Through Women's Eyes: Architectural Sketches of the West Indies

Abstract

Introduction The traditional view of European colonization of the Caribbean is that the colonisers invariably carried their cultural forms with them. Architectural designs were no different. Yet there is evidence that there were adaptations to the local conditions. The Caribbean hosted varied designs and styles and there seemed to have been some creative use of available building material. Visitors to the Caribbean invariably recorded their perceptions of the architectural forms found and so left a record of valuable data on the material culture of a region where life was often transient and natural disasters were frequent and destructive. The women's descriptions provide a fairly vivid picture of the built landscape of islands of the Caribbean. We learn of houses, school rooms, and churches but in many instances there were no detailed descriptions. Women's letters are the source material for this paper. Women's texts are valuable sources for the reconstruction of the Caribbean past (Brereton, 1994). For this paper, women's letters are examined to find information about the material culture of the islands of the English-speaking Caribbean from the late eighteenth century to the early years of the twentieth century. The paper examines the architectural descriptions and sketches found in women's writings and suggests that women's texts, and specifically their letters, are invaluable sources for the study of material culture, as they not only record information about material artefacts which might not have survived into the present, but describe them within the context in which they existed. Admittedly, the descriptions of artefacts in women's letters are not free of bias and so the descriptions and the contextual information must be treated as critically any other primary document. The information collated here is drawn from letters written mainly by visitors and short-term residents to the islands of the Bahamas, Antigua, Jamaica and Barbados from 1774 to the early twentieth century. In most instances the information is fragmented, recorded as part of a bigger picture and not necessarily the focus of the accounts. Hence, we get information about the layout of a building or the furnishing within the context of a social gathering such as afternoon tea, a ball or dance or just an evening's visit to the home of a resident. In other instances the description is more detailed, reflecting the interest of the writer in documenting the socio-cultural conditions of a particular island at a particular time and for a particular purpose. Together, these observations provide a composite picture of the architecture of the region. The women's comments are informed by their own expectations as well as by the situations in the individual islands. For example, the descriptions of Antigua by Janet Schaw in the 1770s and that of the Bahamas by Adele Hart in 1827 are vastly different from those given by Emelia Russell Gurney, who accompanied her husband to Jamaica after the Morant Bay Rebellion. Gurney' s descriptions seemed coloured by her eagerness to find evidence to disprove the alleged atrocities carried out by whites in response to the uprising in Morant Bay. Generally and naturally, the visitor, passing through, seemed to have measured the buildings they saw against the designs with which they were familiar. Their expectations included seeing buildings with projecting roofs, shady nooks, and chimneys. (Gurney, 1903, 293; Walker- Andrews, 1921). They wanted to see fine art and monuments of antiquity. (Hart, 1827, 76-77; Mozley, 1938, 121) Where they were disappointed or pleased we are able to glean the retention of British cultural forms or adaptation to the local environment in the built landscape. The Built Landscape The features of the built environment, including surviving buildings and their contents, are indices of the socio-cultural life of a people - their cultural contacts, lifestyle and living conditions of the past. …