Angelique O, This Return Policy Totally Sucks!
In the song , the woman, Angelique, is told, “If you don’t know how to cook, wash, and iron, you need to go home to your parents.” In the early 1900’s, if a wife did not fit his standards a Haitian husband had the right to send her back to her parents. Back then, people did not divorce; husbands simply returned wives they no longer wanted or fancied, and this practice was widely accepted. In my mother’s village in 1954, a man named Neva returned his first wife to her parents after a year of marriage. He claimed, “She was a frumpy dresser” and that she looked like his house cleaner, not a “decent” wife. Two weeks after returning his first wife, Neva remarried a woman named Vévé. He had eighteen children altogether, eight of whom were with Veve. Shockingly, even to this day many a Haitian woman stays with her husband whether he is “decent” or not; believing her security, welfare and social status are dependent the husband. These beliefs a...