The child's world view is shaped by their relationship with their parents or guardians. The roles played by mothers, grandmothers and fathers in the scene of recognition have already come under scrutiny, and this chapter now revisits those scenes, paying greater attention to gender. To do so requires a discussion of gender stereotypes which are prevalent throughout the Caribbean, such as the absent father and the practice of ‘othermothering’, and of stereotypes which have developed in a specifically Francophone Caribbean context, such as the femme matador and poteau–mitan. By focusing on parents and guardians, it is possible to observe how gender stereotypes are reaffirmed – or challenged – across the récits d'enfance. In this chapter, the focus extends beyond the corpus examined thus far to demonstrate how specific links with other texts open up new meanings. Such links build a more nuanced portrait of parental roles and gender stereotypes, which allows another facet of the récits d'enfance, the role of self–censorship, to come to light.

The femme matador and the poteau–mitan

In 1939 the African American sociologist Edward Franklin Frazier published a study of the legacy of slavery on family structures, The Negro Family in the United States. Frazier presented the plantation as a site of emasculation and discussed the evolution of a family structure held together by females, which he termed the ‘matriarchate’. On the plantations, he argued, a system of selective reproduction was enforced in order to supply new slaves, and men were instructed to procreate without having any subsequent responsibility for the women they impregnated or their children. Male slaves were stripped of power and compelled to defer to the overseers and slave drivers, who upheld a system in which the plantation owner and master was the ultimate patriarch, having the power to decide the fate of slave men, women and children. A similar structure is identified by Glissant in Le Discours antillais, where he observes that ‘la “famille” en Martinique a d'abord été une “anti–famille”. Accouplement d'une femme et d'un homme pour le profit d'un maître.’ Glissant draws attention to the important role played by women who resisted this ‘accouplement’ by inducing abortions and refusing to bring children, and hence future slaves, into the world.