The Struggle to Define Afro-Jamaican Womanhood, 1865-1938

这项研究考察了从1865年的莫兰特湾起义到1938年的劳工骚乱之间，非洲裔牙买加人社区内对妇女作为性伴侣、妻子、母亲、工人和公民的看法。1938年的劳工骚乱使牙买加走上了独立的道路，到目前为止，学术界对这一时期的关注很少。它首先试图评估这些想法在多大程度上与大都市女性理想相结合，这种理想将女性定义为依赖妻子和有爱心的母亲，并受到政府、教堂和小教堂、学校和媒体的支持。委员会还关注种族和阶级意识形态对在非裔牙买加人社区建立妇女理想的影响，以及非裔牙买加妇女对要求她们遵守这些理想的压力的反应。通过在非洲裔牙买加人的社会经济、政治和文化背景下以及非洲裔牙买加妇女的生活经历中考察他们的妇女观念，这项研究将能够揭示1865年至1938年间牙买加发生的重要发展，例如制糖业的衰落、移民和复兴运动。特别是，它将增进我们对第二代自由人对完全公民身份的追求的理解。它不仅将表明妇女在消除奴隶制遗留下来的阶级和肤色歧视的斗争中发挥了积极作用，阻碍了完全平等，而且这场斗争中关于公民身份的思想是通过对适当女性行为的评论而表达出来的。这项研究比1865年后牙买加现有的为数不多的关于性别问题的著作更全面地介绍了性别在第二代自由男子争取正式公民身份的斗争中所发挥的作用，因为它基于更广泛的来源，并关注非裔牙买加妇女的多样性。它不仅使用由白人岛民和游客编写的官方资料和材料，而且还使用非裔牙买加人编写的资料，包括传达底层、不识字的非裔牙买加人的性别理想的材料，如出版的民间故事、法庭证词和对第二代自由男子的采访记录，它将表明，不仅阶级和肤色，而且年龄和地点也影响非裔牙买加妇女对女性的看法以及她们对试图改变其行为的反应。

This study examines ideas about women as sexual partners, wives, mothers, workers and citizens within the Afro-Jamaican community between the 1865 Morant Bay Rebellion and the labour riots of 1938 that put Jamaica on the road to independence, a period which has thus far received scant scholarly attention. It first of all tries to assess the extent to which these ideas engaged with the metropolitan ideal of womanhood that defined women as dependent wives and caring mothers and was held up by the government, churches and chapels, schools and media. It is furthermore concerned to unravel the impact of racial and class ideologies on the construction of womanhood ideals in the Afro-Jamaican community and the responses of Afro-Jamaican women to the pressures put upon them to conform to these ideals. By examining Afro-Jamaican ideas of womanhood within their socio-economic, political and cultural context and alongside Afro-Jamaican women's lived experiences, the study will be able to shed light on important developments that took place in Jamaica between 1865 and 1938, such as the decline of the sugar industry, migration, and revivalism. In particular, it will enhance our understanding of the quest of the second generation of freedmen for full citizenship. It will not only show that women played an active part in the struggle to undo the class and colour discrimination which was a legacy from slavery and prevented full equality but also that ideas about citizenship in this struggle were articulated through remarks about appropriate female behaviour.The study provides a more comprehensive account of the role played by gender in the second generation of freedmen's struggle for full citizenship than the few existing works on gender in post-1865 Jamaica because it is based on a wider range of sources and pays attention to the diversity of Afro-Jamaican women. It uses not only official sources and materials written by white islanders and visitors but also sources produced by Afro-Jamaicans, including materials that convey the gender ideals of lower-class, illiterate Afro-Jamaicans, such as published folktales, court testimonies and transcripts of interviews with second-generation freedmen, and it will demonstrate that not just class and colour but also age and locality mediated Afro-Jamaican women's ideas of womanhood and their responses to attempts to change their behaviour.