Fashioning Society in Eighteenth-Century British Jamaica

By examining writings by women in the long eighteenth century and comparing them to contemporary sources, this book seeks to complicate the stereotypes present of overconsumption and insensibility in British Jamaica. The sentimental exchanges of material goods solidified bonds for white women separated by the Atlantic.

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White women who inhabited the West Indies in the eighteenth century fascinated metropolitan observers. In popular prints, novels, and serial publications, these women appeared to stray from "proper" British societal norms. Although many women who lived in the Caribbean island of Jamaica might have fit the model, extant writings from Ann Brodbelt, Sarah Dwarris, Margaret and Mary Cowper, Lady Maria Nugent, and Ann Appleton Storrow show a longing to remain connected with metropolitan society and their loved ones separated by the Atlantic. Sensibility and awareness of metropolitan material culture masked a lack of empathy towards subordinates and opened the white women in these islands to censure.

Novels and popular publications portrayed white women in the Caribbean as prone to overconsumption, but these women seem to prize items not for their inherent value. They treasured items most when they came from beloved connections. This colonial interchange forged and preserved bonds with loved ones and comforted the women in the West Indies during their residence in these sugar plantation islands. This book seeks to complicate the stereotype of insensibility and overconsumption that characterized the perception of white women who inhabited the British West Indies in the long eighteenth century.

This book will appeal to students and researchers alike who are interested in the social and cultural history of British Jamacia and the British West Indies more generally.