1917–1934: (Price-Mars’s “Women of Tomorrow” and the LFAS Workshop — Price-Mars Facilitating “Haitian Women in History” at the June 1934 Workshop, His 1917 L…

1917–1934: (Price-Mars’s “Women of Tomorrow” and the LFAS Workshop — Price-Mars Facilitating “Haitian Women in History” at the June 1934 Workshop, His 1917 Lecture to Elite Women Parsing Haitian Women into Peasant and Elite Categories Arguing That Despite Differences They Were Bound by Shared African Ancestry but Elite Women Were Further Removed — Through Relationships with Peasant Women They Could Reclaim More Authentic Haitian Womanhood, Peasant Women’s Bodies and Work “Still in the Primitivity of African Traditions” Named as Interlocutors and Witnesses to Their Pure African Past, Price-Mars Also Asserting That Haitian Women Were Haitian Men’s “Tools” — Peasant Women Literal Tools of Agricultural Labor While Elite Women Were Ornaments for Men’s Respectability, Imploring Women to Stop Sucking the Marrow of Christian Traditions and Be “Impregnated in Their Brains” with Cultural and Civic Education — Intellectual Conception in Place of Immaculate Conception): Price-Mars facilitated the discussion “Haitian Women in History” at the LFAS workshop. His 1917 lecture “Women of Tomorrow” reflected his interest in women’s rights as a component of his commitment to indigénisme. In his studies of rural culture and society, peasant women’s lives captured his attention and led him to critically analyze the intersections between class, gender, culture, and color. Parsing Haitian women into two categories — peasant and elite — Price-Mars argued that despite their differences, poor and elite women were ultimately bound by their shared African ancestry. However, he advised elite women that they were further removed from this ancestry, and that through relationships with peasant women they could mend the divide and reclaim a more authentic Haitian womanhood. He delineated that peasant women’s bodies and work, still in the primitivity of African traditions, were the interlocutors and witnesses to their pure African past. Price-Mars also asserted that Haitian women were Haitian men’s tools — peasant women were literally tools of agricultural and market labor, while pious, expensively dressed elite women were ornaments for men’s construction of social identity and masculine reputation. He named a gendered objectification not unlike the characterization of a slave. To restore their personhood, Price-Mars implored women to stop sucking the marrow of Christian traditions that left them with intellectual poverty, and to be impregnated in their brains with cultural and civic education — intellectual conception in place of immaculate conception, a direct challenge to the elite conservative Catholic education many women received.