A House, a Pistol, China, and a Clock: The Articulation of White Masculinity and the Cult of Sensibility in 18th-Century Montserrat, West Indies

Summary

A modest plantation house overlooking the Caribbean Sea on the northwestern coast of Montserrat burned in the late 18th-century. The path charted by the fire was fortunately uneven and has provided us with an archaeologically intimate portrait of the domesticity of empire—from table settings to personal adornment to furniture. The composition of the household is as of yet unknown, however. There are traces of enslaved Africans, and a wealthy British male well versed in the aesthetics of 18th-century society and fashion. Female members of the household remain materially quiet. This paper examines the planter’s identity as a gendered subject to explore the social and cultural construction of masculinity and white manhood in relation to the planter class in Montserrat and the emergent cult of sensibility defining genteel society in England in the second half of the 18th-century, a gaze gender studies has only recently begun to turn on men historically.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• See Emily Play: Gender Studies in Historical Archaeology   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2013

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Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): 631