Searching for the Invisible Woman: The Evolution of White Women's Experience in Britain's West Indian Colonies

Abstract

Abstract White women in Britain's West Indian colonies, including Barbados, Jamaica, and the Leeward Islands of Antigua, Montserrat, Nevis, and St. Kitts, have received far less attention from historians than have their counterparts in Britain's North American colonies. While scholars have taken up Mary Beth Norton's suggestion to historicize the evolution of white women's experience in colonial North America, the combination of the scarcity of evidence relating to women in the West Indian colonies and long‐standing stereotypes of such women as either decadent or passive have led to their historiographical neglect. However, in recent years a number of scholars have turned their attention to historical and literary analyses of white women's lives in the English settlements in the West Indies, and have uncovered evidence of female agency which has added depth and nuance to historical understanding of the lived experience of settlers in these British colonies. Many potential sources remain to be tapped for insights relating to the history of white women in these slave societies, and it is to be hoped that future histories of the British West Indies will be responsive to issues of gender.