Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-77c89778f8-vpsfw Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-18T00:22:43.407Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
This chapter is part of a book that is no longer available to purchase from Cambridge Core

5 - Uniting Black and White Families: Sophie Doin

Doris Y. Kadish
Affiliation:
University of Georgia
Get access

Summary

It is fitting to end with the example of Sophie Elisabeth doin, née Mamy, who stands as undoubtedly the most fervent and committed abolitionist of the women considered in this book. Central to her abolitionist thought is a utopian vision of the harmonious roles of fathers, daughters, and slaves. Doin fashions a composite model—a man and a woman in some cases, a black and a white in others—which symbolizes the unity of divergent but complementary human traits. This model, which parallels and emblematizes the unity presumably achieved by France's recognition of Haiti in 1825, is the basis of Doin's abolitionism. It also provides the foundation of her views about women which, if not in the forefront of early nineteenth-century French thought about women, has significant feminist components. Doin wants to believe that daughters and wives can be partners with fathers and husbands, just as she believes that whites and blacks can. These partners should work productively together, without a superior male authority. An independent woman and an active writer for over two decades of her short life—she was born in 1800 and died in 1846—Doin remained convinced of the possibility and desirability of harmonious gender and race models of justice and benevolence. Unity should provide the means through which women, like slaves, could best coexist in a society riddled with injustice and oppression. As we shall see later, Doin's vision doubles that of the important Haitian writer Juste Chanlatte in L'Histoire de la catastrophe de Saint-Domingue.

Type
Chapter
Information
Fathers, Daughters, and Slaves
Women Writers and French Colonial Slavery
, pp. 127 - 151
Publisher: Liverpool University Press
Print publication year: 2012

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×