Staging Iberian Domesticity in Africa

Abstract

The chapter provides a comprehensive picture of the wide array of activities designed and implemented by the Spanish and Portuguese to make the “perfect girl” and the new, domestic woman in Africa. Parenting skills and domestic tasks such as cooking, ironing, or decorating the home epitomized a feminine “culture” imbued with Catholic values. The transmission of Portuguese and Spanish domesticity to the colonies aimed to discipline African women in the context of an urban and westernized society that did not yet actually exist. The chapter elucidates how Iberian folklore and food was to promote the acculturation of African women in relation to European customs and habits. Whereas Portuguese folklore was perceived as a tool for stimulating the development of feminine qualities such as “endurance, flexibility, skillfulness, balance, elegance, and harmony,” Spanish cuisine was seen as magic wand for the metamorphosis. A Spanish diet allegedly transformed the colonized into new women, catalyzing their change from African to Iberian. Overall, this chapter questions the purported banality—or even innocuousness—of activities such as dancing, ironing, or cooking and instead argues that they were part of the cultural struggle to stabilize the empire.