not so gaily clad. In the city of Kingston the large and well stocked drapery establishments, all apparently flourishing, certainly give an undeniable contradiction to the existence of poverty in the town, and in several districts of neighbouring parishes.”164 Mais’s account highlights the vast difference between urban and rural areas during the depression. While the poorer classes struggled to clothe themselves, the city and its urban elite apparently continued to flourish. Moreover, the reference to the “well stocked” drapery firms during the economic crisis suggests that the demand for fabric and clothing remained high among the upper classes. Some women who could no longer afford fashionable dresses turned to their churches and the local missionaries for support in obtaining clothes. The Reverend Edward Bean Underhill, a missionary visitor to Jamaica, pointed out: Some [women] doubtless join the Church of England for avaricious motives. No contributions are required of them, and there is a frequent distribution of gifts and clothing. . . . Many of the youth especially young brown women will not attend church unless they are well dressed. When their clothes are faded or worn out, they absent themselves till again supplied.165
Distribution of clothing to the peasants was a charitable and humanitarian activity undertaken by Christian missionaries, as noted by Livingstone: “During the years of depression the missionaries instead of receiving offerings are compelled in sheer humanity to distribute money, food and clothing to many of their people.”166 Livingstone failed to recognize that the distribution of clothing by missionaries was more than
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an act of charity. It provided the missionaries with the opportunity to influence the African aesthetics of the peasant women’s dress and simultaneously pursue Europeanization of the large peasant class. European missionaries had long considered themselves the bearers of civilization, and they sought to spread it by whatever means possible. During the 1860s Jamaica experienced renewed interest in Anglo-Saxon Christanity, which some people had hoped would crush the last remnants of African heritage on the island. The leader of the Anglican Church, Bishop Enos Nuttall, revitalized the perception of Anglo-Saxon civilization and Imperial rule as positive elements.167 The “avaricious motives” mentioned by Underhill suggest indifference and perhaps lack of belief among the recipients of missionary aid. Some may, in fact, have sought to take advantage of a system that provided the less fortunate with the opportunity to have nice clothes. Others may have viewed this missionary activity as reminiscent of the paternal ritual of clothing distribution on the plantation, a legacy of a brutal past and a means of creating among the poor some dependency on missionary aid. Many peasants still mistrusted the churches, like the Church of England, that had a history of alliance with the oppressive planter class; those peasants who had once been slaves certainly remembered the cruel treatment they had received under slavery. Nor did they forget that “a minister of one of the leading denominations, now holding an important position in the city, preached at the insurrection [in 1831] a vigorous sermon in defence of the Divine institution of slavery”.168 For many peasants, their painful memories of slavery made them suspicious of officials and cautious in their dealings with the established elite. Some of them may have considered indifference an effective means of getting back at the ruling elite for their sufferings under slavery. As bell hooks reminds us, “Memory sustains a spirit of resistance”,169 and many Jamaicans continued to support Afro-Jamaican religions. AngloSaxon Christian missionary activity failed to conquer obeah and kumina, which remained popular among various sectors of Jamaican society. Women of the labouring and peasant classes, like their middle-class sisters, felt that to embrace Christianity meant social progress; hence church-going was more an act of social respectability than a religious necessity.170 The sanctuary and the churchyard on a Sunday became a performance space in which to display their best white frock and hat, and for those in the latest European-style dress, to aspire to be the Dress as Accommodation
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“fairest of them all”. Sunday-best clothes made poverty invisible. One could lack money, decent housing, food or medical care and still be decently dressed. Even some Jamaicans with very low wages were nevertheless able to appear prosperous and thereby transcend their class temporarily.171 Poor, fair-skinned Jamaican women who considered themselves racially superior desired the latest British fashions so that they could outdo dark-skinned women in their dress. For many poor Jamaican women, dressing up and wearing a hat, especially for church services, was more than a way to escape their poverty. It made them feel good, provided some fun and stimulated a sense of self-worth and pride. As one woman remarked when asked why she dressed up for church, “It mek me feel so good.”172
The Failure of Accommodation as a Strategy for Social Mobility Clothes are but a symbol of something hid deep within. – Virginia Woolf, Orlando
Jamaican women who accommodated, because it made them feel good or because they believed it would enable them to uplift themselves in the colonial society, soon realized that accommodation to British cultural traits did not eradicate the racial stereotyping of African women. This can be seen in Livingstone’s description of women’s dresses in the 1880s. He said: In the matter of dress considerable progress soon became visible . . . their sense of harmony, however, was in its rudimentary stage, and the result was sometimes sufficiently bizarre. This was particularly the case on Sundays and holidays when they arrayed themselves in costumes which excited the ridicule of the whites, and earned for the fashion, the contemptuous designation of monkey style.173
Livingstone characterized rural freed women who aped European dress as “sufficiently bizarre” and having an “inclination . . . towards monkey style”.174 Yet in the towns things were different. According to Livingstone, “the examples of the whites, many of whom had in selfdefence assumed the quietest of costumes, was making an impression on 170
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the more intelligent negroes”.175 Those who set the trends purposely differentiated themselves from those whom they saw as their inferiors. Therefore, freed women, by virtue of their race, could never catch up. Their attempts to resist the negative images long associated with them from the time of slavery, and to uplift themselves by means of dress and education beyond their “jungle status”, could not succeed in overcoming the racist and stereotypical ideas of the colonial white supremacists. It was the “rudimentary stage” and the “sufficiently bizarre” nature of their dress that branded them as stupid, childish or even “monkey” people, who lacked grace and refined taste. African use of vibrant colours was foreign to European eyes, and only the closest conformity to European dress was acceptable. Livingstone acknowledged that women’s dress had changed, apparently for the better, irrespective of its “rudimentary sense of harmony”. However, he credited this development among Afro-Jamaicans, especially the “intelligent negroes” in urban areas, to white influence. Livingstone, like so many of his contemporaries, reiterated the belief that Afro-Jamaicans could not advance socially without white assistance. Thus women’s capabilities of adaptation, innovation and creativity in their dress were neither valued nor encouraged. Perhaps the most striking observation Livingstone made was that some white women, in “self-defence” [against freedwomen], assumed the “quietest costume”. Afro-Jamaican women who accommodated threatened white women’s dress boundaries. In the colonial realm, an individual’s security was based on conforming and knowing where he or she belonged, distinct from others. Dress both marked one’s status and reflected one’s social role. As Kurt and Gladys Lang point out, “Where custom rules, and the society is clearly stratified, people learn how to dress, express themselves, behave, and think as befits their station.”176 The Afro-Jamaican women who broke the customary rules in dress disrupted the social balance of society and threatened white privilege. The preservation of white elitism and cultural dominance was based on the racist ideology that African women could never be “somebody”. For Afro-Jamaican women this situation reflected a dissonant colonial mentality: they lived in a world that promoted whiteness and Europeanization, but they could never fully Europeanize because of the colour of their skin. At the end of the nineteenth century, E.A. Hastings, a visitor to Jamaica, described the women who accommodated to the European Dress as Accommodation
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aesthetic in dress on Sundays: “Next morning everyone turned out in their Sunday best. Big hulking negresses were attired in gorgeous silks and satins, and truly wonderful hats with broad brims and feathers, and ribbon. . . . The wooly locks under all this fashionable headgear were pathetically ludicrous.”177 Afro-Jamaican women looked silly and “pathetically ludicrous” because they were not dressed appropriately for their race. Despite their fashionable headgear, it was their Negroid hair that made their outfits socially unacceptable. Accommodation to European culture and standards in dress did not always improve race relations. As slaves, many women had sought to subvert the institution of slavery; then as freed women they sought to carve a space for themselves in the new social order. Middle-class and peasant-class women used dress to reflect their degree of accommodation, to resist misrepresentation and to demonstrate that they could be as beautiful as white women. Despite their limited resources, they paraded in their Sunday best, and through their appearance they were sometimes able to transcend the boundaries of class. For instance, in 1891 a street vendor was overheard saying to a friend, “When a lick on me silk frock and fling me parasol over me shoulders and drop into Exhibition Ground, you will know wedder I is a lady or not.”178 Accommodation to European customs in dress did not lead to social acceptance. The races remained very much divided in colonial postemancipation society. Nor did European dress, as a white mask, end racial stereotyping of freed women. In fact, those who accommodated became a type of “racial hybrid”, part African and part white, who were brought to the brink of “civilization” but never fully inducted.179 Adopting European dress was a way for some middle-class and peasant women to look white or European, and in the process avoid Fanon’s “pit of niggerhood”. Needless to say, the attempt to whiten the race failed. Accommodation revealed a harsh reality – freed women and men could never be white, no matter how hard they tried to accommodate. Langston Hughes reiterated this point, stating: “This imitation of whites leads to an imitation life for blacks, that can only be understood as limitation.”180 This limitation was a result of racism. No matter how respectable in circumstances, character or dress, a freed person who entered the church pew of the lowest-class white could be instantly ordered out.181 In hospitals, prisons and “grave-yards where it sleeps the last sleep”, racial prejudice haunted its victims.182 Racism had survived 172
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emancipation and continued to affect the lives of all those of African ancestry. The abolitionist and missionary James Phillippo reaffirmed this notion: “In whomsoever the least trace of an African origin could be discovered the curse of slavery pursued him [or her], and no advantages either of wealth, talent, virtue, education, or accomplishment, were sufficient to relieve him [or her] from the infamous proscriptions.”183 Regardless of any European cultural markers that freed women chose to adopt, they could never assimilate or transcend the racial boundaries. They were bound by racial prejudice, which haunted Afro-Jamaican women and men throughout the colonial period and beyond. Freed persons were not the equivalent of free persons, no matter how much they adopted symbols of equality such as dress.
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Chapter 4
Conclusion
When people put clothes on their bodies, they are primarily engaged in making pictures of themselves to suit their own eyes, out of the completed combination of clothing and body. – Anne Hollander, Seeing through Clothes If you wear the skin of the leopard after it has been purified, the journey will be shorter. – Dahomey voodoo priest, Cotonou, Benin
From Slavery to Freedom: A Long Road Travelled Enslaved African women were stripped of their humanity, and in their nakedness they were forced on a long journey into an alien world based on white privilege. Slave women, like their menfolk, received the fabrics of servitude. On plantations they were restricted, exploited and confined by the chains of white patriarchy that sought to take from them their identity as persons and as Africans. However, Europeans’ attempts at complete deculturation of enslaved Africans, as a means of maintaining control, failed. African slaves brought their customs in dress to Jamaica and were able to maintain and nurture them. The absence of sumptuary laws gave African slave women and their descendants more flexibility
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and control over their dress, hence facilitating cultural expression, retention and adaptation. Cultural expression reflected both individual and collective creativity. Such creativity forced attention on dress and the body, in that the way the colonized dressed and the styles constructed became a performance space for slave and freed women to contest, conform or resist in a racially segregated environment. African women and their descendants, in this respect, were the principal agents of change and transformation in Jamaican colonized society. Moreover, for enslaved women, the politics of representation was important, because dress was a visual display of a popular desire that sent a message about the wearer to the observer. Enslaved women “worked on themselves”, and their ritual of dressing up enabled them to look and feel good, as well as to affirm and validate themselves with in the colonial society. The survival and retention of African customs in dress required innovation and creativity. Although enslavement prohibited the complete transfer of African cultures, enslaved Africans brought with them skills and knowledge, the things they could remember, and adapted them to their environment. For example, African slaves retained the techniques of textile dyeing and bark-cloth and lace-bark production, and they transmitted these ideas to their descendants in the diaspora. Perhaps Jamaicans’ love for linen fabric today has its roots in the bark-cloth industry. Bark-cloth clothing and other clothing made from plant fibre should not evoke an image of the primitive – of Jamaicans wearing grass skirts. What is significant is the sophistication, complexity and ingenuity that were employed in this industry to produce visually exquisite outfits that were desired by many people. Enslaved women established codes in their dress that enabled a unique communication among them.1 Their ornate headwraps, for example, had distinct names and meanings, and they provided a code by which women could communicate with each other.2 These headwraps could signal to other women a woman’s marital status, or whether she was planning to meet her lover. The nurturing of these African customs in dress enabled women to maintain a vital cultural link with their ancestral homeland and, in the process, to resist the institution of slavery which denied them basic human rights. Under the colonial laws regarding dress, slave women were not provided with sufficient clothing rations, nor were women rewarded with clothes for their skills as much as slave men were. Because they received Conclusion
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less clothing than their male counterparts, slave women found alternative ways of obtaining additional dress. Some enslaved women were able to buy extra clothes with money they had saved up from selling their produce in the local market. Others received clothes from white men in exchange for sexual favours. Skilled slave women worked as seamstresses, making garments for the people in the great house as well as members of the slave community, and a cottage industry evolved in clothing manufacture and sewing. This clothing industry created a separate sphere for women, cushioning them from some of the harsh realities of slavery, and provided them with income and some financial independence. Despite the humiliations of the whip and sometimes sexual exploitation by their masters, enslaved women were able to meet the economic demands placed upon them by the planter and at the same time take care of their families. Undoubtedly, the principal transmitters of African customs in dress were women. Melville Herskovits pointed out that a distinctive characteristic of African societies in the New World was the role women played as the principal exponents and protectors of African culture.3 The roles that women customarily played in West African societies – agricultural workers, mothers, teachers, healers and spiritual leaders – equipped them with the opportunity, knowledge and expertise necessary to be not only mainstays of the family but also conduits for the transmission of African knowledge. Slave women were more resistant to European influences in dress than men because more women than men worked in the fields on plantations, where the African elements among cultivators were very strong. Planters were not concerned when their slaves retained certain aspects of their African culture, such as dress, since these cultural elements emphasized the differences between Africans and whites; as well, they did not want to provide more expensive clothing. Women who worked in the fields returned to their cottages at the end of the day; there they had some autonomy to pursue their tasks as they wished and to teach their children culturally appropriate content. Slave women, as field workers, were thus less prone to assimilation than skilled slave men.4 Slave women were resilient and assertive, contrary to popular white belief, and they employed resistance and accommodation activities in their daily lives. Slave women also participated with their menfolk in various forms of resistance. Throughout this study the paradigms of resistance and accommodation have been addressed separately for the 176
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purpose of analysis. However, as we have seen, this separation should not be emphasized, because resistance and accommodation were complex and intertwined processes. In other words, accommodation was also a form of resistance. These concepts reflect a continuum that spans the history of Jamaica and continues into the present. Resistance and accommodation occurred in the lives of both enslaved and freed people. From the moment of enslavement, Africans embarked on a series of resistance strategies that were diverse, complicated and sometimes puzzling. For too long, scholars have taken a simplistic approach to the study of resistance, ignoring the intricacies of adaptive mechanisms like accommodation. Clearly, accommodation as a resistance strategy cannot be dismissed, because it was effective and essential to the survival of African slaves and their descendants. During slavery, for instance, runaway slaves accommodated to European dress so they could pass as freed persons. Carnival attire involved appropriation, accommodation and adaptation of European folk and dress elements, as in the case of the Set Girls and the Queen, as well as the carnival floats. These accommodation strategies in masquerades and slave attire allowed slaves to transgress boundaries and to experience power, while they mocked their enslavers with taunts and pelvic gyrations. For African slave women who were fortunate enough to receive European-style clothes, like the mistresses of white men, their accommodation guaranteed some social mobility and simultaneously enabled them to deceive, to be perceived as the Other and ultimately to escape their slave status, at least temporarily. Resistance and accommodation activities were not necessarily carried out by separate individuals but by the same person as the need arose. In a society that was based on white privilege, slaves had to accommodate to survive; the appearance of assimilation was a tactic they used against their oppressors. The survival of Africans in the diaspora is a testament to the success of all forms of resistance, including accommodation strategy. Slave and freed women also appropriated the symbols of their colonizers. Appropriation in this respect involved some aspects of what Barbara Babcock has called “symbolic inversion”. Babcock argues that symbolic inversion is an expressive behaviour which inverts, contradicts, abrogates or in some manner presents an alternative to commonly held cultural codes, values and norms.5 Slaves’ appropriation of white symbols enabled them to destabilize the colonial discourse and thus demonstrate the futility of attempts to exclude them from society.6 Enslaved Conclusion
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women like Cubah, who refused to conform, used their dress to signal their rejection of European hegemony and to reaffirm their commitment to their African roots. African women, as slaves, sought to subvert the system of slavery by means of accommodation strategy in their dress; as freed women, after emancipation, they tried to carve a space for themselves in the new social order by using the same technique. Despite the new challenges and opportunities that emerged, their use of dress as an expressive cultural strategy did not end. During the post-emancipation era, the policy of Europeanization or whitening of the African race encouraged large numbers of freed women to accommodate to European standards in dress (see Figures 4.1 and 4.2). The old plantation ways of dressing disappeared, and more women donned the fashionable Victorian dresses, with their heavy skirting held out by crinolines. Many women did this as a means of “civilizing” themselves and to increase their social standing; the labouring-class and peasant women accommodated when it was possible and affordable. For the lower classes, the ritual of dressing up was a temporary escape from their poverty. Some freed women, as during slavery, saw accommodation in itself as a form of resistance, in that acculturation or accommodation was a political act which marked them as no longer slaves. Needless to say, accommodation did not eradicate freed women’s oppression; instead, it reinforced some of the negative stereotypes long associated with the African body. Those women who refused to abandon Africanisms combined aspects of African and European dress customs. This synthesis, as discussed, gave rise to a Creole dress, which included the long, full European skirt complemented by the African headwrap or tie-head, which became the dominant dress style among the peasant class. Colonial Jamaican culture was not merely a blending of these two elements but is best described as having a distinction between deep and surface structure. Deep structure was African, whereas surface structure was influenced by other cultures with which Africans had been in contact.7 This analogy, according to Mervyn Alleyne, enables us to see beyond the mere mixing of African and European elements to an understanding of the process or the “movement” – in other words, the “rhythm” – in all aspects of Jamaican culture, including dress.8 Creole dress, however, represented more than deep and surface structure. Although the deep structure of the African elements cannot be dismissed, we cannot ignore the European surface structure that may have 178
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Courtesy David Boxer Collection of Jamaican Photography
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Figure 4.1 Jamaican woman in “separates”, c.1900, by J.W. Cleary
been a less embedded, but nonetheless essential, element of this dress. Furthermore, we should note that these deep and surface structures were not permanent states but were always shifting to suit individual tastes and levels of accommodation. For example, in the post-slavery society that promoted whiteness, the African deep structure became shallower and was eventually eclipsed by European characteristics, as seen in the case of many middle-class women who abandoned Creole dress in the name of progress and civilization. In addition, these characteristics in dress, whether African or European, were not static. They were constantly being reshaped and adapted to new situations. Conclusion
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Private collection
Figure 4.2 A fashionable Jamaican lady in Europeanstyle dress, c.1901–5, by Adolphe Duperly
Creole dress was vibrant, colourful and innovative. It was also the essence of resistance and accommodation. It resisted complete deculturation by visually declaring the survival of African aesthetics, and at the same time, it portrayed accommodation by adapting European norms as a subtle survival mechanism that was used against the enslavers. In this respect, Creole dress, like carnival dress, was ambiguous. Creole dress was political because it represented cultures in conflict. It differentiated people in a society that was polarized between the elite and ultraEuropeanized, who rejected anything African, and the peasant class, steeped in a deep-structured world that was African. 180
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In this study I have tried to show how African elements in dress survived during slavery, and how dress served the ends of both resistance and accommodation in the lives of enslaved and freed women. Throughout history, in many societies, dress has been used to denote age, sex, rank, status and group affiliation. However, as much as dress discloses, it can also conceal. Within Jamaican slave society, for instance, class identity could be concealed if a slaves acquired and wore garments that were not typical of their rank and social circle. By concealing their identity in this manner, some women were able to transform themselves by appearing to be an elite or freed person, and thereby they achieved some power and advantage within colonial society.
Limitations of the Study In emphasizing resistance and accommodation, I have skimped on discussing the important sexual implications of dress. Sexuality embodies whole vocabularies of resistance and accommodation, but the nature of the sources from the slavery and post-emancipation period made it difficult to analyse Jamaican women’s dress from this perspective. Different societies have different sexual connotations associated with dress and exposure of parts of the body. We can assume that in the West these notions were different from those held in West Africa, as they are in contemporary societies. However, the sources for Africa and Jamaica do not give sufficient information to make conclusions possible. This study also did not include an analysis of free coloured women’s dress, the clothing of slaves manumitted during slavery, mourning dress and burial shrouds used by Africans and Europeans in Jamaica, or the ritual clothes associated with the dead in Afro-Jamaican religions. The focus of this study was the secular dress of African slave women and freed women and its legacy in Jamaican society.
Non-European Influences Although this study has focused on the two dominant aesthetics that influenced Jamaican dress – African and European – other groups of people also brought their dress customs to Jamaica from the mid-
Conclusion
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Courtesy Michael T. Gardner
nineteenth century and onwards. These dress customs were not always viewed favourably in Jamaican society. Patrick Bryan reveals that the indentured labourers from India who arrived in Jamaica between 1845 and 1916 and wore their dhotis and pungarees were contemptuously viewed as half-nude and a bad moral influence, and the long-haired Chinese were hostilely described as wearing oilskin pajamas. The colourful dresses of the Syrian women, in contrast, met with great approval from the white and middle-class elite.9 Most Indian women eventually gave up their customary dress for the long European skirt of the period (see Figure 4.3); many Indian women also adapted the African woman’s tie-head.10
Figure 4.3 Mrs Maria Gray in European-style dress, c.1900, by A. Duperly and Sons. Mrs Gray is the mother of Marie and Josephine Gray and is of Indian ancestry.
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Indian indentured labourers were not a monolithic group. Historian Verene Shepherd has argued that Indian labourers came from different linguistic and cultural zones, but the only clear cultural distinction eventually was religious, between Muslims and Hindus.11 Indians’ high degree of acculturation was manifested on the segregated estates, and was successful because the presence of the Indians’ larger cultural forms, such as religion, language, music and dance, was so weak.12 The shortage of Indian women who could act as conduits for cultural transmission was also a major factor.13 Indians were greatly influenced by African customs in dress because they received generous contributions of clothing from black Jamaicans. Furthermore, their harsh living conditions and experiences lead Indian indentured labourers on the sugar estates during this period to forge a bond with members of the labouring and peasant classes who had not forgotten their own experiences as slaves.14
The Continuum: A Reflection on Contemporary Jamaican Dress The endless transformation within female clothing constructs female sexuality and subjectivity in ways that are at least profoundly disruptive, both of gender and of the symbolic order, which is predicated upon continuity and coherence. – Kaja Silverman, Fragments of a Fashionable Discourse
Within the context of the politics of representation, slave and freed women’s use of specific cultural aesthetics and characteristics in their dress allowed them to resist the institution of slavery as well as to conform or accommodate to Victorian concepts of beauty. In contemporary Jamaica, the way one dresses continues to contest, confront and conform, and in the process shapes and transforms society. The power of style enables us to express our individuality, to fit in or be fashionable, as well as to show group affiliation. Despite European attempts at deculturation and Europeanization of African slaves and their descendants, African customs in dress survived and continue to be a vibrant feature in Jamaican society today. Many Jamaicans are fundamentally locating their relationship to style. This requires constant reassessment of how we make fashion by Conclusion
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creating new meanings, by accommodating or adapting and recycling meanings from each section of Jamaican culture and by appropriating the dress patterns of the Other, both past and present. This process of borrowing and combining styles in new ways is creolization in action, a way to define an identity that expresses personal and cultural experiences. The process has given rise to complex subcultures where the layered meanings of style and appearance are important features of the subculture’s identity. Some emerging styles are considered by some people to be highly radical or extreme, subversive and even disruptive. Some of these styles can be interpreted as resistance to the dominant culture; however, others are little more than fads that may vary between regions and even cities. Fads tend to be short-lived, many being derived from music videos, cable television, rap and dancehall musicians, which regularly generate fads and street style as part of their musical improvisation and innovation.15 Music conglomerates and record companies are always in search of new styles as well as talent, since image is an important market commodity. The concept of subversive dress is not unique to any country. In the United States, for example, the hippie fashions of the 1960s were subversive because they symbolized resistance to the social, political, economic and sexual conventions associated with the 1950s. According to sociologist Diana Crane, this type of subversion is generally subtle and takes various forms. The hippies expressed anti-establishment attitudes by choosing garments associated with the working class and by wearing clothing that was often considered unclean, unkempt or disordered.16 The Jamaican male’s street style is another example of subversive dress style. Like many urban black males in the United States and Britain, large numbers of Jamaican black men now wear elaborate braids, multiple piercings, shaved or shaped eyebrows and oversized pants hanging off their bottoms to expose their designer underwear. Hair newly styled for a special occasion is often protected with a piece of silk stocking, later removed for the event. For some men, the goal is to be the first among their peers to acquire the latest fashionable items being marketed by the fashion industry. Maintaining their appearance requires a lot of time, effort and money. Those who cannot afford to purchase such costly items rely on their relatives abroad to send them money or the latest trends in shoes and clothes.17 It may seem surprising that a dress style with such feminine characteristics is acceptable among heterosexual black males in a society steeped in homophobia. However, Jamaican street style is more com184
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plex. This dress reveals that the Jamaican male is obsessed with style and is constantly reconstructing his image. Street style is a symbol of the contemporary dandy, who questions existing definitions of masculinity and experiments with gender identities and lifestyles. Like his nineteenth-century counterpart, the dandy dresses in a style usually associated with women and is generally associated with the arts. The novelists, poets and painters of a century ago have been replaced by icons of popular culture, which today means advertising, film, television, video and popular music.18 The Jamaican black male’s masculinity is not threatened by this fashion. Street style’s androgynous subversion of sexual conventions, represented by extreme, overt masculinity with feminine trappings, challenges and counters the image of the crippled, broken and emasculated black male. As a consequence, the black male body becomes a celebration of prowess, virility and potency. Simultaneously, this dress differentiates the urban, often lower-class young black male from the uptown professional male in his grey suit and tie. Street style represents a rejection of the socially acceptable masculinity prescribed by schools, offices and churches. However, not all members of the street-style subculture see it as subversive. For some young men, this style is a matter of personal taste rather than a political statement. Others simply like wearing loose clothing that facilitates freedom of movement and complex dance manoeuvres. Some men consider street style a way to be part of the fashionable “in crowd”, while others see it as a way to be different, an outlet for individual expression. As street style crosses over and becomes popular among all social classes, it is gradually becoming depoliticized.19 Dress as resistance and accommodation remains a strong cultural phenomenon in Jamaica. Two other segments of Jamaican society that reflect this clearly are Rastafarianism and dancehall. Rastafarianism emerged in the 1930s as a political and philosophical movement that sought to liberate Jamaica from the clutches of colonial elitism and the intolerance of the established Christian church.20 By appropriating the symbols and colours of Ethiopia in their dress, Rastafarians spoke their resentment of the established social and religious order and signalled their rejection of their subordinate status. Consequently, their secular and religious dress became highly subversive and simultaneously represented the specific lifestyle that they had chosen. Rex Nettleford explains this further: Conclusion
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[They] cultivate a ferocious theatricality complete with dreadlocks of matted braids and knitted woollen headgear . . . bearing revolutionary colours of the brightest red, green, gold and black, as if to amplify their anguish . . . through the device of programmed high visibility . . . and defiant exterior masks [were] an organic protest against the Caribbean’s “sufferation” committed against our people.21
Like African slaves and their descendants, Rastafarians used dress to challenge the colonial order by rejecting the social norms set by the ruling elite. Rastafarians’ visibility, like slave women’s and freed women’s dress, was a constant reminder of their discontent and their determination to resist all forms of oppression, including the dominant white culture’s values. It was the Rastafarians’ determination to be free that fuelled the process of decolonization and ultimately contributed to Jamaica’s liberation. In a society that long celebrated Eurocentric values and white aesthetics in beauty, Rastafarian dress is a celebration of the African identity that is such a rich part of Jamaican cultural heritage. In this celebration, blackness, both physical and of the mind, and naturalness are validated and affirmed. Rastafarian dress, with its bright colours of black, red, green and gold, remains a constant visual reminder of black Jamaicans’ cultural link to Mother Africa. African aesthetics are also an integral part of dancehall culture and dress. Dancehall dress has multiple meanings: it reflects a complex style that conforms to the particular subculture, and it contests and resists societal norms about dress and sexuality. Moreover, dancehall dress emphasizes and eroticizes the body, with its tight and revealing clothing; some people see it as objectifying and commodifying the female body. In 1996, when I first visited the dancehall scene, I was amazed and captivated to see the many Africanisms that have survived and are being nurtured in this form of Jamaican popular culture, where appearance is everything, the body is cultural expression and movement is art. In this sense, dancehall is a stage on which popular desire is played out, symbols of the elite are appropriated and the body is celebrated, confined, exposed, manipulated and bleached. The body surface has become a canvas that is painted and worked on.22 The politics of representation in dancehall require that black women’s bodies be beautiful according to the African aesthetic. Although this aesthetic has its roots in the racism of the nineteenth century, when white misogynist attitudes assumed all African women to have big bottoms and big breasts,23 Jamaican black women who have been voiceless and 186
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invisible embrace it because it assures them of validation and recognition on the social and cultural terrain of dancehall. Like enslaved and freed women of decades ago, who sought to do what was necessary to be acceptable within the broader cultural context, contemporary black women resort to various means to fit in. Some go so far as to take hormones (“the chicken pill”) to develop big bottoms and breasts. In dancehall culture, body parts may be transformed and reconstructed by artificial means, and anatomical protrusions are accentuated by tight clothing to attain the desired shape – an African aesthetic of the body – so the woman can don her blond wig, feel good and “bubble” in her batty rider.24 Like carnival, dancehall embodies the masquerading tradition that has survived in Jamaica. The fancy dress of dancehall, with its brightcoloured, shiny “acetate and mock-satins, fake or inexpensive materials” that have been made into futuristic fashions with “fancy brassieres over body stockings or plain skins”,25 for some Jamaicans, reflects the process of liberation from neo-imperialism and resistance against elitism. But dancehall dress is gradually being depoliticized as it becomes increasingly popular across class and racial boundaries and is available with fancy designer labels at high prices in expensive stores. At the moment, dancehall dress at its very core aims to act upon the environment, to annoy, upset and ultimately liberate middle-class and elite society from its stuffy sartorial and social conventions – more specifically, from its racist mentality. Dancehall dress is indicative of a “political style of provocation”.26 This type of provocation and masquerading, like carnivals during slavery, provides a fleeting sense of power to the participants, as well as the opportunity to get beyond the norms of society, let loose and have some fun.27 Whether at an uptown soca carnival or a downtown jam session, the sequins, bright and robust jewellery and beads that make up fancy dress in Jamaica today are reminiscent of Jonkonnu and African masking. Bleaching the skin has become a popular cosmetic activity in some dancehall circles and beyond. Bleaching is not a recent phenomenon and is not unique to Jamaica. According to Mervyn Alleyne, blackskinned young women in other areas of the Caribbean and in North America bleach their skin to lighten their complexions to brown. Alleyne argues that “white is not the goal, but rather brown, which is becoming, aesthetically and erotically, the desired colour the world over”.28 Interestingly, white people, both men and women, bleach to Conclusion
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remove dark-pigmented spots. In Jamaica, several reasons are cited for bleaching the skin: to clear up skin ailments, to look “cool”, and to be more acceptable among one’s peer group. The most popular reason seems to be the desire to be “browning”. The newly acquired skin tone is often complemented by a change in hairstyle and hair texture.29 Even though bleaching is said to be big business in Jamaica and is celebrated in popular music, insufficient research has been conducted on the topic. When I first read about this phenomenon, I thought of Pecola, the eleven-year-old protagonist in Toni Morrison’s novel The Bluest Eye, who prays for blue eyes to make her beautiful. Singer Curtis Mayfield asked in a song, if you had a choice of colours which would you choose, black or white?30 Needless to say, the follow-up question is, Why? In contemporary Jamaica, the choice of colours is between black and brown. In a society where white represents financial and economic privilege but the numbers are too small to have an impact, and black is no longer in style, brownness has become, far more than before, the symbol of aesthetic beauty. I learned this one afternoon after walking to visit an old friend, who remarked, “Don’t let the sun turn you dark, you have such nice brown complexion.” As seen earlier, the act of bleaching goes back to the days of slavery and early post-emancipation, when some freed women bleached their skin to complement their Victorian-style dress and to conform to European notions of beauty. Some did it because they thought it would grant social mobility and acceptance. Since they could never attain a white complexion, brownness became the desired skin tone. Today, Jamaican black women bleach in order to elevate themselves, to look beautiful in a society that values brownness or “high colour” and to find a partner in a culture where most men still prefer brown women. Browning, some people have argued, represents a continuation of the slave mentality.31 Cultural and literary critic Carolyn Cooper has argued, however, that bleaching is a rational response to the racism in Jamaican society.32 Bleaching the skin is more than ornamentation, a desire for self-validation or even a reflection of identity confusion, as some have argued. In fact, the politics of representation are far more complex. For instance, some women bleach their skin, regardless of the damage it may cause, not because they want to be brown or to conform to middle-class aesthetics of beauty, but rather to resist the negative representation of blackness and to demystify the cultural politics of difference.33 In this 188
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context, bleaching is a provocative, political act of resistance that disrupts the racial boundaries of Jamaican society and allows for movement between brownness and blackness. A black woman may bleach her skin and acquire a brown complexion, but if she stops the process her natural skin colour will reappear.34 This fluidity between blackness and brownness forces us to re-examine our construct of race and our definitions of racial categories. Browning is a mask that conceals and deceives. For some black Jamaican women, browning allows them to elevate themselves out of the “pit of niggerhood” by concealing their identity and allowing them to pass, or be perceived, as brown and middle class. In the process, they experience the Other and obtain at least temporary validation. Black women’s bleaching is also a symbolic inversion of the leisure activity of light-skinned women who regularly sit in the sun, regardless of the risk of skin cancer, to achieve the ideal shade – a tan that is not too dark, but just enough to hide the paleness.
When I was a child, every Sunday morning my mother took great care to get my siblings and me dressed up in our Sunday best for church – a habit I have maintained to this day. My mother particularly checked to see if our seams were straight and our shoes nice and clean. Before we left the house, we had a quick inspection to make sure all buttons were buttoned and shirts tucked in nicely. My grandmother seemed to have the same difficulty every week as she tried to decide on the right hat for church. She never considered going to church “bare head”. A few years ago, when I asked her why she wears a hat to church, she replied, “I must look good and have a little style when I praise the Lord.” My grandmother, like so many other Jamaican women both long ago and today, follows the rich tradition that a hat is a woman’s crown. I often wondered why so much fuss occurred over clothes, especially after I learned that many of my Sunday school peers had similar experiences. There seemed to be so many tasks associated with dress – from the long, tedious process of washing clothes, which often involved scalding white garments in a kerosene tin on an outdoor wooden fire, to the laborious chore of starching and ironing collars. These tasks were carried out predominantly by women, who often designated specific days for washing and ironing. Today, even with the use of washing machines and the availability of domestic help, the care of clothing is still done mostly by women. Conclusion
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Jamaicans’ fascination, even obsession, with dress extends to incorporating dress customs and information about the care of clothing into songs, folklore and even daily life. For instance, some people still believe that sewing dirty clothes will make someone ill, and that if you mend your clothes while wearing them, people will “walk all over you or oppress you”.35 My childhood rituals and Jamaicans’ fixation on dress are all part of a rich legacy rooted in slavery and West Africa, which has been passed down to the present. This legacy is a testament to the survival of Africanisms in dress and is important because it bridges the past and the present. The activities of dressing up and dressing down were not unique to Jamaica but were prevalent in African communities throughout the diaspora. What is culturally specific among black people is the power of style,36 a rhythmic pattern of colours and complex messages interwoven with African aesthetics. Dressing up, which goes back to West Africa, continues to provide poor Jamaicans with opportunities to temporarily escape their poverty and tribulations. Dressing down allows the elite and middle class to be free of social conventions that often confine and restrict them. Dressing up or dressing down fosters moods that may be associated with particular occasions or events and makes people of all classes feel good about themselves. No other single garment is as symbolic of the survival of African dress customs as the African woman’s headwrap. Like their forebears during slavery and in West Africa, Jamaican black women continue to wear the headwrap for various reasons. It is still worn for the protection of newly styled hair and to make one look presentable. It has also continued to be used by traders and other women to assist with carrying and balancing heavy loads on the head. In Afro-Jamaican religions, both men and women wear headwraps, commonly referred to as turbans; however, for secular activities, headwraps are rare among men in contemporary Jamaican society. Some young men have adopted a less elaborate but comparable style of tying a handkerchief around their head, as a fashion statement and to absorb perspiration. The African woman’s headwrap, along with matching attire, has remained a symbol of the ancestral homeland, one that evokes a sense of pride and dignity as well as solidarity with other women of African descent and those in Africa. At formal receptions during the 1997 state visit to Jamaica of the Ghanaian president Jerry Rawlings, many black women wore elaborate headwraps in diverse styles, colours and patterns. 190
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So spectacular was this African parade of dress that cultural critic and playwright Barbara Gloudon remarked, in patois: Yuh waan see African dress. Man! Me never know say is so much Jamaican-African deh bout. Headwrap fe days. But yuh know how we love excitement.37
Jamaicans do love excitement, especially when it involves dressing up for an occasion that provides an opportunity to display one’s fashionable outfits. However, one cannot forget the role that the black-consciousness movement of the 1960s and the Afrocentric movement of the 1970s onward played in nurturing, encouraging and stimulating greater awareness of and interest in African dress. Such movements, for example, rejected the negative attitude towards nappy or “kink” (kinky) hair, which led to renewed interest in African-inspired hairstyles, such as the Afro, and headwraps. These styles were embraced by women at all levels of Jamaican society, including Beverly Manley, the wife of Jamaica’s former prime minister. In the 1970s African-style headdresses were often worn with kente cloth fashions and dashikis. Nowadays in Jamaica, African and Indian dresses are frequently seen at formal occasions. Some women wear them because they are pleased by the thought of ethnic or exotic dress and the opportunity to have a “taste of the Other”, to be different or to make a statement. On other women, these fashions can also be interpreted as a rejection of creolization and Europeanization, and even as dressing down.38 The popularity of ethnic or alternative dress is evidence of Jamaica’s multi-cultural society and of Jamaicans’ appreciation for cultural diversity. Jamaica’s history has long been one of the blending of diverse cultures, beginning with indigenous people and Europeans, followed by Africans, Chinese, Indians, and Middle Easterners. The merging of diverse people to form one nation is embodied in Jamaica’s motto, “Out of Many, One People”, which is intended to both reflect our experience and unite all Jamaicans but actually presents a false notion of a harmonious society. Jamaican society is multi-cultural, but the multi-culturalism masks tensions and the absence of dialogue between various groups. Jamaican society is divided socially, economically and politically. The fact that some ethnicities are given more legitimacy than others is problematic.39
Conclusion
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Some people make clear distinctions between Western dress and the dress styles of the Other; however, alternative fashions in dress exist simultaneously in countries around the world. According to Joanne Eicher, what is often thought of as Western dress is not always completely Western, since some styles have their origins in non-Western cultures. Trousers and open coats, for example, are believed to have developed in Asia.40 Although dress styles can be culturally specific, as in the case of the Japanese kimono, even these styles were often influenced over time by contact with other cultures. The dress customs of the Other were either rejected or adapted to suit the cultural taste and standards of the community. The Western-versus-ethnic paradigm as related to dress marginalizes the Other, when, in fact, all dress styles can be considered as ethnic.41 Migration, technology, commerce, the mass media and tourism have brought Jamaicans into greater contact with fashions from around the world, many by means of our close ties with Europe and the United States. As societies become increasingly multi-cultural, international fashions become more common. Some fashions – American blue jeans, T-shirts and Nike athletic shoes, for instance – become wildly popular the world over. Globalization brings diverse fashions together and also sets them apart. Those who can afford the popular international fashions are usually the elite and the middle class, while the dominance of some styles, like American blue jeans, especially among certain age groups, blurs the visual boundaries between cultures and classes. Thus, in some places, indigenous dress is no longer the norm and is relegated to the realm of folk attire.42 Despite the survival of the African woman’s headwrap, specific styles of tie-head once popular with black women, such as the Madras cloth bandanna, have all but disappeared. This headdress was once proudly worn by many market women and was elegantly worn, along with matching outfits, by Jamaican performer Louise Bennett. Market traders say that the bandanna lost favour because of changes in hairstyles, especially the Jheri Curl, which would have been crushed by the tie-head. A few traders argued that it was because the fabric became scarce and too expensive; others said it was a question of fashion.43 Today, bandanna fabric is primarily ceremonial and symbolic. It is usually part of the national costume worn by women representing Jamaica in beauty pageants, official ceremonies and festivals. The women’s national costume consists of a bandanna skirt with a white peasant blouse and a bandanna 192
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tie-head, topped with a wide-brimmed straw hat. The costume for men includes a loose bandanna shirt, trousers and a straw hat. Mrs Beth Lenworth Jacobs of St Ann’s Bay began promoting the idea of a national costume in 1953, during a meeting of the St Ann’s Parochial Board to plan for the Queen’s visit to the town. The local government gave permission and approved the usage of the term national in association with the bandanna dress. The national dress was first worn during the royal visit, by a bevy of girls in that parish. Mrs Lenworth Jacobs and her committee selected the bandanna plaid because they wanted a costume designed to “flatter the many types – types that go to make up the Jamaican woman”.44 By 1955 the idea had caught on and become popular among various groups of women across Jamaica and across class lines. During the Singer Sewing Machine Company’s annual Sewing Week in 1955, the national dress – its style and role – was the principal subject of discussion. This was followed by regular newspaper advertisements of numerous bandanna dress creations aimed at the Jamaican housewife. These designs were worn with a crinoline underneath, as was typical of the period. The crinoline was an underskirt of stiff fabric, either in several layers or with a wire hoop, to hold out the skirt in the desired shape and for extra bounce.45 But the bandanna’s popularity as everyday attire was short-lived and the dress remained symbolic, perhaps because it was associated more with folk or peasant attire.46 Some Jamaicans are now searching for a more appealing national fabric, and several designers have experimented with the colours of the Jamaican flag. However, so far nothing has caught on to replace the bandanna as national dress. In all of this, the question arises: does Jamaica really need a national dress? Some people argue that a national dress undermines other dress forms, that such a dress is nostalgic and impractical. However, bandanna fabric has regained some popularity as a form of religious dress. In some Revival groups, dresses and turbans made from red bandanna fabric are worn on specific feast days because the colour red has religious significance.47 Dress in Jamaica continues to be an integral part of our lives; it fosters style and rhythm that allow us to express ourselves, to show our innovation and creativity, to make a statement and to transform ourselves. Dress allows us to do these things both collectively and individually – as in the case of my mother, who put on a black frock and walked barefoot in the wet streets during the rain after my father died, as a Conclusion
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symbolic act of releasing the man she loved. Regardless of whether one lives in the ghetto and wears “ghetto fabulous” outfits48 or is at the funeral celebration of a “don” with an elaborate and fashionable entourage, the innovative and creative process of expression through dress is part of us as Jamaicans. The deep-structure Africanisms that have been maintained do not survive alone; they are part of a continuous process of osmosis that combines aesthetics in dress from many cultures. Jamaican dress style today is diverse and cosmopolitan by nature. It is a style that reflects a rich history and a multiplicity of experiences. Jamaican dress is not simply African-European; it is uniquely Jamaican. Every woman in Jamaica – from the sister in her prayer wrap going to the revival meeting and the Rasta woman in her knitted multi-coloured tam, to the uptown office worker in her cutwork linen suit and the dancehall queen in her lamé microskirt – is part of this dress custom. Jamaican dress, with its rhythm, colour and diversity, is symbolic of a people restructuring and reshaping their own identity to find meaning for their own existence in a global society. The nurturing and retention of African elements in dress within Jamaican culture is important. It is the ultimate testament to the survival of those who began a long journey at the moment of enslavement and continued it on the middle passage. They crossed the oceans in chains, and yet African slaves and their descendants dared to survive. As I think of my own childhood and those Sunday-morning dress rituals, I realize that these acts were all part of a continuum, a rich legacy of love and hope that moulds us as a people and in the process strengthens us for the next part of our journey – from the present into the unknowable future.
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Appendix 1
Natural Substances and Plants Used in the Manufacture and Care of Clothing in Jamaica
The following information is taken from Edward Long, The History of Jamaica or General Survey, and C.D. Adams, Flowering Plants of Jamaica. Only common or popular names are listed. Sources for perfume Musk wood Musk okra Prince wood Rose wood Sources for vegetable soaps Broad-leafed broomweed Coratoe Lignum vitae leaves Soap-tree Soap wood Soapberry bush Sources for dyes and pigments Anatto Bastard saffron Cashaw, bark and root Cashew and cashew tree Flower fence Fustic Indigo 195
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Indigo berry Lignum vitae leaves (also used for refreshing flowers) Logwood Morinda root or yaw-weed Mountain or Suriname calalu Prickly pear Prickly yellow pear Scarlet seed Shrubby goat-rue Vine sorrel Yellow wood Substances for clothing Bon-ace bark Carotoe leaf Cocoa-husk Cotton wood Down-tree-down Laghetto bark Mahoe bark Mountain cabbage Red sorrel bush Silk grass Substances for tanning leather Black olive bark Button tree (buttonwood tree) Dogwood Mahoe bark Red mangrove White bully bark
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Appendix 2
Selected Jamaican Proverbs and Sayings Associated with Dress
The following information is taken from Izett Anderson and Frank Cundall, Jamaican Proverbs and Sayings, and Martha Warren Beckwith, Jamaican Proverbs. There are variations in interpretations of these proverbs. Clothes cober character – Looks may be deceiving because clothing covers or hides a person’s true character. Pretty face and pretty clothes no character – Similar to “Not all that glitters is gold”; someone may look nice or attractive and wear pretty clothes but have a bad personality or no character. Barefoot man noffe mash macka – A man who is barefooted must not step on prickles, meaning that people whose own conduct is open to criticism should not criticize the conduct of others. De lard gib beard a dem who na hab chin fe wear i – Some people have advantages that they cannot make use of. What de use you da shawl up when you character gone – It is no use to pretend to be better than one really is. No hang you clothes all pon one nail – Similar to “Don’t put all your eggs in one basket”; do not rely only on one source or thing but always have an alternative. You wait pon gentleman you wear blue coat – If you serve people who are honorable, you will be certain of a reward. Too much hair no suit lilly face – A weak person should not assume an appearance of importance.
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Han’some face an’ good luck no all one – It is not beauty that brings good fortune. Only shoe knowing if tockin hab hole – The wearer alone knows where the shoe pinches. Cry shoe no good fe lis’ner – Shoes that squeak will betray a person who comes to eavesdrop. Beautiful ’ooman, beautiful trouble – A woman who is beautiful will bring a lot of trouble. Follow fashion mek monkey cut him tail – It is not necessarily good to imitate others because it may lead to trouble. Shaat nee noh fit ebrybaady – Short-kneed trousers do not fit everybody; therefore, not all fashions are becoming on everyone. We should wear only garments that enhance our appearance. A stitch in time saves nine – Immediate action guarantees efficiency; if you take care of a problem immediately, it will be less of a problem later. Who hab clo’es spread out, a dem look fe rain – Those who have their clothes spread out are looking for rain. Some people go out of their way to look for trouble. Brown man wife nyam cockroach a corner, fe save money fe buy silk dress – A fair-skinned man’s wife deprives herself of food to buy a silk dress. Some women will do almost anything to look good and please their husband, even if it means they have to suffer. Needle mek clothes, but needle naked himself – Sometimes the very person who makes your clothes is in need of clothes; or, the person who helps you may just need your assistance as well.
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Notes The abbreviation CO refers to documents in the United Kingdom Public Record Office, Colonial Office group. NLJ refers to the National Library of Jamaica and UWI to the University of the West Indies.
Introduction 1. 2.
3.
4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9.
10. 11. 12. 13. 14.
Steven Lubar and W. David Kingery, eds., History from Things (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1993), viii–xvii, 1–6. Henry Glassie, “Studying Material Culture Today”, in Living in a Material World: Canadian and American Approaches to Material Culture, ed. Gerald L. Pocius (St John’s: Institute of Social and Economic Research, Memorial University of Newfoundland, 1991), 253. Verene Shepherd, “Petticoat Rebellion? The Black Woman’s Body and Voice”, in In the Shadow of the Plantation: Caribbean History and Legacy, ed. Alvin O. Thompson (Kingston, Jamaica: Ian Randle Publishers, 2002), 19. Glassie, “Studying Material Culture Today”, 254. Lubar and Kingery, introduction to History from Things, ix. Ibid., viii–ix. Mary Ellen Roach-Higgins, Joanne Eicher and Kim K.P. Johnson, eds., Dress and Identity (New York: Fairchild, 1995), 7–10. Ibid., 11. Jules David Prown, “The Truth of Material Culture: History or Fiction?”, in History from Things, ed. Steven Lubar and W. David Kingery (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1993), 3, 4, 17. Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures (New York: Basic Books, 1973), 13. Prown, “The Truth of Material Culture”, 4. Joan W. Scott, “Experience”, in Feminists Theorize the Political, ed. Judith Butler and Joan W. Scott (London: Routledge, 1992), 33. Barbara Bush, Slave Women in Caribbean Society 1650–1838 (Kingston, Jamaica: Heinemann, 1990), 4. Monica Schuler, “Akan Slave Rebellion in the British Caribbean”, Savacou 1 (1970): 8–31; Michael Craton, Testing the Chains: Resistance to Slavery in the British West Indies (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1982); David Barry Gaspar, Bondsmen and Rebels: A Study of Master-Slave Relationships in
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15. 16.
17. 18.
19. 20.
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Antigua (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985); Richard Hart, Slaves Who Abolished Slavery: Blacks in Rebellion (1985; reprint, Kingston, Jamaica: University of the West Indies Press, 2002); Hilary Beckles, “The Two Hundred Years War: Slave Resistance in the British West Indies: An Overview of the Historiography”, Jamaica Historical Review (1982): 1–10; B.W. Higman, Slave Populations of the British Caribbean, 1807–1834 (1984; reprint, Kingston, Jamaica: University of the West Indies Press, 1995); Brian Moore, Cultural Power, Resistance and Pluralism: Colonial Guyana 1838–1900 (Kingston, Jamaica: University of the West Indies Press, 1995). Gad Heuman, Between Black and White: Race, Politics and the Free Coloreds in Jamaica, 1792–1865 (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1981). Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, “Strategies and Forms of Resistance” in In Resistance: Studies in African, Caribbean and Afro-American History, ed. Gary Y. Okihiro (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1986); Darlene Clark Hine and Kate Wittenstein, “Female Slave Resistance: The Economics of Sex”, in The Black Woman Cross-Culturally, ed. Filomena Chioma Steady (Rochester: Schenkman, 1981); Deborah Gray White, Ar’n’t I a Woman? Female Slaves in the Plantation South (New York: W.W. Norton, 1985). Arlette Gautier, “Les Esclaves femmes aux Antilles francaises, 1635–1848”, Reflexions Historiques 10, no. 3 (Fall 1983): 409–35. Lucille Mathurin Mair, The Rebel Woman in the British West Indies during Slavery (Kingston, Jamaica: Institute of Jamaica, 1975); Hilary Beckles, Natural Rebels: A Social History of Enslaved Black Women in Barbados (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1989); Bush, Slave Women in Caribbean Society; Marietta Morrissey, Slave Women in the New World: Gender Stratification in the Caribbean (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1989); Janet Momsen, ed., Women and Change in the Caribbean (Kingston, Jamaica: Ian Randle Publishers, 1993); Verene Shepherd Maharan’s Misery: Narratives of a Passage from India to the Caribbean (Kingston, Jamaica: University of the West Indies Press, 2002) and her edited volume, Women in Caribbean History (Kingston, Jamaica: Ian Randle Publishers, 1999); Patricia Mohammed, ed., Gendered Realities: Essays in Caribbean Feminist Thought (Kingston, Jamaica: University of the West Indies Press, 2002); Patricia Mohammed and Catherine Shepherd, eds., Gender in Caribbean Development (Kingston, Jamaica: Canoe Press, University of the West Indies, 1999); Brian Moore, B.W. Higman, Carl Campbell and Patrick Bryan, eds., Slavery, Freedom and Gender: The Dynamics of Caribbean Society (Kingston, Jamaica: University of the West Indies Press, 2002). Bush, Slave Women in Caribbean Society, 1–10. Bush includes an overview of Caribbean historiography. Mary Ellen Roach-Higgins and Joanne Bubolz Eicher, Dress, Adornment, and the Social Order (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1965); Anne Hollander, “The Fabric of Vision”, Georgia Review, (Summer 1975), 414–55.
Notes to pages 5–6
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21.
22.
23. 24.
25.
26.
27.
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Juliet Ash and Elizabeth Wilson (eds.), Chic Thrills: A Fashion Reader (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992); Shari Benstock and Suzanne Ferris (eds.), On Fashion (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1994). Hildi Hendrickson, ed., Clothing and Difference: Embodied Identities in Colonial and Post-Colonial Africa (Durham: Duke University Press, 1996), 1–8. bell hooks, Black Looks: Race and Representation (Boston: South End, 1992). Eugene D. Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made (New York: Vintage Books, 1976); Gerilyn G. Tandberg, “Field-hand Clothing in Louisiana and Missippi during the Ante-Bellum Period”, Dress 6 (1980): 89–103; Sally Graham Durand and Gerilyn G. Tandberg, “Dress-Up Clothes for Field Slaves of Ante-Bellum Louisiana and Mississippi”, Costume 15 (1981): 40–48; Helen Bradley Griebel, “The African American Woman’s Headwrap: Unwinding the Symbols”, in Dress and Identity, ed. Mary Ellen Roach-Higgins, Joanne Eicher and Kim K.P. Johnson (New York: Fairchild, 1995); Helen Bradley Foster, New Raiments of Self: African American Clothing in the Antebellum South (Oxford: Berg, 1997). Edward Brathwaite, The Development of Creole Society in Jamaica, 1770–1820 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971) and The Arrivants: A New World Trilogy (London: Oxford University Press, 1973); Michael Craton, Searching for the Invisible Man: Slaves and Plantation Life in Jamaica (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1978); Higman, Slave Populations of the British Caribbean; Roderick A. McDonald, The Economy and Material Culture of Slaves: Goods and Chattels on the Sugar Plantations of Jamaica and Louisiana (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1993); Steeve O. Buckridge, “The Colour and Fabric of Jamaican Slave Women’s Dress”, Journal of Caribbean History 33, nos. 1 and 2 (1999): 84–124. Glory Robertson, “Pictorial Sources for Nineteenth-Century Women’s History: Dress as a Mirror of Attitudes to Women”, in Engendering History: Caribbean Women in Historical Perspective, ed. Verene Shepherd, Bridget Brereton and Barbara Bailey (Kingston, Jamaica: Ian Randle Publishers, 1995); Glory Robertson, “Pictorial Sources for Nineteenth-Century Women’s History: Dress as a Mirror of Attitudes to Women”, in Engendering History: Caribbean Women in Historical Perspective, ed. Verene Shepherd, Bridget Brereton and Barbara Bailey (Kingston, Jamaica: Ian Randle Publishers, 1995); Patrick Bryan, The Jamaican People 1880–1902: Race, Class and Social Control (London: Macmillan, 1991); Carol Tulloch, “Fashioned in Black and White: Women’s Dress in Jamaica, 1880–1907”, Things 7 (Winter 1997–98): 29–53. Joseph Graessle Moore, “Religion of Jamaican Negroes: A Study of AfroJamaican Acculturation” (PhD diss., Northwestern University, 1953); Edward Seaga, “Revival Cults in Jamaica: Notes Towards a Sociology of Religion”, Jamaica Journal 3, no. 2 (1969): 3–13.
Notes to page 6
201
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28.
29. 30.
31. 32.
33. 34. 35. 36.
37. 38.
39.
40.
202
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Rex Nettleford, Caribbean Cultural Identity: The Case of Jamaica (Los Angeles: UCLA Latin American Center Publications, 1978) and “Fancy Dress from Jonkonnu to Dance Hall” (typescript, Office of Deputy Vice Chancellor, University of the West Indies, Mona, Jamaica, 1996); Judith Bettelheim, “Jonkonnu and other Christmas Masquerades”, in Caribbean Festival Arts, ed. John W. Nunley and Judith Bettelheim (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1988); Richard D.E. Burton, Afro-Creole: Power, Opposition, and Play in the Caribbean (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997); Hilary Beckles, “Crop Over Fetes and Festivals in Caribbean Slavery”, in In the Shadow of the Plantation: Caribbean History and Legacy, ed. Alvin O. Thompson (Kingston, Jamaica: Ian Randle Publishers, 2002). Sidney W. Mintz, Caribbean Transformations (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1974), 75–79. Hendrickson, Clothing and Difference, 1–16. The ideas for some of these questions are based on the introduction in Hendrickson’s text and my own professional experience in the field of Caribbean history. A Revival shepherd or shepherdess is the spiritual leader of the faith community. Moore, “Religion of Jamaican Negroes”. Moore gives a comprehensive account of Afro-Jamaican religions, and the significance of dress as well as specific colours to the religions. Martha Beckwith, Black Roadways: A Study of Jamaican Folk Life (1929; reprint, New York: Negro University Press, 1969), 108. Albert J. Raboteau, Slave Religion: The “Invisible Institution” in the Antebellum South (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980), 13–15. Ibid. Beckwith, Black Roadways, 118. Newborns are still dressed this way in Jamaica, according to information obtained during a series of interviews and casual discussions with female family members, students at the University of the West Indies and an obeah follower who wishes to remain anonymous. Ibid., 3–5. Philip D. Curtin, Two Jamaicas: The Role of Ideas in a Tropical Colony, 1830–1865 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1955), 22–25, 42–43. See also Edward Brathwaite, The Development of Creole Society in Jamaica, 1770–1820 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971), 105–6, 167–68; and B.W. Higman, Slave Population and Economy in Jamaica 1807–1834 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976), 139–41. All three authors describe in depth the racial composition of Jamaican society and the privileges of each group. See Mervyn C. Alleyne, The Construction and Representation of Race and Ethnicity in the Caribbean and the World (Kingston, Jamaica: University of the West Indies Press, 2002), 193 (hereafter cited as Race and Ethnicity), for a discussion on the racial divide throughout Jamaica’s history. Definitions taken from Random House Webster’s Dictionary, 3d ed.
Notes to pages 6–10
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41.
42. 43.
44. 45. 46. 47. 48.
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Elizabeth Wayland Barber, introduction to Women’s Work: The First Twenty Thousand Years, Women, Cloth, and Society in Early Times (New York: W.W. Norton, 1994), 11–13. Dr David Boxer, curator and director of the National Gallery of Jamaica, conversation with author, 19 November 2002. Verene Shepherd and Glen L. Richards, eds., introduction to Questioning Creole: Creolisation Discourses in Caribbean Culture (Kingston, Jamaica: Ian Randle Publishers, 2002), xi–xxi. Roach-Higgins, Eicher and Johnson, Dress and Identity, 2. Ibid., 12, 19, 134–35. James C. Scott, Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985). Bush, Slave Women in Caribbean Society, 9. Dancehall is the new popular culture in Jamaica. Like reggae, it emerged in the poor areas of Kingston. It has its own music, dress and linguistic terms. This is discussed further in chapter 4. For more information, see Carolyn Cooper, Noises in the Blood (London: Macmillan, 1993).
Chapter 1 1.
2.
3. 4. 5. 6.
There were three waves of African migration to Jamaica, the third of which occurred during the period 1841–65. Some ten thousand Africans arrived after emancipation as indentured labourers. I did not include them in this analysis because the focus of this chapter is cultural retention during slavery – the period prior to 1838. The diverse groups of Africans who came were known by different names. Coromantee was the same as Kramanti or Coromantyn and referred to Ashanti-Fanti people of the Gold Coast. Igbo were Ibo, also known as Eboc or Ebo, from the Niger Delta. Papaw were the same as Popo, now known as Ewe. Mandingo were the same as Malinke, from the region between the Niger and Gambia. Congo, also spelled Kongo, were Bantu from the Congo River basin. Anago or Nago, now known as Yoruba, were from the Oyo and Benin empires in western Nigeria. For further details, see Mervyn Alleyne, Roots of Jamaican Culture (London: Pluto Press, 1988), 28, 52. Franklin Knight and Margaret Crahan, “The African Migration and the Origins of an Afro-American Society and Culture”, in Africa and the Caribbean: The Legacies of a Link, ed. Margaret E. Crahan and Franklin W. Knight (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1979), 11. Higman, Slave Population and Economy, 18, 36–41. Bush, Slave Women in Caribbean Society, 1–3. Robert Farris Thompson, Flash of the Spirit (New York: Random House, 1983), xiv. Melville J. Herskovits, The Myth of the Negro Past (Boston: Beacon Press, 1958), 292–99.
Notes to pages 11–17
203
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7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13.
14. 15.
16.
17.
18.
19. 20. 21.
22.
23. 24.
25.
204
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Leonard E. Barrett, Soul-Force: African Heritage in Afro-American Religion (New York: Anchor Press/Doubleday, 1974), 1. Alleyne, Roots of Jamaican Culture, 7. Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures, 15. Ibid., 20. Roach-Higgins, Eicher and Johnson, Dress and Identity, 15. Roach-Higgins and Eicher, Dress, Adornment, and the Social Order, 13. Betty M. Wass, “Yoruba Dress in Five Generations of a Lagos Family”, in The Fabrics of Culture: The Anthropology of Clothing and Adornment, ed. Justine M. Cordwell and Ronald A. Schwarz (New York: Mouton Publishers, 1979), 331. Barber, Women’s Work, 134–35. See also Duncan Clarke, The Art of African Textiles (San Diego: Thunder Bay Press, 1997), 8–9. M.D. McLeod, The Asante (London: British Museum Publications, 1981), 143. The spelling Ashanti is used in the text because it is most popular, but there are variants such as Asanti and Ashante. Henry John Drewal, “Pageantry and Power in Yoruba Costuming”, in The Fabrics of Culture: The Anthropology of Clothing and Adornment, ed. Justine M. Cordwell and Ronald A. Schwarz (New York: Mouton Publishers, 1979), 190. Adeline Masquelier, “Mediating Threads: Clothing and the Texture of Spirit/Medium Relations in Bori”, in Clothing and Difference: Embodied Identities in Colonial and Post-Colonial Africa, ed. Hildi Hendrickson (Durham: Duke University Press, 1996), 9–11. Clarke, Art of African Textiles, 8–17, 46–48. The introduction to this study provides an excellent overview of the richness and sophistication of African textiles. Basil Davidson, The African Slave Trade (New York: Back Bay Books, 1980), 58. See Clarke, introduction to Art of African Textiles. Ruth Nielsen, “The History and Development of Wax-Printed Textiles Intended for West Africa and Zaire”, in The Fabrics of Culture: The Anthropology of Clothing and Adornment, ed. Justine M. Cordwell and Ronald A. Schwarz (New York: Mouton Publishers, 1979), 468–69. See A.G. Hopkins, An Economic History of West Africa (London: Pearson Professional Education, 1973) for some details on manufacturing industries such as textiles. Frederick E. Forbes, Dahomey and the Dahomeans (1851; reprint, London: Frank Cass, 1966), vol. 1, 64–65. John Adams, Remarks on the Country extending from the Cape Palmas to the River Congo: Including observations on the manners and customs of the inhabitants (London: Whittaker, 1823), 113. See Clarke, introduction to Art of African Textiles; Bradley Foster, New Raiments of Self, 39–68.
Notes to pages 17–22
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26.
27. 28.
29. 30.
31. 32. 33.
34.
35. 36.
37. 38. 39.
40.
41. 42.
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See McLeod, The Asante, 153. For a further discussion on dyes, see Maude Wahlman and Enyinna Chuta, “Sierra Leone Resist-Dyed Textiles”, in The Fabrics of Culture: The Anthropology of Clothing and Adornment, ed. Justine M. Cordwell and Ronald A. Schwarz (New York: Mouton Publishers, 1979), 458. John Beecham, Asantee and the Gold Coast (1841; reprint, New York: Johnson Reprint Corporation, 1970), 147. Brad Weiss, “Dressing at Death: Clothing, Time, and Memory in Buhaya, Tanzania”, in Clothing and Difference: Embodied Identities in Colonial and Post-Colonial Africa, ed. Hildi Hendrickson (Durham: Duke University Press, 1996), 139–41. Adams, Remarks on the Country, 115. Ila Pokornowski, “Beads and Personal Adornment”, in The Fabrics of Culture: The Anthropology of Clothing and Adornment, ed. Justine M. Cordwell and Ronald A. Schwarz (New York: Mouton Publishers, 1979), 104. McLeod, The Asante, 145. Pokornowski, “Beads and Personal Adornment”, 111. Ibid., 106–13; Henry John Drewal and John Mason, Beads, Body and Soul, Art and Light in the Yoruba Universe (Los Angeles: UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural History, 1997), 32–52, 91–187. Mary Jo Arnoldi and Christine Mullen Kreamer, eds., Crowning Achievements: African Arts of Dressing the Head (Los Angeles: University of California Fowler Museum of Cultural History, 1995), 9–13. For a discussion of contemporary hairstyles in West Africa and the influence of African hairstyles on contemporary popular culture in the United States, see Mary Tannen, “The Braided Bunch: Identity Politics or Fashion”, New York Times Magazine, 20 May 2001, 76–77. Angela Fisher, Africa Adorned (London: Collins Harvill, 1987), 148–49. Marilyn Hammersley Houlberg, “Social Hair: Tradition and Change in Yoruba Hairstyles in Southwestern Nigeria”, in The Fabrics of Culture: The Anthropology of Clothing and Adornment, ed. Justine M. Cordwell and Ronald A. Schwarz (New York: Mouton Publishers, 1979), 349–73. Fisher, Africa Adorned, 148–49. Ibid. R. Galletti, K.D.S. Baldwin and I.O. Dina, “Clothing of Nigerian Cocoa Farmers’ Families”, in Dress, Adornment, and the Social Order, ed. Mary Ellen Roach-Higgins and Joanne Bubolz Eicher (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1965), 92. See Foster, New Raiments of Self, 21–29. Although Foster examines AfricanAmerican dress the author also provides a brief discussion of Islamic and Arabic influences on black Africans’ dress. Thompson, Flash of the Spirit, 3. Robin Law and Paul E. Lovejoy, eds., The Biography of Mahommah Gardo Baquaqua: His Passage from Slavery to Freedom in Africa and America (Princeton: Markus Wiener, 2001), 153.
Notes to pages 22–26
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43. 44. 45. 46.
47. 48. 49. 50.
51. 52. 53. 54.
55. 56.
57. 58. 59.
60. 61. 62.
206
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Quoted in Edward Brathwaite, “Jamaican Slave Society: A Review”, Race 9, no. 3 (1968). Ibid. Curtin, Two Jamaicas, 24. J. Stewart, A View of the Past and Present State of the Island of Jamaica: With Remarks on the Moral and Physical Condition of the Slaves, and on the Abolition of Slavery in the Colonies (Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, 1823), 250. Ibid. W.J. Gardner, A History of Jamaica: From Its Discovery by Christopher Columbus to the Year 1872 (London: E. Stock, 1873), 175. Stewart, The Past and Present State, 250. Bryan Edwards, The History, Civil and Commercial of the British Colonies in the West Indies (London: J. Stockdale, 1794), 2: 5. The freeholders elected the vestrymen annually; the funds necessary for all purposes were raised by taxes on the property of the inhabitants, and by colonial duties on the articles imported. Laws of Jamaica, Act 37 (1696), 57. Bernard Martin Senior, Jamaica as It Was, as It Is and as It May Be, by a Retired Military Officer (London: T. Hurst, 1835), 162. The Laws of Jamaica, “An Act for the Government of Slaves”, CAP 25 (19 February 1831), 45. Edward Long, The History of Jamaica or General Survey of the Ancient and Modern State of the Island: With Reflections on its Situation, Settlements, Inhabitants, Climate, Products, Commerce Laws and Government (London: T. Lowndes, 1774), 2: 493. Long lists several types of fabrics that were distributed – for instance, perpetuana, a durable wool fabric manufactured in England beginning in the sixteenth century; and Oznaburgh (also spelled Oznaburg, Oznaberg, or osnaburg), a coarse linen originally made in Osnabruck, Germany. See the glossary in this text for further information on these textiles. Invoices, Accounts, Sales of Sugar etc. Jamaica Windsor Lodge and Paisley Estates (1833–37), Manuscript collection, 32, NLJ. Mrs A.C. Carmichael, Domestic Manners and Social Conditions of the White, Coloured, and Negro Population of The West Indies (London: Whittaker, Treacher and Co., 1833), 1: 155. Higman, Slave Population and Economy, 14–15. MS 2952, Dickenson Papers, University of the West Indies Library, Kingston, Jamaica. Neville Hall, Slave Society in the Danish West Indies: St Thomas, St John, and St Croix, ed. B.W. Higman (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992), 116, 149. Journal of the Assembly of Jamaica 4 (1745–46): 45. Hall, Slave Society, 149. Beckles, “Crop Over Fetes and Festivals”, 256.
Notes to pages 27–31
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63.
64. 65. 66. 67.
68. 69. 70. 71. 72.
73.
74. 75.
76. 77. 78. 79. 80. 81. 82.
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Elizabeth B. Hurlock, “Sumptuary Law”, in Dress, Adornment, and the Social Order, ed. Mary Ellen Roach-Higgins and Joanne Bubolz Eicher (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1965), 296–97. Ibid., 296. J.W. Phillips and H.K. Staley, “Sumptuary Legislation in Four Centuries”, Journal of Home Economics 53 (October 1961): 673–77. Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll, 559. See Lafcadio Hearn, Two Years in the French West Indies (London: Harper and Brothers, 1900), 39; also Costumes at NLJ. The women of the French West Indies were greatly admired for their beautiful and elaborate dresses, diverse styles and brilliant colours. Hearn argues that the styles were so similar to some in the east that some might be tempted to believe they were introduced into the colony by a Mohammedan [Muslim] slave. Cynric Williams, A Tour through the Island of Jamaica from the Western to the Eastern End in the Year 1823 (London: Hunt and Clark, 1826), 174–75. Ibid., 176. Quoted in McDonald, The Economy and Material Culture of Slaves, 120. Mary Ann Hutchins, The Youthful Female Missionary: A Memoir of Mary Ann Hutchins (London: Wightman and H. Adams, 1840), 126. Matthew Gregory Lewis, Journal of a West India Proprietor, Kept during a Residence in the Island of Jamaica (London: John Murray, 1834), 199. The term “husband” in this context is prescribed by Lewis. J. Finkelstein, The Fashioned Self (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1991), iii. Stripping someone of clothing was meant to humble, humiliate and control an individual. This practice was common during the Holocaust. Jewish minorities were stripped of their clothing and possessions when entering concentration camps. Convicts are stripped of their civilian clothes and made to wear prison clothes that identify them as prisoners. Carmichael, Domestic Manners, 1: 148. Many Caribbean texts deal with absenteeism and its impact on the socioeconomic situation of the colonies. See, for example, Higman, Slave Populations of the British Caribbean, 112–13, or Bush, Slave Women in Caribbean Society, 24, 53, 58, 69, 112. For some understanding of slaves’ role in clothing production in the US South, see Foster, New Raiments of Self, ch. 2. Carmichael, Domestic Manners, 1: 150. Ibid., 153. Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll, 551. William Beckford, A Descriptive Account of the Island of Jamaica (London: T.J. Egerton, 1790), 2: 386. Stewart, The Past and Present State, 269; Douglas Hall, In Miserable Slavery: Thomas Thistlewood in Jamaica, 1750–86 (London: Macmillan, 1989), 285. Stewart, The Past and Present State, 269. Higman, Slave Populations of the British Caribbean, 224–25, 346–47, 376.
Notes to pages 32–37
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83.
84.
85. 86. 87.
88. 89.
90. 91.
92. 93.
94. 95. 96. 97.
98. 99. 100. 101.
208
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Edwards, The History, Civil and Commercial, 2: 602–16. So many shoes were imported that they were calculated according to weight in pounds instead of numbers of pairs. See Harmony Hall Estate Account Book, MS 1652, vol. 1, List of Slaves for 6 June 1799, NLJ. See also Invoices, Accounts, Sales of Sugar etc., Jamaica Windsor Lodge and Paisley Estates, MS32 (Montego Bay, 1833–37), NLJ. Williams, A Tour through the Island, 3. Theodore Foulks, Eighteen Months in Jamaica with Recollections of the Late Rebellion (London: Whittaker, Treacher and Arnott, 1833), 107. On the plantations, slaves were divided into three gangs or groups in the fields. The first gang consisted of the stronger men and women; their duty was to clear, dig and plant cane. In crop time they also cut and transplanted the cane and attended in the millhouse. The second gang comprised bigger boys and girls, pregnant women and others who could not do heavy work. They weeded the cane and did lighter activities. The third gang of slaves consisted of young children. They weeded the gardens, collected food for the animals and did trivial duties. Male drivers supervised the first two gangs with a whip. The third was under the care of an old slave woman who used a long switch. See Gardner, A History of Jamaica, 176–77. Carmichael, Domestic Manners, 1: 155. Henry T. De la Beche, Notes on the Present Condition of the Negroes in Jamaica (London: T. Cadell, 1825), ii. De la Beche does not specify which fabric was distributed in five long ells. See also Orlando Patterson, The Sociology of Slavery: An Analysis of the Origins, Development and Structure of Negro Slave Society in Jamaica (London: MacGibbon and Kee, 1967), 223. Brathwaite, Development of Creole Society, 232. McDonald, Economy and Material Culture of Slaves, 113–19. See also Harmony Hall Estate Account Book, MS 1652, vol. 1, NLJ. Worthy Park Plantation Books, 4/23, No. 1 (1783–87), 4/23, No. 2 (1787–91), JA. Higman, Slave Populations of the British Caribbean, 223. Jerome S. Handler and Frederick W. Lange, Plantation Slavery in Barbados: An Archaeological and Historical Investigation (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1978), 78. Higman, Slave Populations of the British Caribbean, 224. Quoted in Bush, Slave Women in Caribbean Society, 61. Hall, In Miserable Slavery, 231. Douglas V. Armstrong, The Old Village and the Great House: An Archaeological and Historical Examination of Drax Hall Plantation, St Ann’s Bay, Jamaica (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1990), 178. Lewis, Journal of a West India Proprietor, 125. Ibid., 343. McDonald, Economy and Material Culture of Slaves, 121. Hilary Beckles, “Sex and Gender in the Historiography of Caribbean Slavery”, in Engendering History: Caribbean Women in Historical Perspective,
Notes to pages 37–43
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102. 103. 104.
105. 106. 107. 108. 109. 110. 111. 112. 113. 114.
115.
116.
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ed. Verene Shepherd, Bridget Brereton and Barbara Bailey (Kingston, Jamaica: Ian Randle Publishers, 1995), 137. Bush, Slave Women in Caribbean Society, 17. Gray White, Ar’n’t I a Woman, 27–46. J.B. Moreton, West India Customs and Manners, 2d ed. (London: J. Parson, 1793), 153. See also Cooper, Noises in the Blood, 19–22. Cooper analyses the song and places it within the contexts of orality, gender and the vulgar body of Jamaican popular culture. She also explores how the lexicon, grammar and syntax of the song may have changed over time. Here is a brief translation of the extracted verses. “Although I was born and raised a slave, my skin is black not yellow, I often sold my virginity to many handsome men. My master keeps me as his mistress, and he gives me clothes with bustles, and fine muslin coats to gain my sweet embraces. The master came one night and he gave me a gown with bustles. I got pregnant and bore him a child who was almost as fair skinned as the master’s wife (my mistress). My mistress came with a long whip and asked if the child is for the master. My master denied it, called her a ‘lying bitch’ and told the mistress to beat me. I don’t know if I should not condescend, and I don’t know what happens if I do. I have no friend to turn to, so I was forced to do it. I do not know any laws, I do not know any sin. I am just whatever they want me to be. This is the way they have made me. So God or the devil can take me!” Gray White, Ar’n’t I a Woman, 34. Ibid., 38. Lewis, Journal of a West India Proprietor, 130–31. Gray White, Ar’n’t I a Woman, 28. Michel Foucault, introduction to History of Sexuality, trans. Robert Hurley (London: Allen Lane, 1978), vol. 1. Long, The History of Jamaica, 2: 280. Senior, Jamaica as It Was, 29. Williams, A Tour through the Island, 22; see also Higman, Slave Populations of the British Caribbean, 257. Stewart, The Past and Present State, 268. Several early illustrations of slave women show this dress style. The pullskirt was popular throughout the British Caribbean. I was introduced to the term by Glory Robertson. See, for example, the illustration and photograph St Vincentian Villagers Merrymaking, N/11578, NLJ. Working-class women in Europe also wore shorter skirts than the upper classes, for ease of movement. We do not know exactly what Africans learned from indigenous people about clothing materials, but it is quite possible that they learned about some plants and their uses. Columbus revealed that the indigenous people made, dyed and wore some cotton fabrics, and they may well have passed some of this knowledge on to Africans. Long, The History of Jamaica, 3: 736–858.
Notes to pages 43–49
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117. 118. 119.
120. 121. 122. 123.
124. 125.
126. 127.
210
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Ibid., 731, 857. I have used only the common or local names of the Jamaican plants; Long included the botanical names as well. Higman, Slave Populations of the British Caribbean, 172. Gray White, Ar’n’t I a Woman, 115. C.C. Robertson, personal communication, 7 July 1998. See also Claire Robertson, “Africa into the Americas? Slavery and Women, the Family, and the Gender Division of Labour”, in More Than Chattel: Black Women and Slavery in the Americas, ed. David Barry Gaspar and Darlene Clark Hine (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996), 21, 23. Long, The History of Jamaica, 3: 693–95. Gardner, A History of Jamaica, 412. Foster, New Raiments of Self, 122–24. Georgina Pearman, “Plant Portraits”, Economic Botany 54, no. 1 (2000): 4–6. See also Sir Hans Sloane, A Voyage to the Island of Madera, Barbados, Nieves, St Christopher and Jamaica (London: B.M., 1707–25), 2: 22–23. Sloane did not give the date of the governor’s presentation to the king. Sloane recognized that bark-cloth production was not unique to Jamaica but could also be found in other parts of the West Indies and in Africa. He mentioned particularly a tree called the enzanda, a sort of mangrove tree in the Congo, whose bark, when beaten, cleaned and stretched lengthwise, was used for clothing like the Jamaican lace-bark. Long, The History of Jamaica, 3: 858. See also Sloane, A Voyage to the Island of Madera, 2: 22–23, Appendix. Mrs Caroline Ena Lawrence, Mr Joseph White, Mr Curry, Buywood, Deputy Colonel Robinson and John Wright, interviews with author, Accompong Town, Jamaica, 11 November 2002. Long, The History of Jamaica, 3: 858. See also Pearman, “Plant Portraits”, 4–6. See also Clarke, Art of African Textiles, 52–53, for more on raffia cloth. See Charles Dennis Adams, Flowering Plants of Jamaica (Kingston, Jamaica: University of the West Indies, 1972), 484. The tree grows only in Cuba, Jamaica and Hispaniola, in limestone areas. It is not certain to what extent slaves in Cuba and Hispaniola used lace-bark to make clothing. Nor do we know if some informal inter-island trade connections existed in relation to this industry – this possibility requires further research. In Jamaica the tree is very rare, having been overused for its lace and bark. Lace-bark clothing production was a thriving industry in Jamaica until 1938, and ropes were made from the tree until 1941. Other factors that led to its demise are urban sprawl, deforestation and its use as vine sticks for yam hills. The Bark of Trees (Sale Prevention) Act of 1929 offered little protection to the lace-bark. Only a few young trees have been found recently, in Portland and in the Cockpit Country. For more details on lace-bark in Jamaica, see Patrick Browne, The Civil and Natural History of America in Three Parts (London: T. Osborne and J. Shipton, 1756), 371. See also Pearman, “Plant Portraits”, and Sloane, A Voyage to the Island of Madera, 2: 22–23. The common names for many of these plants and trees were not consistent across
Notes to pages 48–51
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128. 129.
130.
131. 132. 133. 134. 135.
136.
137.
138.
139.
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the island, varying from region to region. Most likely the same is true for Cuba and Hispaniola. Long, The History of Jamaica, 3: 747–48; Sloane, A Voyage to the Island of Madera, 2: 22–23. Long, The History of Jamaica, 3: 747–48. There is a collection of lace-bark products on display in the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, in Britain. The last lace-bark item donated to the gardens, in 1948, was a whip from the nineteenth century. See Georgina Pearman, “Plant Portraits”, 4–6. Long, The History of Jamaica, 3: 747–48. Lace-bark production has become a lost art form; many people today do not remember the process or know very little about it. A few men in the Cockpit Country still make ropes with the bark, but doilies and strainers are no longer made. The availability of and easy access to imported lace, ropes and strainers has led to a loss of interest in this craft. Furthermore, the tree is very scarce. Information about the use of the tree and the location of a few young plants was obtained from several people including Dr G.R. Proctor and Mrs Tracy Commock of the Institute of Jamaica, the Accompong Town Maroons, and Mr D’Owen Grant and Mr Lawrence Nelson of the Jamaica Forestry Department head office. See also the exhibits of lace-bark and its products in the Institute of Jamaica Natural History Museum, in Kingston, Jamaica. Mrs Caroline Ena Lawrence, interview. McLeod, The Asante, 148–49. Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll, 553. Ibid., 552–55. Long, The History of Jamaica, 3: 857. Long listed the plants used to make soap. For some, he discussed the process of making vegetable soap, but he said little about the soapberry bush and soapwood. These plants can be found in several areas of Jamaica, including the Cockpit Country. Long also provided the botanical names for these plants. For more details on the plants, see Adams, Flowering Plants of Jamaica, 440, 546, 560. Information based on interviews and field research by the author, Accompong Town, 11–13 November 2002. Several of these plants grow in the area, and the Maroons assisted me in locating them. According to Accompong Town Maroon resident Buywood, some farmers still wash with soapwood in nearby streams after a long day working in their grounds. For the white perspective, see The Land We Live In: Jamaica in 1890, ed. Brian Moore and Michelle A. Johnson (1889–1890; reprint, Kingston, Jamaica: Social History, University of the West Indies, 2000), 27, 76. Information based on numerous interviews with elderly people, retired domestics and washerwomen, and on personal observations while travelling in rural Jamaica. Slave women washing clothes is a popular theme in several early prints and illustrations (for example, West Indian Washer Women, N/11270, NLJ). These illustrations portray the women beating the clothes with stones and sticks or a paddle. Williams, A Tour through the Island, 83.
Notes to pages 51–56
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140.
141. 142. 143. 144. 145. 146. 147. 148.
149.
150.
151. 152. 153. 154. 155. 156. 157. 158.
212
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Although we know very little about Muslim slaves, we have evidence that some were communicating with fellow Muslims in Africa. See R.R. Madden, A Twelve Months Residence in the West Indies during the Transition from Slavery to Apprenticeship (1835; reprint, Westport, Conn.: Negro University Press, 1970), 2: 199–201; Philip D. Curtin, Africa Remembered: Narratives by West Africans from the Era of the Slave Trade (Prospect Heights, Ill.: Waveland Press, 1997), 163–67. The correspondence of these Muslim slaves took place over periods of forty and sixty years, respectively. See also the works of Sultana Afroz of the Department of History, University of the West Indies, Mona, for more information on Islam in Jamaica. For a discussion of how dress communicates positions within social structures, see Roach-Higgins, Eicher and Johnson, Dress and Identity, 13. Williams, A Tour through the Island, 83. Lewis, Journal of a West India Proprietor, 74. Beckford, A Descriptive Account, 2: 386. Long, The History of Jamaica, 2: 413. Ibid., 493. Armstrong, The Old Village and the Great House, 176–81. Beckwith, Black Roadways, 144. In spring 1998 the author visited a Maroon community in Suriname. Many children were observed wearing waist beads as a form of protection against evil spirits. In Jamaica the custom of wearing protective beads has survived in some Afro-Jamaican religions, such as obeah. However, guard beads are not popular. In contemporary Jamaica beads are worn as personal adornment and locally produced for the tourist trade. Edouard Glissant, “Creolization in the Making of the Americas”, in Race, Discourse, and the Origin of the Americas: A New World View, ed. Vera Lawrence Hyatt and Rex Nettleford (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1995), 269. Quoted in Maria Nugent, Lady Nugent’s Journal: Jamaica One Hundred and Thirty-Eight Years Ago, 3d ed., ed. Frank Cundall (London: West India Committee, 1939) (see the introduction by Frank Cundall, xciii), but taken from Philo Scotus, Reminiscences of a Scottish Gentleman, Commencing in 1787 (London, 1861). The original source was brought to my attention by Glory Robertson. See Carmichael, Domestic Manners, 1: 46. See also Costumes, NLJ. Long, The History of Jamaica, 3: 520. Ibid., 521. Ibid., 522. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid., 523. Higman, in Slave Population and Economy, 129, discusses the environmental factors that contributed to the high mortality rate among Europeans.
Notes to pages 57–64
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159.
160. 161. 162. 163. 164.
165.
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Helen Callaway, “Dressing for Dinner in the Bush”, in Dress and Identity, ed. Mary Ellen Roach-Higgins, Joanne Eicher and Kim K.P. Johnson (New York: Fairchild, 1995), 195–207. Madden, A Twelve Months Residence in the West Indies, 2: 168. Lewis, Journal of a West India Proprietor, 94. Long, The History of Jamaica, 2: 402. Williams, A Tour through the Island, 4. Rev. R. Bickell, The West Indies as They Are; or A Real Picture of Slavery: But More Particularly as It Exists in the Island of Jamaica (London: J. Hatchard and Son, 1825), 54–58. Ibid., 54–58.
Chapter 2 1.
2. 3. 4. 5.
6. 7.
8.
9. 10.
11. 12. 13. 14. 15.
Rosalyn Terborg-Penn, “Black Women in Resistance: A Cross-Cultural Perspective”, in In Resistance: Studies in African, Caribbean and AfroAmerican History, ed. Gary Y. Okihiro (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1986), 188–209. Ibid., 189. Ibid., 189–90. Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, “Strategies and Forms of Resistance”, 147–51. Edna G. Bay, “Servitude and Worldly Success of the Palace of Dahomey” (PhD diss., Boston University, 1977). See also Richard Burton, A Mission of Gelele, King of Dahomey, memorial ed., 2 vols., ed. Isabel Burton (London, 1892), 3–4. Henry Louis Gates, Jr., ed., The Classic Slave Narratives (New York: Mentor, 1987), 17–19. Taken from the twentieth-anniversary special of Budweiser’s publication of Great Kings and Queens of Africa, 1995. See also Terborg-Penn, “Black Women in Resistance”, 188–209. Claire C. Robertson and Martin A. Klein, “Women’s Importance in African Slave Systems”, in Women and Slavery in Africa, ed. Claire C. Robertson and Martin A. Klein (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1983), 11–12. Terborg-Penn, “Black Women in Resistance”, 191. Henry John Drewal and Margaret Thompson Drewal, Gelede: Art and Female Power among the Yoruba (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1983), 8. Ibid. Terborg-Penn, “Black Women in Resistance”, 191. Stewart, The Past and Present State, 249. Ibid., 251. Note that “Eboes” were the same as Igbo, and the Papaw were the same as the Popo. Lewis, Journal of a West India Proprietor, 348.
Notes to pages 65–70
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16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25.
26. 27. 28.
29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38.
39.
40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46.
214
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Ibid. Gardner, A History of Jamaica, 175–76. Ibid., 51–52. Gardner, A History of Jamaica, 175. Madden, A Twelve Months Residence in the West Indies, 2: 169. See Bush, Slave Women in Caribbean Society, 69; Higman, Slave Population and Economy, 176–83, 212–32. Mathurin Mair, introduction to The Rebel Woman; Patterson, The Sociology of Slavery, 260. Lewis, Journal of a West India Proprietor, 110. See also Hall, In Miserable Slavery, 105. Edwards, The History, Civil and Commercial, 2: 89. Bush, Slave Women in Caribbean Society, 147–48. See also Toni Morrison, Beloved (New York: Penguin, 1987), a novel about a woman who killed her child and the resultant trauma. Lewis, Journal of a West India Proprietor, 140. Shepherd, “Petticoat Rebellion”, 24. Lewis, Journal of a West India Proprietor, 183. Dunbar was a planter killed by a few of his slaves prior to this. The remark “let us Dunbar him” suggests the slave woman’s desire to kill the overseer in the same manner. Ibid., 179. Ibid., 204. Carmichael, Domestic Manners, 2: 11. Shepherd, “Petticoat Rebellion”, 20–23. Higman, Slave Population and Economy, 180–83. Gardner, A History of Jamaica, 178. Shepherd, “Petticoat Rebellion”, 23. Ibid. See also Williams, A Tour through the Island, 339. Shepherd, “Petticoat Rebellion”, 24. See also Hall, In Miserable Slavery, 145. Barbara Bush, “Hard Labor: Women, Childbirth, and Resistance in British Caribbean Slave Society”, in More than Chattel: Black Women and Slavery in the Americas, ed. David Barry Gaspar and Darlene Clark Hine (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996), 207. Verene Shepherd, “Petticoat Rebellion? Women in Emancipation in Colonial Jamaica”, Churches Emancipation Lecture 2001, 29 July 2001, 12. (All other references to “Petticoat Rebellion” are to the published article.) Higman, Slave Population and Economy, 227–32. Shepherd, “Petticoat Rebellion”, 26–28. Bush, Slave Women in Caribbean Society, 69–70. Also see Terborg-Penn, “Black Women in Resistance”, 199–200. Beckles, “Sex and Gender”, 134. Ibid., 137. Scott, Weapons of the Weak, 32–34. Ibid.
Notes to pages 70–77
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47.
48. 49.
50. 51. 52. 53. 54.
55. 56. 57. 58. 59.
60. 61. 62.
63. 64. 65. 66. 67.
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Walter Rodney, “Upper Guinea and the Significance of the Origins of Africans Enslaved in the New World”, Journal of Negro History 54 (4 October 1969): 327. Hendrickson, Clothing and Difference, 6–9. Mary Louise Roberts, “Samson and Delilah Revisited: The Politics of Women’s Fashion in 1920s France”, American Historical Review 98, no. 3 (June 1993), 664. Michael Zakim, “Sartorial Ideologies: From Homespun to Ready-Made”, American Historical Review 106 (December 2001): 1553–86. Roberts, “Samson and Delilah Revisited”, 658–62. Zakim, “Sartorial Ideologies”, 1553. Joan Newlon Radner, ed., Feminist Messages: Coding in Women’s Folk Culture (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1993), vi. Justine M. Cordwell and Ronald A. Schwarz, eds., The Fabrics of Culture: The Anthropology of Clothing and Adornment (New York: Mouton Publishers, 1979), 189. Hall, In Miserable Slavery, 101. Senior, Jamaica as It Was, 271. Royal Gazette, 31 July 1813, 748. Available at NLJ. Smithfield Estate business (accounts/records), MS 806, Manchester, 4 October 1838, NLJ. In some areas of Jamaica, even today, it is believed that one should be careful not to leave one’s clothes outside overnight lest they be stolen and used by one’s enemies to harm one. The notion of using someone’s clothing to cast spells is common to several African religions, including voodoo. This information was received from a Jamaican obeah believer who wishes to remain anonymous, and confirmed in a series of interviews with voodoo believers and practitioners, conducted in Dahomey/Benin, West Africa, during the summer of 2001. Mary Rockford, “The Slave Rebellion of 1831”, Jamaica Journal 3, no. 2 (June 1969): 30. Roach-Higgins, Eicher and Johnson, Dress and Identity, 11–13. See Masquelier, “Mediating Threads”, 66–93, and Hildi Hendrickson, “Bodies and Flags: The Representation of Herero Identity in Colonial Namibia”, in Clothing and Difference: Embodied Identities in Colonial and Post-Colonial Africa, ed. Hildi Hendrickson (Durham: Duke University Press, 1996), 213–21, for a discussion on the potency of clothing within the African context. Joan E. Cashin, “Black Families in the Old Northwest”, Journal of the Early Republic 15 (Fall 1995): 456. Ibid. Senior, Jamaica as It Was, 182. Ibid. Ibid.
Notes to pages 77–81
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68. 69.
70. 71. 72. 73. 74. 75. 76. 77. 78. 79. 80. 81.
82. 83. 84.
85. 86. 87. 88. 89. 90. 91. 92. 93. 94. 95. 96. 97.
216
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Diana Crane, Fashion and Its Social Agendas: Class, Gender, and Identity in Clothing (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 193. See Rachel Holmes, Scanty Particulars: The Life of Dr James Barry (London: Viking, 2002), an interesting examination of the life of Dr Barry, who was celebrated for performing one of the first successful Caesarean sections known in Western medicine. John Hope Franklin and Loren Schweninger, Runaway Slaves: Rebels on the Plantation (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 219–20. Mathurin Mair, Rebel Woman, 23–27. See also Jamaica Mercury (November–December 1779), NLJ. Mathurin Mair, Rebel Woman, 25. Ibid. Beckles, Natural Rebels, 168. Franklin and Schweninger, Runaway Slaves, 223. Ibid., 224. W.E.B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk, ed. Henry Louis Gates, Jr, and Terri Hume Oliver (New York: W.W. Norton, 1999), 128. Mathurin Mair, Rebel Woman, 20–21. Long, The History of Jamaica, 2: 445. Mathurin Mair, Rebel Woman, 21. Transportation for life was the punishment given to the most intransigent troublemakers. They were transported to Nova Scotia or even Australia, which became a convict settlement. See Bush, Slave Women in Caribbean Society, 72n. Mathurin Mair, Rebel Woman, 21. Burton, Afro-Creole, 230–32. Joan Newlon Radner and Susan S. Lanser, “Strategies of Coding in Women’s Cultures”, in Feminist Messages: Coding in Women’s Folk Culture, ed. Joan Newlon Radner (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1993), 3. Invoices, Accounts, Sales of Sugar etc., Jamaica Windsor Lodge and Paisley Estates, MS 32 (Montego Bay, 1833–37), NLJ. Lewis, Journal of a West India Proprietor, 35–36. Carmichael, Domestic Manners, 1: 146–47. Beckford, A Descriptive Account, 2: 385–86. Edwards, The History, Civil and Commercial, 2: 152. Brathwaite, Development of Creole Society, 232–34. Ibid., 234. bell hooks, Yearning: Race, Gender and Cultural Politics (Boston: South End Press, 1990), 150. Long, The History of Jamaica, 3: 413. Contemporary wisdom supports the idea of covering one’s head in the hot sun to prevent sunstroke. Ibid. Ibid. Foster, New Raiments of Self, 282–84. Bradley Griebel, “The African American Woman’s Headwrap”, 445.
Notes to pages 82–88
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98. 99. 100.
101.
102. 103.
104. 105. 106. 107.
108. 109.
110.
111. 112. 113.
114.
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Ibid., 446. Drewal and Drewal, Gelede, 120. Antonia McDonald-Smythe, from St Lucia, and other women of her family, conversations with author, autumn 1996. See Juliette Harris and Pamela Johnson, Tenderheaded: A Comb-Bending Collection of Hair Stories (New York: Pocket Books, 2001), 141–42. See Derek Walcott, “When Love Comes Along: The Ends of the Head-Tie Give a Cue to Your Chances”, with sketches by Derek Aleong, Trinidad Guardian, 8 December 1961. Walcott was lamenting the demise of this fascinating cultural expression. Ibid. In a series of discussions and interviews conducted with various Surinamese women, I learned about some of their African headwraps. Although these headwraps are no longer popular with young Surinamese women, they are still worn by older women, and occasionally they may be seen in the Paramaribo market. In Suriname, a woman always wears a dress (koto) that matches her headwrap, and the colours are based on her age. Each year there is also a “Miss Alida” contest, where women compete against each other for the best koto and angisa. For further details, see Ilse HenarHewitt, Surinaamse Koto’s en Angisa’s (Paramaribo: Offsetdrukkerij Westfort, 1997). The text includes English translation. Slaves Merrymaking in St Vincent, c.1775–79, NLJ. Long, The History of Jamaica, 3: 413. Ibid. Moore, “Religion of Jamaican Negroes”. Moore analysed dress and headwraps in some Afro-Jamaican religions in Jamaica. He included descriptive accounts as well as revealing colour symbolism in some of the religions. See also Foster, New Raiments of Self, 249. Bradley Griebel, “The African American Woman’s Headwrap”, 446. Mrs Muriel Whynn, interview by author, Kingston, Jamaica, 16 August 1997. Mrs Whynn, a direct descendant of Nanny of the Moore Town Maroons, claims to be the only person who knows the well-kept secret of how Nanny tied her headwrap. Gwendolyn S. O’Neal, “African-American Aesthetic of Dress: Symmetry through Diversity”, in Aesthetics of Textiles and Clothing: Advancing Multidisciplinary Perspectives, ed. M.R. Delong and A.M. Fiore, ITAA Special Publication, no. 7 (Monument, Colo.: International Textile and Apparel Association, 1994), 186. Senior, Jamaica as It Was, 186. Roach-Higgins, Eicher and Johnson, Dress and Identity, 14. Justine M. Cordwell, “The Very Human Arts of Transformation”, in The Fabrics of Culture: The Anthropology of Clothing and Adornment, ed. Justine M. Cordwell and Ronald A. Schwarz (New York: Mouton Publishers, 1979), 64. Pokornowski, “Beads and Personal Adornment”, 107.
Notes to pages 88–96
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115. 116. 117.
118. 119. 120. 121. 122. 123.
124. 125. 126. 127. 128.
129. 130. 131. 132. 133. 134. 135. 136. 137. 138. 139. 140. 141. 142. 143. 144.
218
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McLeod, The Asante, 173. Beckwith, Black Roadways, 92–108, for details about duppies and the practices of obeah and other slave religions in Jamaica. Mrs Muriel Whynn, interview by author, Kingston, Jamaica, 14 August 1997. Caroon bush is an indigenous plant that grows in the mountains of eastern Jamaica. Ibid. Beckles, “Crop Over Fetes and Festivals”, 248–52. Burton, Afro-Creole, 169. Burton also discusses the concept of ritualized conflict in these play elements. Lewis, Journal of a West India Proprietor, 24. Ibid., 58. Judith Bettelheim, “The Afro-Jamaican Jonkonnu Festival: Playing the Forces and Operating the Cloth” (PhD diss., Yale University, 1979), 2–10. See also Burton, Afro-Creole, 77, for a discussion of how Africans and Europeans danced to African music. Burton, Afro-Creole, 77. Bettelheim, “The Afro-Jamaican Jonkonnu Festival”, 2–10. Michael Scott, Tom Cringle’s Log (New York: William Blackwood, 1895), 346–47. Ibid., 347. Long, The History of Jamaica, 2: 425. For more on Jonkonnu in Jamaica see also Sylvia Wynter, “Jonkonnu in Jamaica: Towards the Interpretation of Folk Dance as Cultural Process”, Jamaica Journal 4, no. 2 (June 1970): 34–48. Richard Allsopp, ed., Dictionary of Caribbean English Usage (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996). Drewal and Drewal, Gelede, 206–14. Long, The History of Jamaica, 2: 424–25. Bettelheim, “The Afro-Jamaican Jonkonnu Festival”, 80. Allsopp, Dictionary of Caribbean English Usage. Lewis, Journal of a West India Proprietor, 24–26. Radner and Lanser, “Strategies of Coding”, 2. Lewis, Journal of a West India Proprietor, 52–54. Williams, A Tour through the Island, 27. Richardson Wright, Revels in Jamaica, 1682–1838 (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1937), 246. Lewis, Journal of a West India Proprietor, 54. Williams, A Tour through the Island, 63. I.M. Belisario, Sketches of Character in Illustration of the Habits of the Negro Population of Jamaica (Kingston, Jamaica, 1837), NLJ. Scott, Tom Cringle’s Log, 363. Adams, Remarks on the Country, 39–40. Simon Ottenberg, “Analysis of an African Masked Parade”, in The Fabrics of Culture: The Anthropology of Clothing and Adornment, ed. Justine M. Cordwell and Ronald A. Schwarz (New York: Mouton Publishers, 1979), 180.
Notes to pages 96–102
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145.
146. 147. 148. 149. 150.
151. 152. 153.
154. 155. 156. 157. 158. 159. 160. 161. 162. 163. 164. 165. 166. 167.
168. 169. 170.
171. 172. 173.
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See also Fashioning the Future: Our Future from Our Past (exhibition catalogue) (Columbus: Snowden Gallery, College of Human Ecology, Ohio State University, 1997), 12–25. Lewis, Journal of a West India Proprietor, 53. Ibid. Belisario, Sketches of Character. Williams, A Tour through the Island, 62. Judith Bettelheim, ed., Cuban Festivals: A Century of Afro-Cuban Culture (Kingston, Jamaica: Ian Randle Publishers, 2001), 47. See also Lewis, Journal of a West India Proprietor, 50–51. Bettelheim, “The Afro-Jamaican Jonkonnu Festival”, 25–30. Lewis, Journal of a West India Proprietor, 25. Pelvic gyrations were provocative movements of the hips, but the meaning was not necessarily sexual. Such movements were also popular in some West African societies as a way of teasing, ridiculing or mocking, and for fun. Scott, Tom Cringle’s Log, 347. Williams, A Tour through the Island, 23. Burton, Afro-Creole, 230–33. Drewal and Drewal, Gelede, 101. Professor Rex Nettleford, discussion with author; Nettleford, “Fancy Dress from Jonkonnu to Dance Hall”. Burton, Afro-Creole, 240 Scott, Tom Cringle’s Log, 354. Radner and Lanser, “Strategies of Coding”, 13. Lewis, Journal of a West India Proprietor, 24. Scott, Weapons of the Weak, 34. Ibid., 36. Victor Turner, Dramas, Field and Metaphors: Symbolic Action in Human Society (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1975), 231–70. Bettelheim, “The Afro-Jamaican Jonkonnu Festival”, 2. Francisco A. Scarano, “The Jibaro Masquerade and Subaltern Politics in Puerto Rico”, American Historical Review 101, no. 5 (December 1996): 1430–31. Vincent Harding, There Is a River: The Black Struggle for Freedom in America (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1981), 12. Beckles, “Sex and Gender”, 137. Barbara Bush, “ ‘The Family Tree Is Not Cut’: Women and Cultural Resistance in Slave Family Life in the British Caribbean”, in In Resistance: Studies in African, Caribbean and Afro-American History, ed. Gary Y. Okihiro (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1986), 117. Bush, Slave Women in Caribbean Society, 51–52. Ibid., 2–32. Scott, Weapons of the Weak, 301.
Notes to pages 102–110
219
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Chapter 3 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.
8.
9.
10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20.
21. 22.
220
See Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks, trans. Charles Lam Markmann (New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1967). Ibid., 18. Susan Gubar, Race Changes: White Skin, Black Face in American Culture (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 38. Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks, 110. Ibid., 47. Gubar, Race Changes, xxi. Harry C. Bredemeier and Jackson Toby, “Ideals of Beauty”, in Dress, Adornment, and the Social Order, ed. Mary Ellen Roach-Higgins and Joanne Bubolz Eicher (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1965), 34. Kurt Lang and Gladys Lang, “Fashion: Identification and Differentiation in the Mass Society”, in Dress, Adornment, and the Social Order, ed. Mary Ellen Roach-Higgins and Joanne Bubolz Eicher (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1965), 338–39. Mary Ellen Roach-Higgins and Joanne Bubloz Eicher, “The Language of Personal Adornment”, in The Fabrics of Culture: The Anthropology of Clothing and Adornment, ed. Justine M. Cordwell and Ronald A. Schwarz (New York: Mouton Publishers, 1979), 10. Katrin Norris, Jamaica: The Search for an Identity (London: Oxford University Press, 1962), 9–13. Alleyne, Race and Ethnicity, 203; Verene Shepherd, personal communication, 13 March 2003. Alleyne, Race and Ethnicity, 205. James M. Phillippo, Jamaica: Its Past and Present State (London: J. Snow, 1843), 150. Paulette Kerr, “Jamaica Female Lodging House Keepers in the Nineteenth Century”, Jamaica Historical Review 18 (1993): 7. Lewis, Journal of a West India Proprietor, 53–54. Nugent, Lady Nugent’s Journal, 219. Phillippo, Jamaica: Its Past and Present State, 150. Norris, Jamaica: The Search for an Identity, 9–13. Alleyne, Race and Ethnicity, 206. J.H. Parry, Philip Sherlock and Anthony Mingot, A Short History of the West Indies, 4th ed. (London: Macmillan, 1987), 169–70. See also the works of Swithin Wilmot, such as (with Claus Stolberg) Plantation Economy, Land Reform and the Peasantry in a Historical Perspective: Jamaica 1838–1980 (Kingston, Jamaica: Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, 1992), for the missionaries and their role in the creation of free villages. Ibid., 9–13. Sheena Boa, “Urban Free Black and Coloured Women: Jamaica 1760–1834”, Jamaica Historical Review 18 (1993): 4.
Notes to pages 111–115
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23. 24. 25.
26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35.
36. 37. 38. 39.
40.
41. 42.
43. 44.
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Douglas Hall, Free Jamaica, 1838–1865: An Economic History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1959), 17–23. Joan French and Honor Ford-Smith, Women, Work and Organization in Jamaica, 1900–1944 (Kingston, Jamaica: Sistren Research, 1986), 31–132. Edward Bean Underhill, The West Indies: Their Social and Religious Condition (London: Jackson, Walford and Hodder, 1862), 188, 230. See also Edgar M. Bacon and Eugene M. Aaron, The New Jamaica (Kingston, Jamaica: Aston W. Gardner, 1890), 94. Hall, Free Jamaica, 232–34. For a detailed analysis of the social groups in Jamaican society, see Curtin, Two Jamaicas, 23–52, 101–21. Ibid., 24. Joseph Williams, Whisperings of the Caribbean: Reflections of a Missionary (New York: Benziger, 1925), 282. John Bigelow, Jamaica in 1850 (New York: George P. Putman, 1851), 144. H.G. De Lisser, “White Man in the Tropics”, Century Review (February 1900), NLJ, Jamaica pamphlets. Bryan, introduction to The Jamaican People, x. Ibid. Norris, Jamaica: The Search for an Identity, 9–15. Neil McKendrick, John Brewer and J.H. Plumb, The Birth of a Consumer Society (London: Europa Publications, 1982), 1–3. See also Beverly Lemire, Dress, Culture, and Commerce: The English Clothing Trade Before the Factory, 1660–1800 (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1997), 43–145, for an analysis of women’s role in the clothing trade and manufacturing business in Britain. McKendrick, Brewer and Plumb, The Birth of a Consumer Society, 95. Ibid., 94–95. Ibid., 98. Kathryn Weibel, Mirror, Mirror: Images of Women Reflected in Popular Culture (New York: Anchor, 1977), 176–77. See also Fashioning the Future: Our Future from Our Past, 12–24. Both the catalogue and the exhibition of the same name provided great insight into the dress styles of the period of this study. Karen Halttunen, Confidence Men and Painted Women: A Study of MiddleClass Culture in America, 1830–1870 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982), 75–80; see also Weibel, Mirror, Mirror, 176–77. Weibel, Mirror, Mirror, 182–83. Weibel also discusses the impact of the steel-cage hoop on women’s fashion. Ibid., 183–84. Charles Frederick Worth (1825–95), the father of haute couture, was born in England and later moved to Paris, where he created one of the most famous fashion houses. He has long been credited with designing the hoop skirt, but this continues to be a debate among scholars. Ibid., 186. Ibid., 192.
Notes to pages 115–121
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45.
46. 47. 48. 49.
50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62.
63.
64.
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Ibid., 178. Illustrations by author (Figures 3.1 through 3.4) are based on Weibel’s descriptive accounts, art books from the period, and the Ohio State University’s dress exhibition, Fashioning the Future. Ibid., 180. Ibid., 180–81. Lemire, Dress, Culture, and Commerce, 6–7. Mary Ellen Roach-Higgins, “The Social Symbolism of Women’s Dress”, in The Fabrics of Culture: The Anthropology of Clothing and Adornment, ed. Justine M. Cordwell and Ronald A. Schwarz (New York: Mouton Publishers, 1979), 418. Ibid. Helene E. Roberts, “Exquisite Slave: The Role of Clothes in the Making of the Victorian Woman”, Signs 2, no. 3 (Spring 1997): 554–69. Lemire, Dress, Culture, and Commerce, 31–37. See Heuman, Between Black and White, 15. Williams, A Tour through the Island, 3–4. Foulks, Eighteen Months in Jamaica, 109. Nugent, Lady Nugent’s Journal, 21 October 1801, 48. Quoted in Hall, In Miserable Slavery, 285. Senior, Jamaica as It Was, 8. See, for example, Falmouth Post, 8 March 1836, for advertisements of European goods and clothing for sale. Royal Gazette (Kingston), 24 September 1831 (MF) 940, NLJ. Stewart, The Past and Present State, 269. See Nugent, Lady Nugent’s Journal, 17–20, 34, 149, 174, 239. Throughout the text there are references to Lady Nugent receiving the ladies of the island for dinner and receptions. These functions were major gatherings of the island’s elite. Printed invitations informed guests of the appropriate dress for these functions. Halttunen, Confidence Men and Painted Women, 71, 88–89. Halttunen discusses the relationship between physical beauty and morality as it was viewed by the sentimentalists of the period. Johann Kaspar Lavater (1741–1801) was a Swiss theologian and mystic who wrote several books on metaphysics, but he is chiefly remembered for his work on physiognomy, the art of determining character from facial characteristics. For example, a woman’s complexion could say a lot about her feelings: “the blush of honesty and purity, the sudden glow of love, the hues of sorrow and despair” were all visible through the transparency of a “clear skin”. See Catherine Clinton, The Plantation Mistress: Woman’s World in the Old South (New York: Pantheon Books, 1982), 99–101, for a discussion of the impact of Christian teachings on white women’s dress customs in America. Although Clinton focuses on plantation mistresses in the antebellum South, missionaries and laypersons from America and Britain brought the same principles to Jamaica. Many Jamaican schoolchildren were taught to memorize the proverb “cleanliness is next to godliness”. Cleanliness became
Notes to pages 121–127
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65. 66. 67.
68.
69.
70.
71. 72.
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a major part of schools’ curriculum, to promote better health and discipline. The regimen included dress inspections – to see if the children’s clothes were clean, neat and ironed – and regular trips to wash hands and face. Improper attire or dirty clothes sometimes led to punishment or a meeting with the student’s parents. This type of emphasis on cleanliness has disappeared from many contemporary Jamaican schools. Underhill, The West Indies, 295–97. Gardner, A History of Jamaica, 204–10. See also Moore and Johnson, The Land We Live In, 39–41. Samuel J. Hurwitz and Edith F. Hurwitz, Jamaica: A Historical Portrait (New York: Praeger, 1971), 121–33. See also Curtin, Two Jamaicas, 56–57, and Underhill, The West Indies, 296n, 440n, for information on type of instruction and the teaching of sewing to girls. For the Annual Report of Saint Catherine’s Ragged Schools, CO 137/390, December 1864, West Indies Collection, UWI. See the “Rules for Teachers Employed in the Schools of the United Brethren in Jamaica, 1880” and the Upward and Onward Society magazines, reports and minutes of meetings in the Moravian Collection, National Archive of Jamaica. In an interview conducted on 2 January 2003 with Sharon Gardner, the wife of a Moravian minister, I learned that the Upward and Onward Society for young ladies still exists in Jamaica. Many of the nineteenth-century activities are still taught, including sewing and needlework in the British fashion, making pantry towels, and baking scones. Some Jamaican cooking is also taught. Mrs Gardner considers many of the activities not practical. Bryan, The Jamaican People, 165, 205. See also Clinton Black, History of Jamaica (London: Collins, 1965), 225; “Women’s Self-Help Society”, Daily Gleaner, 13 January 1886. Godey’s Lady’s Book was published in the United States and was popular from the 1830s through the 1860s. In this publication, sentimentalists criticized the lifestyles of the middle class and their obsession with fashion. They considered fashion a form of hypocrisy but a necessary evil in a society based on the promise of social mobility. Quotation from Halttunen, Confidence Men and Painted Women, 67. W.P. Livingstone, Black Jamaica: A Study in Evolution (London: William Clowes and Sons, 1899), 106. Large numbers of Middle Easterners were involved in the retail business, according to an elderly long-time employee at Bardowells, a clothing and shoe store in Kingston. Horace Coke, conversation with author, 10 March 2003. See also Carol S. Holzberg, Minorities and Power in a Black Society: The Jewish Community of Jamaica (Lanham, Md.: North South Publishing, 1987), 126–30; Swithin Wilmot, “A Stake in the Soil: Land and Creole Politics in Free Jamaica – The 1848 Elections”, in In the Shadow of the Plantation: Caribbean History and Legacy, ed. Alvin O. Thompson (Kingston, Jamaica: Ian Randle Publishers, 2002), 325–27; Glen O.I.
Notes to pages 127–130
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73.
74.
75.
76. 77.
78. 79.
80. 81. 82.
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Phillips, The Changing Role of the Merchant Class in the British West Indies, 1834–1867 (1975, microfilm, West Indies Collection, UWI). Falmouth Gazette, 23 May 1879 (West Indies Collection, UWI), includes numerous store advertisements of clothes for sale direct from New York and a few other places. Professor Patrick Bryan, personal communication, 4 March 2003. In photographs from the period of major stores in Kingston, there was a noticeable absence of female clerks. Shelves in stores were stacked high, almost to the ceiling, and clerks needed to reach these goods with ladders. Women were not yet allowed to wear trousers, and it was considered inappropriate for women to climb high ladders in public since it would risk exposing beneath their skirts. See the Falmouth Gazette, 23 May 1879. Based on author’s analysis of stores’ advertisements and addresses. Most of the major stores were on Harbour Street and sections of King Street that also had government offices. Ibid. See also the issues of the Daily Gleaner for the month of December 1899 (West Indies Collection, UWI). Ibid. Store advertisements, including prices and stocks, provide useful information about the stores and their customers. Mr Coke remembered that the rich shopped on Harbour and King Streets, while the lower classes shopped in other areas. A grip was a suitcase used for storage or to carry clothes. Mr Michael Webb, consultant to the Kingston and St Andrew Corporation Markets Company Limited, personal communication, 10 March 2003; also conversations with several market traders, June 1996. Ms Myrtle, a retired third-generation market trader whose great-grandmother sold ribbons and hair accessories in the market, remembered seeing some clothing in the markets, especially Madras cloth tie-heads. However, Jubilee and other major markets in Kingston sold primarily produce, meat and fruits. Jubilee Market was previously named Sollas Market. It was destroyed by a hurricane in 1886; the following year it was rebuilt and renamed in honour of Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee. The new structure had thirty covered stalls and was lit by ten powerful gas lamps. The market was enlarged in 1894. Brian L. Moore and Michelle A. Johnson, eds., Squalid Kingston, 1890–1920: How the Poor Lived, Moved and Had Their Being (Kingston, Jamaica: Social History Project, University of the West Indies, 2000), 172n8. Livingstone, Black Jamaica, 106. Ibid., 190. Phillippo, Jamaica: Its Past and Present State, 151. See also Robertson, “Pictorial Sources for Nineteenth-Century Women’s History”, 111–22. Phillippo gives a comprehensive analysis of women’s dress of the period, based on his own observations. His work also includes sketches of black women’s dress, as observed during his own travels throughout the island.
Notes to pages 130–135
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83.
Rex M. Nettleford, Caribbean Cultural Identity: The Case of Jamaica (Los Angeles: UCLA Latin American Center Publications, 1979), 3. 84. Betty of Port Royal, N/15656, NLJ. 85. See Halttunen, Confidence Men and Painted Women, 79, for a further description of the sentimental dress of the period. 86. Phillippo, Jamaica: Its Past and Present State, 150. 87. Ibid., 230. 88. This information is based on my childhood experiences in the country and conversations with several elderly women; my grandmother used these substances in her hair. Extracts from these plants are still used for hair care in many areas of rural Jamaica, and today some are used as ingredients in manufactured hair-care products such as aloe vera shampoo. There are variant spellings and names of “single-bible”, including singgl-baibl and simple-bible. 89. Foster, New Raiments of Self, 245–50. “Straightening” refers to using a hot comb, whereas “creaming” or “processing” means applying chemicals to straighten the hair. Over the decades, the “treatment” of hair has taken on many meanings, and hairstyles continue to change in Jamaica. Today, the natural look is favoured, and twisting, plaiting and dreadlocking are popular. Sharon Gardner, conversation with author, 2 January 2003. 90. Mark Higbee, “The Hairdresser and the Scholar”, in Tenderheaded: A Comb-Bending Collection of Hair Stories, ed. Juliette Harris and Pamela Johnson (New York: Pocket Books, 2001), 11–14. 91. See Bush, Slave Women in Caribbbean Society, 5, 9, 11–22, 52–53. Bush discusses the stereotypes and negative images long associated with black women in the Caribbean and how they have affected women’s lives. 92. Cornel West, “The New Cultural Politics of Difference”, in Out There: Marginalization and Contemporary Cultures, ed. Russell Ferguson, Martha Giver, Trinh T. Minh-ha and Cornel West (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1990), 27. 93. Norris, Jamaica: The Search for an Identity, 9–13. 94. Ibid., 10. See also Daily Gleaner (1882). The vast numbers of advertisements in local newspapers for creams and lotions such as Barry’s Pearl Cream suggest that there was a large market for these products. Another cream, Osmhedia Cream, a “high life perfumery”, promised to ensure its faithful customers eternal youth and fair complexion. 95. E. Franklin Frazier, Black Bourgeoisie (Glencoe, Ill.: Falcon’s Wing, 1957), 25. For further discussion on the quest for upward social mobility and the negation of blackness and Africanness, see hooks, Black Looks, 17. 96. West, “The New Cultural Politics”, 27. See also Sidney W. Mintz, “Tasting Food, Tasting Freedom”, in Slavery in the Americas, ed. Wolfgang Binder (Warzburg: Khonigshausen and Neumann, 1993), 271n6. 97. Verene Shepherd, personal communication, 13 March 2003. 98. Livingstone, Black Jamaica, 190.
Notes to pages 135–141
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99. Adolphe Duperly, Daguerrian Excursions in Jamaica (Kingston, Jamaica: n.p., 1844). Duperly’s collection focuses on urban scenes. He took his daguerreotype photographs in Jamaica and then had them lithographed, under his direction, by the most eminent artists in Paris. His collection was self-published in Kingston, Jamaica, in 1844. 100. West, “The New Cultural Politics”, 27. 101. Good Housekeeping, March 1888. Information found in the Moravian Collection, JA. 102. Ibid.; see also Daily Gleaner, 2–30 December 1899 (West Indies Collection, UWI) for soap advertisements. 103. Moore and Johnson, The Land We Live In, 75–76. 104. Tulloch, “Fashioned in Black and White”, 33. 105. Simeon MacLatte, “Jamaica in 1914”, Daily Gleaner, 24 September 1938. Jamaica Description collection, NLJ. MacLatte refers to the continuation of Victorian and Edwardian concepts in Jamaica as late as 1914. 106. Phillippo, Jamaica: Its Past and Present State, 231. 107. Quoted in Bryan, The Jamaican People, 85. 108. Ibid., 85–86. 109. Ibid. See also MacLatte, “Jamaica in 1914”, for a description of how Jamaica changed during the period and some analysis of dress at the end of the nineteenth century and beginning of the twentieth. See the photograph collection at NLJ for examples of professional uniforms. 110. See Long, The History of Jamaica, 2: 493; Radner Coffee Plantation Journal, January 1822–February 1826, MS 180, NLJ. Although some planters gave hats and caps to their slaves, because of the absence of slave testimony and the paucity of sources, not much is known about styles of the caps or the criteria used to determine who received a cap or a hat. Questions about slave headwear need further investigation. It is unlikely that planters would have provided slaves with fashionable hats and caps of comparable quality to those worn by Europeans. Perhaps slaves received caps similar to those worn by peasants in Britain, or to the soft mob caps worn indoors by women during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, which consisted of a circular cloth drawn together with a string to cover the hair. The Kilmarnock cap derives its name from the fabric it is made from – a woollen serge named after the town of its origin, Kilmarnock in westcentral Scotland. Some illustrations of Caribbean slaves show both men and women wearing wide-brimmed straw hats. See Foster, New Raiments of Self, 255, for more on hats and caps in the American South. 111. Lemire, Dress, Culture, and Commerce, 33, 159. 112. See Foster, New Raiments of Self, 269, for a discussion on the different words for hats. See also Doreen Yarwood, The Encyclopedia of World Costume (New York: Scribner, 1978), 65. 113. Halttunen, Confidence Men and Painted Women, 86–87; Foster, New Raiments of Self, 255; Phillippo, Jamaica: Its Past and Present State, 151; Yarwood, The Encyclopedia of World Costume, 40–42.
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Notes to pages 141–148
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114.
115.
116. 117. 118. 119.
120. 121.
122. 123. 124.
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Advertisements of the period show the various types of hats available to customers. Some advertisements listed the styles, such as bowler hats, wedding bonnets and so on. See local papers, such as the Falmouth Gazette, 23 May 1879, for examples. For information on women being taught how to make hats, see the printed reports of the Upward and Onward Society. In many secondary schools, the school uniform included a small version of the jippi-jappa hat, a cap or a soft, visorless cap like a beret. This information was gleaned from interviews with several church women who enjoy wearing hats, and a conversation with Sharon Gardner, the wife of a Moravian minister. See Foster, New Raiments of Self, 269, on the African-American woman’s love of hats. Some churches, such as the Church of God, interpret the Bible literally and therefore require women to cover their heads in church, after 1 Corinthians 11:1–16. For women who do not have a hat, a headwrap will do. In many parts of Africa, people made straw hats from plant fibres and decorated caps from refined fabrics. Moore and Johnson, The Land We Live In, 145. Ibid., 92–93. Yarwood, The Encyclopedia of World Costume, 26–27, 30–31. The absence of swimsuits in stores’ newspaper advertisements during the 1870s to 1890s in Jamaica suggests that beach bathing was not yet popular. Public pools were rare; by 1914 there were no other bathing pools similar to those at Bournemouth and Springfield in Jamaica, which also had enclosed beach areas for swimming. During the first few decades of the twentieth century, middle-class Jamaicans began to enjoy holidays at the seaside, and hotels such as the Titchfield Hotel in Port Antonio became a favourite destination. For further description of swimwear from the period, see Yarwood, The Encyclopedia of World Costume, 26–27, 30–31; and MacLatte, “Jamaica in 1914”. Even though MacLatte’s article focuses on 1914, it gives some sense of the changes in dress styles over the previous decades. His description, compared with Yarwood’s analysis, shows that bathing dress had changed very little over the decades and reveals the similarities between Jamaican bathing dress and that worn in Britain at the time. Norris, Jamaica: The Search for an Identity, 10. Callaway, “Dressing for Dinner in the Bush”, 195–207. Callaway gives an interesting account of the roles Imperial dress played in colonized societies. In Jamaica today, guests invited to King’s House for state ceremonies hosted by the governor general, in honour of visiting dignitaries, royals or honourees, are required to follow the appropriate dress code for the event. Invitations, for example, will specify lounge suit, national dress, uniform or decorations such as badges, sashes or medals and how to wear the various insignias. This is part of the colonial legacy that continues to survive. This information courtesy of the Office of the Governor General, King’s House. Bryan, The Jamaican People, 85–86. Phillippo, Jamaica: Its Past and Present State, 230. Brathwaite, Development of Creole Society, 306–11.
Notes to pages 150–155
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125. 126. 127. 128. 129. 130. 131. 132. 133.
134. 135. 136.
137. 138.
139. 140.
141. 142. 143.
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Glissant, “Creolization in the Making of the Americas”, 269–75. West, “The New Cultural Politics”, 27. See Hall, In Miserable Slavery, 170, for an example of how some slave women contributed to the earnings of their masters by sewing. Hall, Free Jamaica, 232. CO 137/391, 20 April 1865, West Indies Collection, UWI. Hall, Free Jamaica, 233. French and Ford-Smith, Women, Work and Organization, 145. CO 137/391, 20 April 1865, West Indies Collection, UWI. B. Pullen-Burry, Jamaica as It Is in 1903 (London: T. Fisher, 1903), 48. Although Pullen-Burry was writing later, in her discussions on seamstresses she implied that the women in that profession had maintained a long tradition of excellence. Ibid. French and Ford-Smith, Women, Work and Organization, 141–45. Bark-cloth was not sold in the major stores in Kingston. There is no reference to it in store advertisements in the local newspapers throughout the nineteenth century. However, bark-cloth craft was mentioned in books of the period published specifically for the tourist market. See, for example, advertisements in the following books: Souvenir of Jamaica (London: C.W. Faulkner and Co., c.1900); Jas Johnston, Jamaica, the New Riviera: A Pictorial Description of the Island and Its Attractions, Imperial Direct West India Mail Service (London: Cassell, 1903). Livingstone, Black Jamaica, 53. See also S.U. Hastings and B.L. Macleavy, Seed Time and Harvest: A Brief History of the Moravian Church in Jamaica, 1754–1979 (Barbados: Cedar Press, 1979), 55. Livingstone, Black Jamaica, 190. Phillippo, Jamaica: Its Past and Present State, 217. The notion of reserving one’s best shoes for Sunday services continues in many areas of Jamaica. Information obtained during interviews conducted in summer 1996 with family members and other elderly Jamaicans raised in rural areas. Drewal, “Pageantry and Power in Yoruba Costuming”, 190–92. See also McLeod, The Asante, 143–54. NLJ, N/3481. An examination of the women’s headwraps reveals that the styles are all similar. See also Clarke, Art of African Textiles, 112, for a discussion of the role of British manufacturers in copying and mass-producing indigenous textiles such as Indian Madras cloth. Information on bandannas worn in the marketplace was obtained in a series of conversations with several elderly women who were market traders (see note 144, below) and with some Jamaican women who shopped in Kingston’s Jubilee and Coronation Markets. It is also based on recollections of childhood visits to the market with my mother. The bandanna headwrap is no longer popular in Jamaica and is rarely seen in the marketplace.
Notes to pages 155–162
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144.
145. 146. 147.
148.
149.
150.
151. 152. 153. 154. 155. 156. 157. 158. 159. 160. 161. 162. 163.
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This information was obtained during a series of interviews conducted on 10 April 2003 with several elderly market traders, during slow periods and between sales, in Kingston’s urban markets. Kingston and St Andrew Corporation Market Company Limited provided assistance in locating these traders. The interviewees at Coronation Market included Ms Myrtle Turner (fifty years a trader), Ms Viola White (more than forty years a trader) and Ms Elaine Johnson (more than fifty years a trader); at Jubilee Market, I talked with Ms Barbara McNeil (forty-five years a trader). These women have been selling in the markets since they were children or young women, and some are second- and third-generation traders. Ibid. Ibid. Moore, “Religion of Jamaican Negroes”. Moore describes ritual dress in Afro-Jamaican religions, focusing on colours and elaborate headwraps and their significance within the religions. For more on the bandanna, see “Let It Be Our Costume and Not Her Costume”, Sunday Gleaner, 16 October 1955; “African Costumes for Independent Jamaica?”, Star, 29 May 1962, 10; and National Costumes, collection of articles, NLJ. For more on Madras fabric, see chapter 4 and the glossary to this text. Dr Olive Lewin, interview by author, Kingston, Jamaica, 12 August 1997. Dr Lewin provided insight into the role of market women as traders and the folk songs associated with these women. In addition, I observed these methods of securing money being used by many contemporary market traders. See, for example, Claire Robertson, “Ga Women and Socioeconomic Change in Accra, Ghana”, in Women in Africa, ed. Nancy Hafkin and Edna Bay (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1976), 111–33; Margaret Katzin, “The Business of Higglering in Jamaica”, Social and Economic Studies 9, no. 3 (1960): 197–331. Rob Morris, “Negro Life in Jamaica”, Harper’s New Monthly Magazine 44, no. 262 (March 1872): 554. Bush, Slave Women in Caribbean Society, 33–40. Robertson and Klein, “Women’s Importance in African Slave Systems”, 3–25. Phillippo, Jamaica: Its Past and Present State, 236. Livingstone, Black Jamaica, 190–91. CO 137/391, June 1865, UWI. Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks, 19. Roach-Higgins, Eicher and Johnson, Dress and Identity, 13. Hall, Free Jamaica, 240. Ibid., 239–43. CO 137/391, March 1865, UWI. CO 137/390, March 1865, UWI. CO 137/391, June 1865, UWI.
Notes to pages 164–168
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164. 165. 166. 167. 168. 169. 170. 171.
172. 173. 174. 175. 176. 177. 178. 179. 180. 181. 182. 183.
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CO 137/391, April 1865, UWI. Underhill, The West Indies, 253. Livingstone, Black Jamaica, 275. Bryan, The Jamaican People, 60. Bryan examines Bishop Enos Nuttall’s Imperial policies and his notions of Anglo-Saxon civilization. Underhill, The West Indies, 193. hooks, Black Looks, 136. Bush, Slave Women in Caribbean Society, 156. Michael Harrington, “The Best-Dressed Poverty”, in Dress, Adornment, and the Social Order, ed. Mary Ellen Roach-Higgins and Joanne Bubolz Eicher (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1965), 163–65. Masie Walker, conversation with author, Kingston, Jamaica, 4 August 1994. Livingstone, Black Jamaica, 53. Ibid., 106. Ibid. Lang and Lang, “Fashion: Identification and Differentiation”, 339. E.A. Hastings, A Glimpse of the Tropics (London, 1900), 241–42. Bryan, The Jamaican People, 85. Gubar, Race Changes, 21. Ibid., 24. Phillippo, Jamaica: Its Past and Present State, 148. Ibid. Ibid.
Chapter 4 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11.
12. 13.
230
Radner, Feminist Messages, 2. Ibid. Quoted in Bush, Slave Women in Caribbean Society, 153. Ibid., 158. Barbara Babcock, ed., The Reversible World: Symbolic Inversion in Art and Society (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1978), 14. Radner and Lanser, “Strategies of Coding”, 11. Alleyne, Roots of Jamaican Culture, 149. Ibid. Bryan, The Jamaican People, 86–87. Lakshmi Mansingh and Ajai Mansingh, “Indian Heritage in Jamaica”, Jamaica Journal 10, no. 2 (1976–77): 12. Verene Shepherd, Transients to Settlers: The Experience of Indian Settlers in Jamaica, 1845–1950 (Leeds: Centre for Research in Asian Migration, University of Warwick/Peepal Tree Books, 1994), 46. Alleyne, Race and Ethnicity, 211. See Shepherd, Transients to Settlers, 104, for a discussion of population size and low birth rate among the Indians in Jamaica.
Notes to pages 168–183
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14.
15. 16. 17.
18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23.
24.
25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30.
31.
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See Hall, Free Jamaica, 56. Over the decades this bond has dissolved, as racial and ethnic hostilities developed between Indians and Afro-Jamaicans. In contemporary Jamaica, Indians consider themselves superior to AfroJamaicans. See Alleyne, Race and Ethnicity, 210–13, for discussion of race relations between Indians and the black population in contemporary Jamaica. Diana Crane, Fashion and Its Social Agendas: Class, Gender, and Identity in Clothing (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 183–85. Ibid., 189. Ibid., 190, for a discussion of street styles, which the author also observed in Jamaica. See also bell hooks, “My ‘Style’ Ain’t No Fashion”, Z Magazine, May 1992, 27–29. Crane, Fashion and Its Social Agendas, 193. Ibid. Leonard Barnett, The Rastafarians (Boston: Beacon Publishers, 1977). Nettleford, Caribbean Cultural Identity, 187. hooks, “My ‘Style’ Ain’t No Fashion”, 27–29. See, for instance, Zola Maseko, The Life and Times of Sara Baartman, the Hottentot Venus (1998), a documentary film that sheds light on the relationship between the black woman’s body and early science. Maseko examines the life of Sara Baartman, who has been mentioned in numerous books. Her body was exploited by science in the nineteenth century, and she became the first major example of scientific racism. At first I thought the hormone story was urban legend, but it is true. My information on the chicken pill came from interviews with several Jamaicans, including Carolyn Cooper. The phenomenon has been written about in the Jamaican newspapers and continues to be a topic of debate. No serious medical studies have been conducted to determine the effects of taking this type of hormone, normally given to chickens on chicken farms, nor is it known how popular the practice is, but it is not confined to dancehall circles. “Batty rider” is a tight pair of shorts, and to “bubble” means a particular way of dancing that accentuates the bottom. Nettleford, “Fancy Dress from Jonkonnu to Dance Hall”. Emily Braun, “Futuristic Fashions: Three Manifestos”, Art Journal 54, no. 1 (Spring 1995): 34. Cooper, Noises in the Blood, 193. Alleyne, Race and Ethnicity, 31. Information learned in a discussion on dancehall and bleaching during the University of the West Indies History Departmental Seminar, 4 April 2003. Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye (New York: Plume, 1970); Curtis Mayfield, “Choice of Colors”, performed by Curtis Mayfield on Soul Legacy (audio CD, March 2001). Bleaching products include various manufactured creams and lotions, but individuals also make homemade mixtures – for instance, toothpaste and laundry bleach. For more information on this and the politics of image and
Notes to pages 183–188
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32.
33. 34.
35. 36.
37. 38. 39. 40.
41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47.
48.
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representation, see Alleyne, Race and Ethnicity, 204–6; Verene Shepherd, “Image, Representation and the Project of Emancipation: History and Identity in the Commonwealth Caribbean”, in Contending with Destiny, ed. Kenneth Hall and Denis Benn (Kingston, Jamaica: Ian Randle Publishers, 2000), 53–64; Neil Persadsingh, “Bleaching and Self-Identity in Jamaica”, Daily Observer, 9 September 2002, 9. Carolyn Cooper, discussion with author, University of the West Indies, Mona, Jamaica, 10 January 2003. See Cooper, Noises in the Blood, for more on dancehall. West, “The New Cultural Politics”, 26–28. Bleaching can be very harmful to the skin, and not all women are fortunate in this respect. Sometimes the skin has been so badly damaged that, even when one stops bleaching, little can be done to cure the condition. See the works of Neil Persadsingh for a medical perspective on this issue. Beckwith, Black Roadways, 66–67. Gwendolyn S. O’Neal, “The Power of Style: On Rejection of the Accepted”, in Appearance and Power, ed. K. Johnson and S. Lennon, Dress, Body, Culture Series (New York: Berg, 1999), 127–39. Barbara Gloudon, “Nuff Jamaican-African Deh Bout”, Weekend Observer, 8 August 1997, 7. Verene Shepherd, personal communication, March 2003. Susan Mains, conversation with author, 12 May 2003 Joanne Bubolz Eicher, “Cosmopolitan and International Dress”, in Dress, Adornment, and the Social Order, ed. Mary Ellen Roach-Higgins and Joanne Bubolz Eicher (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1965), 461. Mains, conversation. Eicher, “Cosmopolitan and International Dress”, 461–62; Mains, conversation. Market traders, interviews. See chapter 3, note 148, above. Ibid. Verene Shepherd and members of the Jamaica Historical Society, discussion with author, 22 April 2003. Mains, conversation, on the relevance of a national dress; also interviews with market traders, many of whom are Revival members, including Barbara McNeil, Jubilee Market, 10 April 2003. This term – and its shorter form, ghetto fab – has become popular among African-Americans in some parts of the United States and is frequently heard on African-American television shows. It refers to the fashions of the inner cities and the ghettos. It is a term of endearment and assertiveness that reflects the uniqueness of a particular style embodied in rap, street style and dancehall cultures.
Notes to pages 188–194
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Glossary of Selected Terms
Definitions and information obtained from Helen Bradley Foster, New Raiments of Self: African American Clothing in the Antebellum South; Beverly Lemire, Dress, Culture, and Commerce: The English Clothing Trade Before the Factory, 1660–1800; Doreen Yarwood, The Encyclopedia of World Costume; and Edward Long, The History of Jamaica.
Baize, baise
Coarsely woven woollen or cotton fabric napped to imitate felt and dyed in solid colours. This was distributed to slaves on many plantations.
Bandanna, bandana
The word comes from the Hindi word bandhnu, which refers to a method of dyeing in which the cloth is tied in places to prevent it from receiving the dye. This process produces a dark red or blue ground and white and yellow spots. In the nineteenth century, cotton bandannas were produced by chemical means that resulted in a checked pattern of the same colours. In the Caribbean the term bandanna was merged with the term Madras to refer to the popular tie-heads worn by many women. Bandanna became very popular in post-emancipation Jamaica, used for neck cloths and tie-heads. Bandanna is part of the Jamaican national costume/dress.
Barege
Gauze-like semi-transparent fabric, originally made at Bareges, in the French Pyrenees, in the 1850s.
Brocade
A luxurious fabric, loom-woven in an all-over pattern of contrasting colours on a background of satin or twill weave.
Brocardels
Brocade made in a combination of yarns, with the design, in high relief, of silk or linen on plain or satin ground.
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Basque
On a woman’s dress, an extension of the bodice below the waist to form a short overskirt or tabs.
Bib
A type of apron worn by market women in Jamaica, consisting of two large pockets, one for silver coins and the other for copper coins. This is similar to the corner cloths worn by some women traders in East Africa.
Bloomers
Word coined from the reform dress promoted by Mrs Amelia Jenks Bloomer and designed by Elizabeth Smith Miller. Designed to allow women greater freedom of movement, it consisted of a jacket and kneelength skirt over full Turkish-type trousers. The campaign to popularize this outfit failed. The term was later revived in the 1890s when women began to wear knickerbockers with a blouse and jacket for cycling and walking – these bloomers were also called rationales.
Bustle
A sort of frame made for pushing out the skirts of ladies’ gowns, usually placed at the back just below the waist.
Calamanco
Glazed woollen fabric made in Flanders in the sixteenth century. Often checked in the warp so that the checks are visible on one side of the material. By the nineteenth century, highly glazed and made of a mixture of cotton and wool. Some enslaved women wore dresses made from this fabric on special occasions.
Calico, calycot
Cotton cloth originally imported from India and named after its city of origin, Calicut, on the Malabar Coast. In England the name refers to a plain white cotton cloth; in the Americas, to a printed cotton. Calico was popular during and after slavery and is also used in the Jamaican national costume along with bandanna or Madras fabric.
Cambay, cambaye
Coarse cotton cloth made in India.
Cashmere
Soft, lightweight woollen cloth, often twilled.
Chemise
A woman’s loose-fitting, shirt-like undergarment; a type of dress with an unfitted waist. A smaller version was made for young babies, and in some AfroJamaican religions, a red chemise is believed to keep evil spirits away.
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Very soft fine velvet.
Chints, chintss, chintz Printed or spotted cotton cloth. Corsage
The upper part or bodice of a woman’s dress, which extends from shoulder to waist.
Cotta, catta
A piece of cloth or dried banana leaves rolled and shaped like a donut and placed on the head to aid in the balancing of heavy loads. During slavery in Jamaica, some women signalled the end of a relationship by cutting their cotta into two and giving their estranged partner one half as a symbol of an eternal end to the union. This is no longer done, but the cotta is still used when carrying heavy loads.
Cottonade
A nineteenth-century term for certain coarse cotton fabrics.
Crepe
The term comes from the French word creper, to crimp or frizz. This term was used to describe all kinds of fabrics – wool, cotton, silk – that have a crinkly, crimped surface.
Crinoline
Originally from the Latin crinis and the French crin for hair, the material used in the 1840s for making stiffened petticoats worn by women to support the weight of other petticoats. Later this was replaced by the cage-crinoline, made of quilted materials stiffened with whalebone, and in 1857 by the flexible steel hoop.
Daccasses
Calamanco woollen coats worn by some slave women during carnival and festive occasions. The style or design of these coats is not known.
Damask
In the Middle Ages, this was used to describe silk fabrics of elaborate design, worn in Damascus. Later the word was applied to fabrics made of wool, linen or cotton that displayed light and shade effects by the use of contrasting shiny and matte surfaces. Damask dresses were popular among some slave women and were worn during holidays and on special occasions such as carnivals and masquerades.
Delaine
An abbreviation of the French, moussline de laine, which is a lightweight dress fabric resembling woollen muslin. Originally of wool, later of wool and cotton.
Ells or ell
An old European measure of length, used for cloth, which varied from one country to another. For exam-
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ple, the British ell was 45 inches, but in Scotland it was 37 inches. Flounce
Dress element consisting of strips of material, gathered or pleated and attached to the garment by one edge, with the other edge left to flare. This was very fashionable on women’s garments of the mid-eighteenth century.
Gauze
A sheer fabric of cotton, silk or linen used since the early Middle Ages for veils and over dresses.
Holland
This fabric was made in Holland and was a type of linen which when bleached was called brown Holland. The term Holland cloth was also used broadly to describe manufactured cotton fabrics from Holland. Plain and striped Holland cloth was distributed to slaves on some plantations.
Jaconet
Plain, light- to medium-weight cotton, originally from India but later made in Britain.
Kendal
Green woollen cloth named after its town of origin in northwestern England. Kendal was distributed to slaves on some Jamaican plantations.
Kilmarnock
Woollen serge named after the town of its origin, Kilmarnock in Scotland. This fabric was used to make Kilmarnock caps, which were distributed to slaves. The style of these caps is unknown.
Laghetto, lageto, lace-bark or bark-lace
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Glossary
Fine lace derived from the laghetto tree’s bark. The plant fibre also resembles gauze and linen. The bark was cut, soaked and beaten, and the thin filament between the outer and inner core of the bark was then pulled out with the fingers. The material was dried in puffballs and then stretched in the sun to bleach white. It was used to make lace clothing, slippers and accessories. Slaves, Maroons and freed persons in Jamaica used the bark material to make clothes for daily attire, and both men and women used it as mourning linen. The bark of the tree had medicinal properties. The bark-cloth industry was very vibrant in Jamaica from the seventeenth century onwards and lasted in Jamaica until the early twentieth century, but eventually died primarily because the bark was over-
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harvested. Unfortunately, the Bark of Trees (Sale Prevention) Act of 1929 offered little protection, hence the scarcity of the tree today. Madras
A vividly coloured silk and cotton kerchief, patterned in plaids and checks in red, blue and white, without borders. The dyeing process involved was the bandanna technique. Consumers in different areas preferred different colours. Originally made in Madras and other parts of South India, Madras fabric was traded by the Portuguese for more than four hundred years, and it became popular on several continents by different names. It is called “real Madras handkerchief ” in India and “Indian Madras” in the United States and Britain; in West Africa it is called “George” by the Igbo and “Injiri” by the Kalabari of Nigeria, which means “Real India” in their language. British textile manufacturers eventually copied this fabric and mass-produced several cheaper grades of Madras for the colonial markets. Madras was imported into the Caribbean and other parts of the Americas. There is no evidence to suggest that it was popular among slaves in Jamaica; however, several sources refer to the importation of Indian cottons. Madras became popular with freed women, especially those of the labouring and peasant classes. In the nineteenth century, stripped or checked muslin also named Madras appeared. In the Caribbean, the term Madras cloth was merged with the term bandanna to mean tie-head or headwrap, and Madras was used by Jamaican women primarily for tie-heads.
Millinery
A business where hats are made; the hat maker is called a milliner. Both terms come from the word milaner, an inhabitant of Milan, Italy, and later meant a vendor of articles of apparel, especially bonnets, made in Milan. Later the term came to be applied to the designers of ladies’ hats and bonnets.
Mohair
A fabric woven or knitted from the wool of the Angora goat.
Mousseline
French muslin. In English, it refers to a fabric of cotton, wool or silk which is soft and generally very fine.
Muslin
This fabric is named after the city of Mosul on the River Tigris in Iraq (formerly Persia), where the fabric
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was made. Later, muslin became a general term covering a broad spectrum of fine cotton imported into Western Europe from India. Slave and freed women who could afford it and who had access to refined fabrics wore muslin dresses on special occasions. Osnaburg, Oznaburgh, Oznaberg Coarse, durable linen or cotton originally made in Osnabruck, Germany. Osnaburg was the cheapest grade of cotton and was used for bagging and industrial purposes. It was the fabric most commonly distributed to enslaved Africans throughout the British Caribbean and parts of the US antebellum South. Peasants and other poor people in some parts of Jamaica wore osnaburgh after emancipation. Penniston, pennystone
Perpetuana, perpets, petuna
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Coarse, heavy woollen cloth originating at Penistone in Yorkshire and used for outdoor wear in the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries. This fabric was distributed to slaves in Jamaica, and by the late eighteenth century it was as popular as osnaburg on some plantations. A durable, glossy-surfaced woollen cloth made in England after the late sixteenth century. It was worn especially by the seventeenth-century Puritans in England and later in the American colonies. Some slaves received this fabric as part of their clothing rations.
Satin
A silk fabric of close texture with a glossy face and dull back. It has been worn for hundreds of years. Finishing the fabric between heated rollers produces the glossy surface.
Serge
A twilled worsted with a smooth clear face and pronounced diagonal rib on the front and back, made in various weights in wool, cotton, or silk and used especially for suits, coats and dresses.
Silk
The finest and most sought-after of all natural fibres, and the only one to be available in a natural continuous filament. Silk originated in China. There are two major sources of silk, the cocoons of wild silkworms
Glossary
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and those of the silk moth. The cultivation of silk was a well-guarded secret for hundreds of years in China. Taffaty, taffeta, taffeties
Rich, thin, lustrous silk of plain weave and several finishes.
Toque
A brimless hat.
Tred-bag
A small moneybag made from cloth and used by many Jamaican women traders in the marketplace. It was used to store paper money or cash and then tucked into the trader’s bosom.
Tulle
A fine bobbin net made of silk and cotton thread, used in the nineteenth century, chiefly for indoor caps and later for veiling.
Underwear
Before the nineteenth century, women’s underwear consisted of a loose chemise or long shirt, drawers or pants and even stockings. From the end of the 1830s until the 1870s, an increasing number of garments had to be worn underneath dresses and skirts. Underwear for women included a brassiere, chemise, corset, drawers, elastic pantaloons and petticoats, chiefly made from white and partly starched cambric, calico or flannel. Enslaved women received some readymade undergarments from their owners; however, most made their own undergarments, in the style of a simple chemise, from the fabrics they received.
Velvet
Silk textile with a short, dense, smooth pile; a luxury fabric. In French it is called velour, but in English, velour describes a velvety pile fabric made from linen, cotton or wool. There are several types of velvet.
Worsted
Smooth, compact yarn spun with an average to hard twist from long wool fibres that have been carded and combed. Worsted was used especially for napless fabrics and knitting wool.
Glossary
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Selected Bibliography
Abbreviations CO IOJ JA MF MS NLJ UWI
Public Record Office, London, Colonial Office group Institute of Jamaica Jamaica Archives and Records Department Microfilm Manuscript National Library of Jamaica University of the West Indies Library, West Indies Collection
Manuscripts Dickenson Collection, Vestry Proceedings, MS 2952, UWI. Harmony Hall Estate Account Book, vol. 1, MS 1652, NLJ. Invoices, Accounts, Sales of Sugar etc. Jamaica Windsor Lodge and Paisley Estates (1833–37). MS 32, NLJ. Public Record Office, London, Colonial Office, 137 vols. Governor’s Despatches (1865), UWI. Radner Coffee Plantation Journal, 1822–26, MS 180, NLJ. Smithfield Estate Records and Business, MS 806, NLJ. The Moravian Collection and Archives, Upward and Onward Society, MS 5/5, JA. The Moravian Collection and Archives, Good Housekeeping (March 1888), MS 5/5, JA. The Moravian Collection and Archives, Rules Observed by the Missionaries of the Brethrens’ Church in Jamaica, 1880, MS 5/5, JA. Worthy Park Plantation Books 4/23, No. 1 (1783–87), 4/23, No. 2 (1787–91), JA.
Official Publications Journal of the Assembly of Jamaica, vol. 4 (1745–46). Laws of Jamaica, 1696. Laws of Jamaica, 1831. Laws of Jamaica, no. 17, 1929. Proceedings of the Legislative Council, 1898.
240
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Invitation cards of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales, and their Excellencies the Governor General, Sir Howard Cooke and Lady Cooke. Courtesy of the Office of the Governor General, Kingston, Jamaica. “The Guide to the Wearing of State, Crown and Related Orders and Decorations with Civilian Dress.” Courtesy of the Office of the Governor General, Kingston, Jamaica.
Newspapers Colonial Standard and Jamaican Despatch, 1883–90 Daily Gleaner, 1878–1902, 1938 Diary and Kingston Daily Advertiser, January–August 1796 Falmouth Gazette Falmouth Post Jamaica Mercury, November–December 1779 Royal Gazette, July 1813–16, 1830–31 Sunday Gleaner, 1955, 1970, 1997
Books Abrahams, Roger D. “Pull out Your Purse and Pay: A St George Mumming from the British West Indies”. Folklore 79 (Autumn 1968): 176–201. ———. The Man-of-Words in the West Indies: Performance and the Emergence of Creole Culture. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983. Adams, C.D. Flowering Plants of Jamaica. Contributions by G.R. Proctor and R.W. Read. Kingston, Jamaica: University of the West Indies, 1972. Adams, John. Remarks on the Country extending from Cape Palmas to the River Congo: including observations on the manners and customs of the inhabitants. London: Whittaker, 1823. Alleyne, Mervyn. Roots of Jamaican Culture. London: Pluto Press, 1988. ———. The Construction and Representation of Race and Ethnicity in the Caribbean and the World. Kingston, Jamaica: University of the West Indies Press, 2002. Allsopp, Richard, ed. Dictionary of Caribbean English Usage. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996. Angelou, Maya. All God’s Children Need Traveling Shoes. New York: Random House, 1986. Argyle, M. Bodily Communication. 2d ed. London: Methuen, 1988. Argyle, W.J. The Fon of Dahomey. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1966. Arnoldi, Mary Jo, Christrand M. Geary and Kris L. Hardin, eds. African Material Culture. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996. Arnoldi, Mary Jo, and Christine Mullen Kreamer, eds. Crowning Achievements: African Arts of Dressing the Head. Los Angeles: Fowler Museum of Cultural History, University of California, 1995.
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Armstrong, Douglas V. The Old Village and the Great House: An Archaeological and Historical Examination of Drax Hall Plantation, St Ann’s Bay, Jamaica. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1990. Ash, Juliet, and Elizabeth Wilson, eds. Chic Thrills: A Fashion Reader. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992. Atwood, Thomas. The History of Dominica. London: J. Johnson, 1791. Austin, Allan D. African Muslims in Antebellum America: A Sourcebook. New York: Garland Publishing, 1984. Babcock, Barbara, ed. The Reversible World: Symbolic Inversion in Art and Society. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1978. Bacon, Edgar M., and Eugene M. Aaron. The New Jamaica. Kingston, Jamaica: Aston W. Gardner, 1890. Bakan, Abigail. Ideology and Class Conflict in Jamaica: The Politics of Rebellion. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1990. Barber, Elizabeth W. Women’s Work: The First Twenty Thousand Years: Women, Cloth, and Society in Early Times. New York: W.W. Norton, 1994. Barclay, Alexander. A Practical View of the Present State of Slavery in the West Indies. London: Smith and Elder, 1826. Barnes, Ruth, and Joanne B. Eicher, eds. Dress and Gender: Making and Meaning. New York: Berg, 1992. Barnett, Leonard E. Soul-Force: African Heritage in Afro-American Religion. New York: Anchor Press/Doubleday, 1974. ———. The Rastafarians. Boston: Beacon Publisher, 1977. Bastide, Roger. African Civilizations in the New World. Translated by Peter Green. New York: Harper and Row, 1971. de Beauvoir, Simone. The Second Sex. New York: Vintage, 1974. Beckford, William. A Descriptive Account of the Island of Jamaica. 2 vols. London: T.J. Egerton, 1790. Beckles, Hilary. Natural Rebels: A Social History of Enslaved Black Women in Barbados. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1989. ———. “Sex and Gender in the Historiography of Caribbean Slavery”. In Engendering History: Caribbean Women in Historical Perspective, edited by Verene Shepherd, Bridget Brereton and Barbara Bailey, 125–40. Kingston, Jamaica: Ian Randle Publishers, 1995. ———. Centering Woman: Gender Discourses in Caribbean Slave Society. Kingston, Jamaica: Ian Randle Publishers, 1999. ———. “Crop Over Fetes and Festivals in Caribbean Slavery”. In In the Shadow of the Plantation: Caribbean History and Legacy, edited by Alvin O. Thompson, 246–63. Kingston, Jamaica: Ian Randle Publishers, 2002. Beckles, Hilary, and Verene Shepherd, eds. Caribbean Freedom. Kingston, Jamaica: Ian Randle Publishers, 1993. ———. Caribbean Slavery in the Atlantic World. Kingston, Jamaica: Ian Randle Publishers, 1998. Beckwith, Martha Warren. Black Roadways: A Study of Jamaican Folk Life. 1929. Reprint, New York: Negro University Press, 1969.
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Beecham, John. Asantee and the Gold Coast. 1841. Reprint, New York: Johnson Reprint Corporation, 1970. Bennett, Louise. Jamaica Labrish: Jamaica Dialect Poems. Kingston, Jamaica: Sangster’s Book Stores, 1966. Benstock, Shari, and Suzanne Ferris, eds. On Fashion. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1994. Bettelheim, Judith. “Women in Masquerade and Performance”. African Arts 31, no. 2 (Spring 1998). ———, ed. Cuban Festivals: A Century of Afro-Cuban Culture. Kingston, Jamaica: Ian Randle Publishers, 2001. Bickell, Rev. R. The West Indies as They Are, or A Real Picture of Slavery: But More Particularly as It Exists in the Island of Jamaica. London: J. Hatchard and Son, 1825. Bigelow, John. Jamaica in 1850. New York: George P. Putman, 1851. Binder, P. Dressing Up and Dressing Down. London: Allen and Unwin, 1986. Bisnauth, Dale. History of Religions in the Caribbean. Kingston, Jamaica: Kingston Publishers Limited, 1989. Black, Clinton. History of Jamaica. London: Collins, 1965. Blier, Suzanne. African Vodun: Art, Psychology, and Power. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995. Boa, Sheena. “Urban Free Black and Colored Women: Jamaica, 1760–1834”. Jamaica Historical Review 28 (1993): 1–6. Boone, Sylvia Ardyn. Radiance from the Waters: Ideals of Feminine Beauty in Mende Art. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986. Bradley, Keith. Slavery and Rebellion in the Roman World 140 BC–70 BC. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989. Bradley Foster, Helen. New Raiments of Self: African American Clothing in the Antebellum South. Oxford: Berg, 1997. Bradley Griebel, Helen. “The African American Woman’s Headwrap: Unwinding the Symbols”. In Dress and Identity, edited by Mary Ellen RoachHiggins, Joanne Eicher and Kim K.P. Johnson, 451–64. New York: Fairchild, 1995. Brathwaite, Edward Kamau. “Jamaican Slave Society: A Review”. Race 9, no. 3 (1968): 331–42. ———. The Development of Creole Society in Jamaica, 1770–1820. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971. ———. The Arrivants: A New World Trilogy. London: Oxford University Press, 1973. ———. “Kumina: The Spirit of African Survival in Jamaica”. Jamaica Journal, no. 42 (1978): 44–63. Braudel, Fernand. The Structures of Everyday Life: Civilization and Capitalism 15th–18th Century. Vol. 1. Translation from the French revised by Sian Reynolds. New York: Harper and Row, 1979. Braun, Emily. “Futurist Fashion: Three Manifestoes”. Art Journal 54, no. 1 (Spring 1995): 34–41.
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Index abolitionists, 37, 66 abortion, 75 accessories, 119, 135–36, 146. See also specific accessories accommodation, 7, 11. See also appropriation; resistance after emancipation, 129–46, 178 benefits of, 166 carnivals as, 98, 104, 106 creolization and, 113, 155–56 cultural alienation and, 111–12 difficulties of, 141–42 dress as, 123–26 failure of, 170–73 reasons for, 138–40 as resistance, 140, 177, 178 during slavery, 123–26, 176–78 Accompong Town, 50, 52 acculturation. See accommodation Adams, John, 21–22, 23, 101 adaptation. See accommodation; resistance advertising, 139, 142 of fashion, 125, 126, 131–33 Africa carnival customs from, 98–99, 101–2 cultural influences of, 17–18, 77, 84–85, 93, 110, 165, 176, 185–87, 194 cultural influences on, 21–22 dress style from, 19–20, 47–48, 60–62, 79, 135–36, 151, 154–56, 160, 175, 182–83, 189–91 resistance in, 68–69 textiles in, 20–22, 25–26 traditional medicine from, 8–9
260
Africans. See also Afro-Jamaicans and Creole culture, 70, 116, 175 Afro-Caribbean religions, 28, 107, 116, 169 role of dress in, 8, 60, 95, 160–61, 164, 190 Afrocentrism, 191 Afro-Jamaicans, 10 diversity of, 16, 18 dress of, 154–56 status of, 16, 27, 113 as threat, 71, 171 agricultural workers. See peasants Alleyne, Mervyn, 178, 187 Allsopp, Richard, 99 Amazons, 68 Anglican Church, 169 Angola, 69 Antigua, 84, 107 apparel, 3 appropriation, 156 in carnivals, 104, 155, 177 by slave men, 34, 82 by women, 104, 124, 155, 177–78 Armstrong, Douglas, 42 Arnoldi, Mary Jo, 24 artefacts, 2–4. See also material culture archaeological, 41–42 dress as, xi–xii, 3 Ashanti people, 22, 23, 25, 27, 52 colour symbolism of, 96, 160 assimilation. See accommodation Atwood, Thomas, 43 Babcock, Barbara, 177 Back to Africa Movement, 138 Bahamas, 40 baize, 30–31, 37, 38
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banana fibre, 50, 52 bandanna, 162–64, 192–93, 228n143 Baquaqua, Mahommah Gardo, 26 Barbados, 40 Barbot, John, 24 bark-cloth in Africa, 22–23, 52 in Jamaica, 47, 50, 128–29, 158, 175, 228n136 Barry, James, 82 bast, 22 bathing (swimming), 151–52 Bay, Edna, 68 beachwear, 152 beads, 23, 58–60, 85–86, 135, 212n148 beards, 146 beauty, 112, 117, 122–23, 126–29, 134, 138 Beckford, Charlotte, 114 Beckford, William, 36, 58, 86 Beckles, Hilary, 43, 77, 109 Beckwith, Martha, 96 Beecham, John, 22 Belisario, I.M., 104 Benin, 23, 79 Bennett, Louise, 192 Berbice, 48 Bettelheim, Judith, 104 Betty of Port Royal, 135–37 bibi bonnet, 148 Bickell, R., 66 black, 10–11 black women. See also slave women in Jamaica, 186–87 stereotypes of, 43, 109–10, 138, 170–72 black-consciousness, 191 blankets, 49 bleaching, 123, 126, 139, 141, 187–89, 231n31, 232n34 Bloomer, Amelia, 78–79 body attitudes to, 25, 26–27, 45 commodification of, 34, 42–43 and dress, 13, 20
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as metaphor, 61–62 and resistance, 75 bon-ace tree, 51 bonnets, 124, 135, 147–48 Bradley Foster, Helen, 25 Bradley Griebel, Helen, 88 branding, 82–83 Brathwaite, Edward, 27, 154–55 Brathwaite, Kamau, 13 Bredemeier, Harry, 112 bride wealth, 20, 23 Britain cloth from, 21, 49 clothing from, 123, 147 fashion in, 117–22 influence of, 113, 115–17, 124–25, 152–54 brown, 9–10 browning, 187–89 Bryan, Patrick, 182 buckles, 41 burial customs, 59 Burton, Richard (British explorer), 68–69 Burton, Richard D.E., 13 Bush, Barbara, 15, 109 buttons, 41–42 cabildos, 107 calamanco, 100 cambric, 37 camouflage, 96 caps, 146, 147 Caribbean dress in, 5–9 historiography in, 5–9 play tradition in, 97 Carmichael, Mrs A.C., 40, 63, 74, 86 on slave clothing, 30, 35–36, 38 carnival, 96–109 African roots of, 98–99, 101–2 as competition, 102–4 costumes at, 97, 101, 177 dancehall as, 187 European influences on, 102, 104
Index
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meanings of, 106–8 as resistance, 98, 104, 106–9 sponsorship of, 102–3, 104–6 Cashin, Joan, 81 Chamba people, 70 Chanel, Coco, 78–79 charity, 168–69 Charles II, 50 children. See slave children Chile, 79 Chinese, 182 chip straw bonnet, 124, 147, 148 Christianity, 169. See also specific churches and religions churches, 168–70 church-going, 169–70, 189 class clothing and, 118, 134 Creole dress and, 154–55 in Jamaica, 113–14, 116, 117, 134 polarization of, 155 cloth, 131–33, 206n54. See also specific fabrics; textile manufacturing imported, 21, 29–31, 33, 37–38 trade in, 20–23, 37, 49, 133, 167 clothing. See also clothing rations; dress; style care of, 11, 53, 54–55, 124, 141–42, 189–90, 195–96 and climate, 124 coded messages in, 88–92, 100 cost of, 33, 167–68 destruction of, 33–34, 79–80 as disguise, 81–84, 166 formal, 152–54 imported, 37, 64, 123, 126 lack of, 167–68 making of, 29–31, 35, 123, 176, 195–96 and punishment, 33–34 purchase of, 38, 40, 166–67 ready-made, 29–30, 35, 123, 130, 157, 158 regulation of, 28–31, 32–33, 40 as reward, 38, 40, 42–45
262
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sports, 146 as symbolic, 34, 65 theft of, 40, 79–80 for working, 118, 143, 145 clothing rations, 29–31, 36–40, 59, 80 supplementing of, 36–37, 66 clothing shops, 118, 126, 130–34 coats, 46, 100 Cole, Miss, 114 colour, 62, 88–90. See also specific colours symbolic use of, 95–96, 107, 158, 193 coloured, 9–10 Congo people, 70 Conney, John, 99 consumer revolution, 117–23, 129 Cooper, Carolyn, 188 corals, 58, 85–86, 135 coratoe fibre, 50, 52 Coromante people, 27, 70, 84 corsets, 121, 122, 148 costume, 3–4 cotta, 94, 162 cottage bonnet, 148 cotton, 22 Indian, 21, 29–31 in Jamaica, 29–30, 48–49, 158 Madras, 162–63, 192–93 Court, 84 crafts, 128–29 Crane, Diana, 184 creativity, 32, 62–63, 171, 193–94 as political statement, 7, 175 Creole dress, 60–63, 143–45, 154–56, 178–80 African elements in, 60–62, 87, 93, 178–79 and class, 154–55 headwraps in, 87, 143–44, 154 non-European influences on, 181–83 ridicule of, 170, 171–72 as subversive, 93, 180 Creoles, 27, 70
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creolization, 13, 60–61, 154–56, 183–84 and accommodation, 113, 155–56 Cromanty. See Coromante people Crop-Over fêtes, 97 cross-dressing, 81–82 Cuba, 107 Cubah, 84–85 culture, 16–18 annihilation of, 17, 26–27 dress as expression of, 20, 32, 184–86 retention of, 7, 12–13, 16–17 Dahomey, 21, 68 dancehall fashion, xii, 6, 15, 186–87, 231n24, 232n48 dances, 97 dandies, 82, 185 Danish West Indies, 31 dashiki, 191 De La Beche, Henry, 38–39 De Lisser, Herbert George, 116 deculturation, 17, 42–43, 109 Demerara Essequibo, 71 disease, 37 disguise, 81–84, 113 dress, 3–4. See also specific items of dress; clothing; Creole dress; European dress; style as accommodation, 123–26 African, 19–22, 84–87, 135–36, 191 and authority, 153–54 in Caribbean, 5–9 as communication, 18–20, 23–24, 84–85, 112–13, 175 control over, 36, 66 as cultural expression, 7, 20, 32, 112–13 functions of, 8–9, 18–20 and health, 37, 122 as historical artefact, xi–xii, 3–4, 6 and identity, 13–14, 140–41
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as marker of civilization, 25, 34–35, 44, 117, 135–37, 169, 178 as masking, 108–9, 166 as performance, 175, 186 as political, 7, 66, 108–9, 180, 185–87 regulation of, 28–31 and religion, 8–9, 89 revolutionary, 78–79 and ritual, 20, 158–61, 164 sentimental, 119, 135–36 social significance of, 171 spiritual significance of, 80–81 studies of, 4, 6–8, 11–12 as subversive, 93, 180, 184–86 Victorian, 119–21 Western, 192 and women’s role, 121–22 dressing up, 54, 62, 65, 158–61, 190–91. See also Sunday best dressmakers, 157. See also seamstresses Du Bois, W.E.B., 83 Duperly, Adolphe, 226n99 dyes, 22, 135 sources of, 47–48, 195–96 education, 126–29 Edwards, Bryan, 71, 86 Edwards, Miss, 114 Egungun, 99 Egyptians, 19 Eicher, Joanne, 3, 18, 80, 95, 113, 166, 192 elite, 116, 131, 155, 168 and fashion, 123, 124–25, 148–50 good works of, 128–29 leisure activities of, 143, 151–52 emancipation, 111–17, 135–36, 156 Equiano, Olaudah, 69 Eugenie, Empress, 120 European dress, 63–64, 118–22 and Creole styles, 62–63, 134 slaves’ use of, 35–36, 177 and status, 44–45, 133–34
Index
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sumptuary laws and, 31–32 Europeanization, 126–29, 137, 155, 171, 178. See also Creole dress; creolization among peasants, 160, 165–67, 169 Europeans and African bodies, 26–27, 28, 34 and African culture, 17, 25 cultural influence of, 21–22 and personal hygiene, 54 and slave dress, 62, 65–66 Ewe people, 22 ex-slave, 10 fabric. See cloth fads, 184 Fanon, Frantz, 111–12, 166 Fante people, 99, 101 Farquharson, Matthew, 30–31 fashion, 4, 184, 192. See also style and advertising, 125, 126, 131–33 commercialization of, 117–23, 130 democratization of, 117–18, 133–34 in Europe, 117–22 in slave dress, 31–32, 62–63 fashion dolls, 118 fashion magazines, 118 Finkelstein, Joanne, 34 Forbes, Frederick, 21 Foucault, Michel, 45 Foulks, Theodore, 38, 123–24 Fox-Genovese, Elizabeth, 68 Franklin, Benjamin, 78 Frazier, E. Franklin, 140 free villages, 114 freed persons, 10, 57, 114–15, 141, 145 freed women, 140–41 and Africanness, 137–39 attitudes towards, 129, 137, 170–72 education of, 126–29 urban, 115
264
Index
French Revolution, 78 French West Indies, 32, 88, 89–90, 207n67 frocks, 46 Fulani people, 24 fur, 22 Furtado, Isaac, 83 Gandhi, Mohandas, 79 Gang-Gang, xi Garvey, Marcus, 138 Geertz, Clifford, 4, 18 Gelede, 69, 88, 107 gender, 5–6, 82, 185 gipsy bonnet, 148 Glassie, Henry, 1, 2 Glissant, Edouard, 60, 155 globalization, 192 Gloudon, Barbara, 191 gloves, 135 gold, 85–86 Gold Coast (Ghana), 22, 99 gombay, 99 Good Housekeeping, 142 Goombay. See Jonkonnu Goveia, Elsa, 27 grass-cloth, 22 Gray, Marie and Josephine, 148 Gray White, Deborah, 43, 44 Green, Theresa, xi Guadeloupe, 88 Gubar, Susan, 112 Guyana, 71. See also Berbice; Suriname haberdashers, 133 hair, 137–38, 141, 225nn88–89 facial, 146 hairstyles African, 23–24, 86, 191 European, 64 Jamaican, 184, 192 Haiti, 107 Hall, Douglas, 115, 156 Hamilton, Hugh, 33
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hand-me-downs, 34–35, 124 Harding, Vincent, 109 Hastings, E.A., 171–72 hat shops, 149 hats, 146–51, 226n110, 227nn114–15. See also bonnets functions of, 150–51, 170, 189 with headwraps, 47, 94, 144, 150, 154, 193 for men, 46, 145, 146–47 straw, 46–47, 94, 144–47, 150, 154, 193 Haya Kingdoms, 22–23 headdresses, 23–24. See also headwraps headmen (slave drivers), 38 headwraps, 86–95, 190–91. See also bandanna in Africa, 24 in Caribbean, 87, 89, 182 cock’s-tail, 164 as coded messages, 88–92, 162–64, 175 in Creole dress, 143–44 decline of, 135, 192–93, 228n143 function of, 94, 95 with hats, 47, 94, 144, 150, 154, 193 for men, 94 in peasant dress, 158, 161–62 in plantation dress, 46, 47 significance of, 87–88, 94–95 styles of, 88–90, 164 Hearn, Lafcadio, 32 Herero people, 80 Herskovits, Melville J., 17, 176 Higman, Barry, 40, 74, 75–76 hill ladies, 143 Hintzen, Percy, 13 hippies, 184 history, 5, 12. See also material culture artefacts as, 2–4 holidays, 97–98 hooks, bell, 86, 169 hoop skirt, 119–20, 135–36 Hughes, Langston, 172
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Hurlock, 81–82 Hutchins, Mary Ann, 33–34 identity, 13–14, 155 Igbo people, 23, 27, 69–71, 99, 102 illiteracy, 127 illness, 72, 73 India, 79 Indians, 117, 167, 182–83 Industrial Revolution, 54, 117, 118 infanticide, 71–72 insanity, 71–72 insubordination, 72–73 iron, 42 ironing, 54 Islam, 27–28, 57 Jack in the Green, 102 Jacobs, Beth Lenworth, 193 Jamaica, 16 and Britain, 113, 122–23 colonial relationships in, 77–96 contemporary fashion in, xii, 14–15, 183–94 dress norms in, 82–83, 130, 135–36 economic history of, 166–68 ethnic dress in, 191–93 headwraps in, 91–92 middle class in, 116, 129, 131 non-European influences in, 181–83, 191 racial categories in, 9–11 slaves in, 27, 70–71 social order in, 100, 113, 115–16, 129–30, 134 James, Judy, 114 Jenny, 73–74 jewellery, 31, 86, 104, 135–36 jimmy (white-bark) tree, 50 jippi-jappa hats, 145, 150 Jonkonnu (Junkanoo), 98, 99 Kaba, Muhammad, 57 Kendal cotton, 30
Index
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kente cloth, 191 Kilmarnock caps, 146, 226n110 Kingery, W. David, 26 King’s House, 126, 152, 227n121 Kingston, 130–33, 149 Klein, Martin, 69 knitting, 48, 49 kumina, 95, 164, 169 labourers, 145, 161, 162, 165 indentured, 167, 182–83 lace, 31 lace-bark cloth, 56, 147 production of, 50–53, 128–29, 175, 210n127, 211n130 laghetto (lace-bark) tree, 50–51, 52 Lang, Kurt and Gladys, 171 Lanser, Susan, 108 laundry, 54–55, 141–42, 151 Lavater, Johan, 126, 222n63 Lawrence, Caroline Ena, 52 laws clothing-ration, 28–30, 40 slavery, 27, 45–46 sumptuary, 31–32 leather, 22, 147, 196 leisure, 143, 151–52. See also bathing Lewis, Matthew Gregory, 42, 58, 114 on carnivals, 97, 100, 102, 104, 108 on slaves, 34, 65, 70, 71, 72–73 and Venus, 44–45 lignum vitae, 54 liminality, theory of, 108 linen, 46, 134–35, 175 linen markets, 40 Livingstone, W.P., 129–30, 133–34, 141 loincloths, 37 Long, Edward, 46, 54, 59, 70, 84, 94 on carnivals, 98–99 on clothing, 52, 63–65 on clothing rations, 30, 146 on cloth-making, 47–49, 50, 51, 52 on headwraps, 86–87 Lovejoy, Paul, 13
266
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lower classes, 133, 150, 152, 154 and Sunday best, 143–45 Lubar, Steven, 2 Lydia Ann, 143–45 Lynch, Thomas, 50 Madden, R., 65 Madras cloth, 162–63, 192–93, 228n143 magazines, 118, 142 Mali, 21 Manchester cloth, 21 Mande people, 25 Mandeville, 151–52 Mandingo people, 27–28, 70 Manley, Beverly, 191 Marcia, 71 markets. See also traders cloth trade in, 40, 53, 224n79 peasant women in, 161–65 Maroons, 5, 60 bark-cloth production by, 50, 52, 158 as rebels, 76, 95, 96 Martinique, 88 masking, 98–99, 112, 189 dress as, 108–9, 166 masquerade. See carnival material culture, 1–4 dress as, xi–xii, 3–4, 6, 7–8 Mathison, Gilbert, 42 Mawri people, 20, 80 Mathurin Mair, Lucille, 5–6 Mbunde, Nzinga, 69 “Me Know No Law, Me Know No Sin,” 43–44, 45 medicine, 8–9 men, 131, 146 dress of, 15, 118, 152, 184–86 Mende people, 99 merchants, 126, 130 middle class, 116, 129, 131 education for, 127–28 and fashion, 134–36, 148–50 leisure activities of, 143, 151–52 mulattoes as, 113–14, 135
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status symbols of, 139–40 middle passage, 26–27, 109 migration, 16, 192, 203n1 millineries, 149 Minetta, 73 Mintz, Sidney, 7, 13 miscegenation, 9, 113–14 missionaries and clothing, 37, 158, 160, 168–69 as educators, 127–29, 142 Moore Town, 95, 96 Moravians, 128 Mountain Lucy, 75 mourning dress, 23, 51 mulattoes, 9–10, 100 headwraps of, 92–93 social status of, 27, 100, 113–14, 135 and whites, 139–40 murder, 73 Musgrave, Lady, 128 Muslims, 21, 27–28, 57 muslin, 36 myalism, 28, 60, 116 Nanny, 76, 95, 96 Nettleford, Rex, 135, 185–86 Nigeria, 20, 23, 79 Njenji, 102 nudity, 25, 26–27, 34 among slaves, 37, 151 attitudes towards, 29, 151, 152 Nugent, Lady, 114, 124, 126 nurses, 146 obeah, 8, 9, 28, 96, 116, 169 O’Neal, Gwendolyn, 95 osnaburg cloth, 30–31, 33, 35–36 in clothing, 37–39, 46, 82, 85, 158 decline of, 134–35 panama hats, 145, 150 Papaw people, 70 Patterson, Orlando, 71
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peasants, 114–15, 117, 150, 167 dress of, 157–70 and Europeanization, 155, 165–67, 169 poverty of, 166–68 peddlers, 133 pennistone, 30–31, 33, 37–38 perfume, 54, 195 Peter, 79–80 petticoats, 46 Peyton, Mr, 31 Phelps, Elizabeth Stuart, 122 Phibbah, 40–41, 75, 124 Phillippo, James M., 114, 137, 145, 154, 224n82 Phillips, J., 32 plantations. See also peasants; planters archaeological evidence from, 41–42, 48, 59, 60 brutality of, 65–66 clothing rations on, 32–33, 34–35 dress on, 30–31, 46–60 labour force on, 115, 117 planters, 33–34, 38–39. See also plantations Pocomania, 164 poison, 73, 76 poke bonnet, 147–48 politics of representation, 175, 186–87, 188–89 of subalternity, 108–9 Port Antonio, 151 positivism, 116–17 poverty, 166–68 and dressing up, 169–70, 178 Priscilla, 74 Prown, Jules David, 4 pull skirt, 47, 134–35, 158, 161 quilting, 49 racism, 170–73. See also stereotypes bleaching as response to, 188–89 Radner, Joan, 108
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Ragatz, Lowell, 5 rape, 43–44, 45 Rastafarians, xii, 6, 15, 185–86 rebellion, 5, 70–71 in 1760, 70–71, 79, 84–85 in 1831, 75–76, 79, 80, 81, 95 in 1865, 167 dress and, 95, 97, 107 women’s role in, 71, 75–77 red, 60, 62 symbolism of, 96, 107, 193 religion. See also specific religions; AfroCaribbean religions; missionaries in Africa, 69, 96, 107 colour in, 96, 107 and dress, 8–9, 59–60, 89, 94–95, 193 and personal hygiene, 127 representation, politics of, 175, 186–87, 188–89 resistance, 7, 11, 67–69, 155. See also accommodation accommodation as, 140, 177, 178 African origins of, 67–70, 77, 84–87 analysis of, 5, 7, 67–68 bleaching as, 188–89 carnivals as, 98, 104, 106–9 physical, 72–75 by slave women, 67–69, 70–77, 176–77 Revival Zionism, 8, 95 revolution, 78–79. See also rebellion Roach-Higgins, Mary Ellen, 3, 18, 80, 95, 113, 166 Robertson, Claire, 69 Rodney, Walter, 77 romance, 89–91 Royal Jubilee, 152–53 runaways, 5 disguises of, 81, 82–84, 113, 177 women as, 69, 71, 74 Sadler, Mary, 83 St Lucia, 88
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St Vincent, 92–94 sandals, 59 sand-shoes, 152 scarring, 86 schools, 127–29 Scott, James C., 77, 108, 110 Scott, Joan W., 4 Scott, Michael, 98, 106, 108 Scotus, Philo, 62 seamstresses. See also sewing freed women as, 129, 156–57 slave women as, 40–41, 46, 63, 176 self-help societies, 128–29 self-image, 13–14, 138 self-mutilation, 73–74 Senegal, 24 Senior, Bernard, 46, 124 on rebellion, 79, 81, 95 separates, 121 servants, 145 Set Girls, 98, 100–104, 107 queen (Ma’am) of, 102, 104 sewing, 40–41, 128. See also seamstresses sewing machines, 157 sexual exploitation, 43–44, 45 resistance to, 73, 74–75 sexuality clothing and, 37, 94, 181, 184–85 and power, 45 racist views of, 25, 27 as tool, 44, 124 shawls, 135 Shepherd, Verene, 74–75, 76, 140, 183 shifts, 46 shoes, 131, 152 in dressing up, 62, 160 slaves’ lack of, 46, 59, 82 shopping, 133–34 silk, 21, 22, 31 skin bleaching of, 123, 126, 139, 141, 187–89 colour of, 139–40, 171, 172
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slave drivers (headmen), 38 slave men, 34, 38–39, 46, 94 slave trade, 21 slave women, 5–6 and African heritage, 84–87, 109, 176, 178 branding of, 82–83 clothing of, 34, 37–45, 123–24, 175–76 commodification of, 42–43 economic achievements of, 40–41, 176 and European fashion, 124–26 exploitation of, 45–46 objectification of, 37, 45 as resistors, 67–69, 70–77, 109 roles of, 53, 109, 176 as sex objects, 37–38, 43–46, 73, 74–75 skilled, 39, 176 and slave men, 34 and white men, 45, 110 slavery, 2, 5, 27, 169 slaves, 5, 6, 10. See also clothing rations; freed persons; slave men; slave women children of, 38, 42–43 clothing of, 29–31, 34–36, 38, 65–66, 123–24 creativity of, 7, 32 dehumanization of, 42–43, 59, 109 diversity among, 69–70 domestic, 27, 63, 124 education of, 28, 127 elderly, 32–33 field, 27, 46–47 owners’ views of, 69–70 and personal hygiene, 53–54, 151 skill levels among, 38–39, 40 status among, 27, 42, 84–85, 124 urban, 27, 46, 82 Sloane, Hans, 52 smocks, 46
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soap, 54, 142, 195 social Darwinism, 116–17 social mobility, 170–73 Songhai people, 24 spinning, 48 spoon bonnet, 148 Staley, H., 32 Stanley, E., 116 Stanton, Elizabeth Cady, 122 stereotypes of black body, 25, 27, 178 of black faces, 59 of black women, 43, 109–10, 138, 170–72 fight against, 140–41 Stewart, J., 28, 36, 69–70, 125 Stone, R.H., 25 street style, 15, 184–85 strikes, 72 style, 3 African, 47 among slaves, 62–63 in colonial society, xii, 78 dandy, 82, 185 European influence on, 52, 62–63 imperial, 152–54 power of, 183–84, 190 subalternity, politics of, 108–9 sugar industry, 17, 30, 35, 48–49, 52, 167 suicide, 71 sumptuary laws, 31–32 sun bonnet, 147 Sunday best, 150–51, 158, 189 as dressing up, 143–45, 169–70 and poverty, 169–70 ridicule of, 171–72 Suriname, 60, 90–91, 217n103 Swaby, James, 80 swimwear, 151–52, 227n119 symbolic inversion, 177–78 Syrians, 182 Tacky, 70–71, 79 Terborg-Penn, Rosalyn, 67–68
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textile manufacturing, 20–22, 25, 47–53. See also cloth Thistlewood, Thomas on Phibbah, 40–41, 75, 124 on rebellions, 71, 79 Thompson, Robert Farris, 17 tie-head. See bandanna; headwraps Toby, Jackson, 112 traders, 115, 133, 161–65, 192 tred-bag, 164 Trinidad, 40 Trotman, David, 13 trousers, 46, 145 trumpet tree, 50 turbans, 87, 94–95, 190. See also headwraps Underhill, Bean, 115 unemployment, 167 uniforms, 95–96, 145–46, 153–54 United Brethren Church of Jamaica, 128 United States, 167 cloth-making in, 48, 49 dress in, 32, 78, 184 slave clothing in, 35, 36 upper class. See elite Upward and Onward Society of the Women of Jamaica, 128, 149 vacations, 151–52 veils, 56–57 vendors, 115. See also traders Venus (“Big Joan”), 44–45 vestries, 29, 30–31, 32, 38 Waddell, H.M., 108 Walker, C.J., 137 Warner-Lewis, Maureen, 13 washerwomen, 54, 63, 124, 142, 151 Wass, Betty, 18–19
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weaving, 48–49, 50 wedding dress, 159–60 West, Cornel, 140, 141, 156 whips, 107–8 whiskers, 146 white, 158, 160 whites, 9 and accommodation, 137 and black women, 45, 110, 170–72 fashions of, 87, 124–25 in Jamaican society, 113, 116–17 and mulattoes, 139–40 and slave clothing, 34–35 Williams, Cynric on carnivals, 100, 104, 106 on Jamaican clothing, 55–57 on slave clothing, 33, 38, 123 women, 5–6 in Africa, 68–69, 165, 176 as agents of change, 175 care of clothing by, 11, 189–90 cloth production by, 52 dress styles of, 78–79, 118–23, 152 education of, 127–28 as entrepreneurs, 114, 115 Indian, 182–83 as resistors, 109 as spiritual leaders, 69, 76 as warriors, 68–69, 76 as workers, 131, 165 Women’s Self-Help Society, 128–29 wool, 22, 36 Worth, Charles Frederick, 120, 221n42 yellow, 9–10 Yoruba people, 27, 99 colour use of, 96, 107 and dress, 19, 23, 24, 25, 79, 160 women of, 68–69, 88
