In The Flow of Time – June 29, 2024
I just finished Property, a novel by Valerie Martin. This isn’t note taking research, it’s gestalt gathering.The story is set in 1828 told from the point of view of a “monstrously self-absorbed” wife of a plantation owner. I read it because it was recommended by a fellow historical fiction author, and it is set at the same time I’m researching. Someone else researched, wrote, and I was very curious how she handled her decidedly unsympathetic protagonist. I recommend it, but this is not a feel-good novel. If you think you’re going to read it, SPOILER ALERT. Later on I’m going to comment on the ending.
There is a fairly small slave insurrection in the novel. There was a real rebellion in 1811 that will very likely figure into my story. The 1811 rebellion shows up in Property, with mention that Mr Andry was seriously injured back then. He was. The author drops in a bit of verisimilitude, fact inside her fiction.
FACTS: the “German Coast Uprising” started on the plantation owned by Manuel Andry. It was the largest slave uprising in US history. Andry was, quite likely, a very nasty human being. Josephine Trudeau, daughter of Charles “Don Carlos” Trudeau, married Manuel Andry five years later. He was 29-30 years older than she. Josephine was Marie Laveau’s aunt, half-sister to her father. So Andry, quite likely a human piece of shit, became her relative. Three of Don Carlos’s four daughters married major members of the power elite.
Among the many things I’ll have to figure out is how Marie Laveau interacts with her white family.
So, what I was looking for in Property was the gestalt of how white people ran sugar plantations, how they related to their slaves, and, if it shows up, their attitude toward free people of color. I got that. This was a good read.
Manon Gaudet is the protagonist. She owns Sarah, a woman of mixed race, light-skinned. We get deep inside Manon’s thoughts, and her attitude toward Sarah, who is useful, intelligent, gets it right, and totally subhuman. During the slave insurrection Sarah escapes. She makes it to New York City, where she finds refuge with abolitionist Quakers. The story is inspired by a true escape, someone really did this.
But Sarah is hunted, recaptured, and returned to Manon, her owner. Sarah is once again a slave, waiting hand and foot on her owner. What follows is the very end of the novel. It is all first person, Manon’s point of view. She is speaking of Sarah. These are the last words in the novel.
Her eyes wandered away from me, to the plate on the table, the cup next to my hand. A strange inward-looking smile, as at a recollection, compressed her lips. “When you gets to the North,” she said, “they invites you to the dining room, and they asks you to sit at the table. Then they offers you a cup of tea, and they asks, ‘Does you want cream and sugar?’”I was dumbfounded. It was more than I had ever heard her say. My uncle was right, I thought. She had changed; she had gone mad. I took a swallow of my coffee. “And this appealed to you?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said, raising her eyes very coolly to mine. “It appeal to me.”
I considered this image of Sarah. She was dressed in borrowed clothes, sitting stiffly at a bare wooden table while a colorless Yankee woman, her thin hair pulled into a tight bun, served her tea in a china cup. The righteous husband fetched a cushion of make their guest more comfortable. It struck me as perfectly ridiculous. What on earth did they think they were doing?
I have no idea who what when where why or how, but if I write this story, that belief system must appear. It must. The inside of Manon’s head is filled with certainty and absolute inhumanity. I suspect three of Don Carlos’s daughters may have thought much the same.
