Caetana Says No

This book is the story of two women linked by time and participation, albeit in dramatically different ways, to the system of slavery in Brazil’s coffee zone. Sandra Lauderdale Graham uses these two stories to paint a picture of life in the Paraíba Valley during the middle of the nineteenth century. This short work evidences the author’s deep knowledge of the coffee zone and the Brazilian slave system. In fact, a part of the joy of this book is the author’s willingness to expose the process of research and analysis. Graham describes this process as “something closer to archaeology than full-blown biography” (p. xxii). What emerges is an excellent example of social history—one that uses the specific as a vehicle to illuminate the general. The book’s two sections are constructed around the experiences of Caetana, a slave woman fighting to escape an unwanted marriage to another slave, and Inácia Delfina Werneck, an unmarried member of the powerful Werneck coffee dynasty, who in her will reaffirms the manumission of a slave woman and her five children and additionally bequeaths them several of her slaves. The stories, told in a very nuanced and sympathetic fashion, function as bookends that illuminate a culture characterized by its flexibility. Neither story ends clearly, and Graham uses that uncertainty to discuss the nature of the documents and of writing history.Graham’s sources—court documents, wills and estate inventories, censuses, parish records, and period publications—are familiar to social historians. She also uses secondary literature to expand the implications of the cases far beyond the coffee zone. In the first story, what emerges is the complexity of the master/slave relationship. The master, coercing his slave into an undesired marriage, is then convinced by the slave to support her efforts to have the marriage annulled on the basis of this very coercion. In this saga, we can see both the paternalistic power of the master and the patriarchal power of Caetana’s enslaved godfather, who exerts additional pressure. Graham uses this case to explore the broader context: the construction and workings of power at the local level, the household structure within slave communities (building on recent research emphasizing the significance and frequency of slave marriage and the importance of the slave family), the lives of slaves, the privileges based on trust but subject to the whim of the master, and the crushing impact of the master’s death on slave families. All these are seen in very human terms. Graham also discusses the issue of the slave master’s legitimacy, the circumscribed agency of slaves, the ambiguity of Brazilian slavery, and the structure of the master/slave relationship as shaped by the larger community.The crucial themes of patriarchy and patronage that undergird Caetana’s story continue into that of Inácia Delfina Werneck, a woman whose life epitomized the ideal of upperclass female respectability. Graham deconstructs the last will prepared by Werneck and then uses “thick description” to illuminate a number of important issues. Graham describes the will as primarily a “legal document that disposes of and distributes property,” as well as a cultural document that provides insights into a person’s relationship with God and family (p. 83). I suspect this reflects a transition in the nature of wills from being primarily part of a spiritual process of salvation to one, in the nineteenth century, that distributed property. This approach permits Graham to explore in great detail three generations of Werneck family history.Perhaps the story’s most important contribution is its interweaving of family history, marriage strategies, in-family purchase of property, and inheritance laws to show how the family patrimony was created, distributed through inheritance, and then recreated via “near-relative marriages” (p. 92) and re-purchase. Different behaviors are documented through the wills. Thus her younger sister’s recognition of her natural (illegitimate) child becomes an opportunity to explore the status of natural children. Graham uses the options available to this sister to explore the dilemmas faced by historians and to bring the reader into the world she has created and the world of writing history. To explore Inácia’s efforts to secure the future for her former slaves, Graham delves into inheritance and debt liability laws, the role of the executor, landholding and tenancy practices, and the worldview of slave owners. This is not an easy section to read, but it provides some important insights, such as the specific mechanisms used to reconstruct a family patrimony constantly threatened with disruption through inheritance rules.This book will be useful to specialists, but it will be of special interest for the classroom. These engaging accounts will allow students to see the process of researching history at work. Graham reproduces some of her documentation, which will permit students to reexamine the issues she raises. The book is also vivid and well written, in places elegantly so. Its style will draw the reader in as it moves easily from the story to how and why it was recorded and how it is being interpreted. Since the stories are used as vehicles to explore a range of specific questions, their uniqueness is not a liability. Their importance is not based on typicality but on their use by the author to explore larger issues. Graham is to be thanked for crafting this delightful and very successful example of social history

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