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Alejandro de la Fuente, Sarah L. Franklin. Women and Slavery in Nineteenth-Century Colonial Cuba., The American Historical Review, Volume 118, Issue 5, December 2013, Pages 1567–1568, https://doi.org/10.1093/ahr/118.5.1567a
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This book argues that patriarchy played a central role in the construction of a slave society in nineteenth-century Cuba. Institutionalized white male control required the subordination of females, especially of white women, and of people of color regardless of sex. Sarah L. Franklin explores the reproduction and implementation of patriarchal control by examining patriarchal ideals, which defined acceptable women's roles, and their impact on marriages, education, charity (especially as it became institutionalized through the Casa de Beneficiencia), and motherhood.
A book of such ambition must combine the analysis of gender discourse, images, and knowledge with the study of social mores as experienced by women and men of different social sectors. The author is more successful at discussing patriarchal ideals, particularly as articulated in previously unstudied religious manuals, sermons, and devotionals, than in analyzing how patriarchy shaped social relations. Franklin seems to imply that the impact of patriarchy was restricted to women: “understanding Cuba's slave society requires a gendered analysis to explore how patriarchy functioned in the lives of both white women and women of color” (p. 5). No effort is made to analyze in detail how men, especially poor whites or men of color (free or enslaved) experienced, attempted to implement, or were constrained by patriarchy. But there is also a question of sources. Although Franklin makes use of some judicial sources that allow her to examine the lives and actions of ordinary people, many of the printed materials on which the book is based are not really applicable to the lives and aspirations of popular subjects. As the author notes, the documentary record produced by women is scant and disperse, particularly when it comes to women of color, who “do not appear as frequently in archival records as white women do” (p. 33). To recover women's voices and aspirations, it may be helpful to study social practices and conflicts that defied patriarchal ideals, where women's voices may be better represented in the documents, such as cases of legally prosecuted sexual violence (estupro), in matrimonios clandestinos (marriages performed without ritual requirements), or in conflicts involving women rejecting prearranged marriages. Writer Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda was surely not the only woman who refused to honor the marriage arrangements made by her parents, or the only woman who perceived marriage as an unbearable “sacrifice” (p. 42).
