Social and Cultural Foundations for the Rise of Female
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SOCIAL AND CULTURAL FOUNDATIONS FOR THE RISE OF FEMALE LEADERSHIP OF VOUDOU IN NEW ORLEANS by KENDRA MARIE BUSBY (Under the Direction of Sandy Dwayne Martin) ABSTRACT The Voudou women of New Orleans garnered leadership positions in the nineteenth-century differing from the rest of the United States. This thesis will provide possible explanations as to how this female role came into being. As a city isolated and consistently mismanaged, this enterprise details how New Orleans held an open a space for women, specifically free women of color, to achieve upward mobility unlike anywhere else in the country. It will also document how the voice of the Voudou woman, in particular, has roots in West African Vodu, a religious tradition varies from the European patriarchy with its delegation of women as near equal. Vodu’s survival upon transplantation to the New World and continued adherence through Haitian Vodou allowed this female role to survive. This work will then cite the Voudou Queen Marie Laveau as illustration for these leading female figures, aiding in a new historical approach to recover often forgotten, and sometimes overlooked, figures. INDEX WORDS: Voudou, Vodu, Vodou, Marie Laveau, New Orleans, West Africa, Haiti, Women, Slavery, Slave Trade, Antebellum South SOCIAL AND CULTURAL FOUNDATIONS FOR THE RISE OF FEMALE LEADERSHIP OF VOUDOU IN NEW ORLEANS by KENDRA MARIE BUSBY B.A., The University of Pittsburgh, 2013 A Thesis Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of The University of Georgia in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree MASTER OF ARTS ATHENS, GEORGIA 2015 © 2015 Kendra Marie Busby All Rights Reserved SOCIAL AND CULTURAL FOUNDATIONS FOR THE RISE OF FEMALE LEADERSHIP OF VOUDOU IN NEW ORLEANS by KENDRA MARIE BUSBY Major Professor: Sandy Dwayne Martin Committee: Carolyn Jones Medine Ibigbolade Simon Aderibigbe Electronic Version Approved: Julie Coffield Interim Dean of the Graduate School The University of Georgia May 2015 DEDICATION It is a strange predicament, knowing that whomever you dedicate your work to will be appreciative of whatever it is you chose to write, but at the same time feeling the pressure of perfection as they deserve it most. Perhaps that is why I lean on another in undertaking a task that should be far less difficult than writing the thesis itself. When I first read Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own, I felt an unusual affinity toward her words. They were teeming with power in the way of being sly as opposed to startling, and her analysis of the difficulties that female writers and intellectuals faced in the early twentieth-century was not discordant to what I had experienced in the modern era. It was within this text that Woolf posited, “I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman.” Habitually overlooked, sometimes forgotten, Woolf’s notion of the woman resonated with my work on women within the religious context. The New Orleans Voudou woman sought to break out of the mold of the silenced “other,” as did Woolf, and as do I in the way of writing about them in this very thesis. My life would be for naught if particular women had not been part of it. They were the women who fed me and clothed me, who taught me to accept everyone but question everything, and who, too, fought against this silence. I feel a further inclination toward Woolf for reasons resounding outside of the mind, those resounding within in the soul. Suffering from what was often described of as “mental illness,” Woolf fell victim to a society unwilling to accept or understand the depths of sorrow that is depression. While hard to evince, what I know firsthand is the iv continued misconception about depression as if it were either this mercurial state or one that comes to fruition after years and years of internal strife and fomentation. Unhappiness feels as if you spend every day maundering around to fulfill the workings of a universal equilibrium until you allow yourself to think, I don’t skew the balance, I go unseen, I don’t matter. To shed tears while in a pool of water does not mean you have not cried, only that tears go unnoticed within the confines of encompassed liquidity. Though I feel a connection to Woolf for her words, her want for feminism, and her struggles with depression, I have been remarkably lucky to find those who feel a connection with me. They are my stars whose incandescence strengthens upon the darkening of the night sky. Without them I would drown within my sadness, and with them I have accomplished this great feat of writing. Accordingly, I want to dedicate this work to these very women: Jennifer, my engrossing sister, Maya, my ingenious childhood companion, Georgia, my roommate with a beautiful capacity to listen, Maria, my intellectual counterpart, and Elizabeth, the sun to my moon and the best friend a girl could ever ask for. Thank you for quelling my inundating anxieties and supporting me without exception. v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank Dr. Sandy Dwayne Martin for his guidance, Dr. Ibigbolade Simon Aderibigbe for his insight, and Dr. Carolyn Jones Medine for her indelible encouragement. I also thank my family and friends for being a cornerstone of support. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ............................................................................................... vi CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION .............................................................................................1 Thesis Structure ...........................................................................................3 Etymology and Definition ............................................................................5 Academic Study of Voudou .........................................................................8 2 UPWARD MOBILITY IN NEW ORLEANS .................................................14 Geographic Sequestration ..........................................................................15 Deviating Jurisprudence .............................................................................20 Shifting Demographics ..............................................................................28 Upward Mobility of Women ......................................................................33 3 VODU, VODOU, VOUDOU LINEAGE ........................................................41 West African Vodu .....................................................................................42 Haitian Voudou ..........................................................................................48 New Orleans Voudou .................................................................................56 4 THE WOMEN OF NEW ORLEANS VOUDOU ...........................................63 Persecution .................................................................................................65 The Historical Marie Laveau .....................................................................70 The Mythical Marie Laveau .......................................................................80 vii 5 CONCLUSION ................................................................................................86 The Decline of Voudou Practice ................................................................86 Overall Significance ...................................................................................89 7 BIBLIOGRAPHY ..................................................................................................92 viii CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION Born of southern lineage, I have always been fascinated by the dichotomous role of the illustrious southern belle. I heeded the idolization of woman, on one end, and, on the other, witnessed her subsequent demoralization. This division is one reminiscent of Rosemary Ruether and Ina Johanna Fandrich, who respectively wrote of the frustrating disunion between saint and witch, Mary and Eve. In her analysis of the female as symbol of evil in the scriptures of Tertullian, Fandrich asserted that “female initiative and women’s control over their own lives and over others appeared to be the key issue dividing the ‘good,’ submissive, passive, vessel-of-God, saint/Mary type from the ‘bad,’ insolent, active, independent witch/Eve type.”1 I questioned if the adversity of early Christian European women was not but equivalent to those in the American antebellum South. Disheartening too was the idea that the male-dominated society of the South, simply put, benefitted the male, he who had no trouble finding theoretical support for a way of life decidedly to his advantage. Obedient, faithful, submissive women strengthened the image of men who thought themselves vigorous, intelligent, commanding leaders. 1 “Consequently, the strong women leaders I could identify either sacrificed their sexuality (and vowed strict obedience to a male clerical hierarchy) by joining a religious order like Hildegard of Bingen and Theresa of Avila or they were burned at the stakes as witches like Joan of Arc.” Ina Johanna Fandrich, The Mysterious Voodoo Queen, Marie Laveaux: A Study of Powerful Female Leadership in Nineteenth-Century New Orleans (New York: Routledge, 2005), 7. 1 Though initial fascination bred from upbringing, it deepened in the discovery of a historical oddity. New Orleans Voudou women, particularly in the nineteenth-century, differed to women of the American South. Voudou offered a model of female behavior contradicting the ideal of “true womanhood”2 permeating dominant groups in New Orleans. Where