Unfit Caretakers: Representations of Enslaved Women and Reproduction in British West Indies Medical Literature, 1764-1833

In this paper I examine the representations of enslaved women in texts concerning the treatment and transmission of yaws and lockjaw in the British West Indies during the era of abolition. Using these two diseases as case studies I analyze why physicians, plantation owners, and other commentators constructed the enslaved woman as irresponsible, promiscuous, and incapable of caring for herself and others. These medical, political, and historical texts served to assert their authors as necessary experts in a subject and to justify their intervention in the reproductive and neonatal health of enslaved women. I also connect these representations to larger trends surrounding the institutionalization of maternal care, the treatment of women in general, and other common cultural stereotypes about African peoples.