1937-1946: (Minors Criminals or Insane — LFAS Women Repeatedly Identifying the Context of Women’s Postrevolutionary Citizenship on Conceptual and Material Gr…
1937-1946: (Minors Criminals or Insane — LFAS Women Repeatedly Identifying the Context of Women’s Postrevolutionary Citizenship on Conceptual and Material Grounds as an Infantilizing Criminalizing and Maddening Enslavement, Captured in Sylvain-Bouchereau’s 1937 Assertion “Haitian Women Were Minors Criminals or Insane” and Her Later Assessment That “the Woman Is a Slave” — Women’s Experiences and Relationships to the Respective Epidemics Echoing the Truths of Their Social Position and Citizenship Location): LFAS women repeatedly identified the context of women’s postrevolutionary citizenship on conceptual and material grounds as an infantilizing, criminalizing, and maddening enslavement. Captured in Madeleine Sylvain-Bouchereau’s 1937 assertion that Haitian women were minors, criminals, or insane, and her later assessment that the woman is a slave — Haitian women’s experiences and relationships to these respective epidemics echoed the truths of their social position and citizenship location. The fatality associated with the period communicated long-stated articulations of women’s compromised freedom and choices in modern Haiti — the legal categories were not metaphors but descriptions: women could not hold their own wages (minors), their children outside marriage had no rights (criminals), and their desperation was diagnosed as neurosis (insane).