Hawaii's Story by Hawaii's Queen, Queen Liliʻuokalani
- Hawaii's Story by Hawaii's Queen, Queen Liliʻuokalani
In her book Paradoxes of Hawaiian Sovereignty: Land, Sex, and the Colonial Politics of State Nationalism, J. Kēhaulani Kauanui argues that, in the nineteenth century, Hawaii’s ruling Kanaka elite engaged in a “radical restructuring of Hawaiian society as a protective measure against Western imperialism” (23). Kauanui suggests the elites reasoning behind this restructuring was that, if they ruled over a kingdom that aligned with Western norms, the West could not use the civilizing mission as a logic behind invading their kingdom (136). Part of this project was reorganizing the relations between men and women on the island to ones that aligned with the “Western civilizing process of colonial modernity, in which the bourgeois family was the model to be emulated” (158). In Kauanui’s own assessment, the capitulation of the kingdom to colonial epistemologies before colonialism itself had occurred increased rather than decreased Hawaii’s susceptibility to a colonial takeover.
Western imperialism gained a stranglehold on Hawaii when the missionary class enacted an illegal invasion of the kingdom in 1893. The import of the entity of sexuality in the enterprise of empire, as seen in the context of Hawaii, may be gleaned through an article published by Rev. Sereno E. Bishop– a member of this missionary class– in The Independent months after the invasion. In the piece titled “A Royal Palace Democratized,” Bishop alludes to “disgusting orgies that [had] polluted ['Iolani] palace” since the beginning of King Kalākaua's reign in 1879. Bishop further declares that Kalākaua and “ex-queen” Liliʻuokalani had no “real hereditary royalty” but were instead the illegitimate children of a mulatto shoemaker, which, he says, explains the “slight African trace in the hair.” On this basis, Bishop claims, “white Hawaii loathes them, and native Hawaii has no respect for them” (905). By questioning the ruling Kanaka elite’s lineage, and proffering around them notions of polluted kinship, Bishop enrols the realm of sexuality to delegitimize the Hawaiian monarchy. Through producing derogatory versions of both sexual practice– huge orgies in their palace– and their sexual kinship– illegitimate children– Bishop renders the native elite as a class unworthy of rule as per contemporary Western standards of bourgeois sexual respectability.
In light of the imperial ideology epitomized by Bishop’s writing, I want to place some tension on Kauanui’s critique regarding the inefficiency of Kanaka elites adoption of Western practices of gender and sexuality as an anti-imperial tactic. To do so, I build on Lydia Kualapai’s reading of Hawaii's Story by Hawaii's Queen that marks Lili'uokalani's ability to portray her personal life from the sensibility of “a farsighted political strategist” (32). In contrast to Kualapai’s more generalist reading, which attends to the variety of anti-imperial tactics Lili'uokalani's memoir mobilizes, I focus on a particular site in relation to the memoir’s aim of restoring the respectability and position of the island’s ruling class in the face of the onslaught of degrading imperial ideology: marriage. I argue that Lili'uokalani at once centres marriage in her memoir and articulates the institution in a manner that would be palatable to the Western notions of sexual respectability held by the US audience that the book is meant for (48). In a memoir that asserts “representational… and political sovereignty,” I argue Lili'uokalani employs sexual respectability to restore her elite Kanaka clan to being a people worthy of ruling (Goeman, 37).
Lili'uokalani uses two seemingly opposed yet actually aligned strategies in her depiction of marriage: reticence, and preponderance. By creating an immensity of discourse regarding marriage and harnessing it within the discourse of respectability, Lili'uokalani situates marriage as a centerpiece of the Hawaiian elite’s propriety and right to rule. Marriage constitutes one of the primary mediums through which Lili'uokalani constructs the social world she portrays in her memoir. While marriage takes different positions in the motley sides of the book– front, back, side, center– it is always looming about the page. Marriage constitutes the titular topic of some chapters such as “Chapter IV– My Married Life.” Furthermore, the narrative of several chapters begins with marriage as an orienting mechanism: “Chapter X– My First Visit to the United States” begins on a ship with Lili'uokalani “accompanied by my husband, General Dominis; and amongst the agreeable company on board were Mr. and Mrs. Wm. F. Allen, Mr. Nott, who married Miss Mary Andrews, and Mr. C. O. Berger, who married a daughter of Judge Weideman” (emphases mine); Chapter XI with “In the year 1880 Miss Helen Aldrich of Berkeley, Cal., made me a visit. She was the daughter of Mr. W. A. Aldrich, a banker, who had married a first cousin of my husband, Elizabeth, the child of Mr. R. W. Holt” (emphases mine). Consistently, Lili'uokalani presents her social life in a way that completely aligns with norms of kinship and sociality that would be legible to U.S. settler readers. Lili'uokalani, it appears, only commingles among those whose social relationships completely align with Western norms. Through this construction of a respectable social world based around marriage, Lili'uokalani offsets colonial charges regarding Hawaiians occupying a vulgar sexuality.
Within its respectable occurrence, Lili'uokalani also emphasizes the regal nature of marriage within her elite Kanaka clan. The original edition of Hawaii's Story by Hawaii's Queen includes not only a majestic cover– blue inlayed with gold– but also a series of photographs of the royal family. These photographs are presented elegantly such that there is high-quality wax paper between pairs of photographs on opposite pages. In effect, photos of couples such as Lili'uokalani and her husband face each other, with a sheet of wax paper separating them. Through these elaborately rendered “formal portraits” of several generations of her family, Lili'uokalani’s memoir “stresses the continuity and dignity of modern Hawaiian monarchy” (Kualapai, 49).
Royal dignity also likely informs Lili'uokalani’s decision to approach the subject of marriage with a reticence that places the Kanaka clan’s practice of the institution within Western norms of propriety. Far from divulging the intricacies of her own marriage on the page, Lili'uokalani’s discourse on marriage serves as a route to retain–or even regain– royal respectability that may be lost in derogatory colonial discourse. This role perhaps best comes to the fore when we consider the way Lili'uokalani writes about Prince William Lunalilo, with whom she was engaged but never married: “But there were certain other incidents which came to the surface ere long which led me to break the engagement. Neither Prince William Lunalilo nor the Princess Victoria was ever married” (15). Herein, while the queen indicates her decision not to marry Lunalilo, she says no more about the fellow member of her clan. She does not diminish the stature of her royal family by saying anything negative about her suitor. Through silence regarding the cause behind breaking off her engagement, Lili'uokalani maintains her people’s respectability at the site of marriage.
Rather than constituting solely a literal silence, silence also of course strategically informs the manner in which Lili'uokalani talks about certain issues that emerge in her memoir. Here too, marriage is at the center of Lili'uokalani’s discourse. We see this strategic silence in the statement Lili'uokalani’s makes following her description of throwing wreaths into a volcano:
So, to prevent misunderstanding now, perhaps it would be well to notice that this propitiation of the volcano's wrath is now but a harmless sport, not by any means an act of worship, very much like the custom of hurling old shoes at the bride's carriage, or sending off the newly wedded couple with showers of rice; usages which form a pleasant diversion in the most highly cultivated and educated communities. (72)
Over here, Lili'uokalani renders her presentation of an indigenous custom in order to make it palatable to the notions of education and cultivation held by a Western audience. In Mary Louise Pratt’s words, this strategy entails “transculturation,” which is “the way in which subordinated or marginal groups select and invent from materials transmitted to them by a dominant . . . culture” (6). By creating a one-to-one comparison of the Indigenous throwing wreaths in a volcano and the customs shared by Western people of throwing rice and shoes at the married couple, Lili'uokalani presents her native custom as similar to a Western one. Rather than assessing this move, and Lili'uokalani’s presentation of marriage in general in terms of Kauanui’s assessment that an elite adherence to Western norms weakened Hawaiian sovereignty, I want to advance an alternative interpretation with respect to a shorter period of time. In a situation where her island had already been taken over, Lili'uokalani effectively harnesses marriage to make her monarchy legible and legitimate in a way recognizable to the ruling classes of the West.