When Women Ruled the Pacific: Power and Politics in Nineteenth-Century Tahiti and Hawai'i by Joy Schulz

Author:Joy Schulz [Schulz, Joy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: HIS036140 HISTORY / United States / State & Local / West (AK, CA, CO, HI, ID, MT, NV, UT, WY), HIS053000 HISTORY / Oceania, SOC028000 SOCIAL SCIENCE / Women's Studies
Publisher: Nebraska

Conclusion

Foreign statesmen failed to understand the esteem Ka‘ahumanu held in the eyes of the Hawaiian people. Just as they ridiculed ‘Aimata, who refused to speak their language and mothered her children in front of them, white visitors to the Hawaiian islands refused to admire Ka‘ahumanu. Unfortunately, one reason was because of her size. Hawaiian ali‘i women were large. Visitors often guessed three hundred pounds, although those estimates most likely were high. Rose de Freycinet wrote in her journal, “Imagine a woman in her thirties, 5 feet 10 inches tall, fat not in proportion to her height, but out of all proportion—in short, enormous.” Rose’s husband, French captain Louis de Freycinet, was even less generous: “These female colossi, who seemed to exist only to eat and sleep, looked upon us mostly with a stupid air.” Freycinet was much annoyed when his audience with Liholiho could not begin until Ka‘ahumanu arrived.55

Like Tahitian women who undertook special diets to gain weight, Hawaiian ali‘i women spent their young adulthoods tightly wrapping themselves in tapa while eating poi to achieve their society’s standards of beauty. Modern women and men apply the same rigor to diet and appearance, albeit to achieve the opposite effect. Where Americans and Europeans saw laziness, indolence, and selfishness, Hawaiian women saw spiritual blessing, provision, and rest, a reminder that cultures can be delicate and easily damaged by condescension and condemnation.56

Of course, what eroticized French writers and disgusted English and American missionaries were Polynesian standards of (un)dress. Most foreigners did not appreciate the labor-intensive process of pounding bark into cloth or using nature to produce color. For Hawaiians, creating tapa was women’s work because cultivating taro was not. In these gendered divisions of labor, many Hawaiians saw spirituality.57

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