“What on Earth Did They Think They Were Doing?”:Plantation Mistress’s Precarious Identity in Valerie Martin’s Property
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Valerie Martin’s novel Property unfolds with Manon Gaudet as its central character, a white mistress consumed by voyeuristic fascination with the house slave Sarah. The narrative intricately captures Manon’s internal struggles as she grapples with understanding and signifying Sarah within the sociopolitical context of the antebellum South. Despite Manon’s continuous observation and interpretation of Sarah’s gestures through the lens of her racial fantasy, Sarah’s deliberate reticence frustrates the mistress’s attempts to integrate her into the knowledge system of the time. Many critics of the novel have seen in the relationship between the mistress of the planation, Manon Gaudet, and the house slave, Sarah, either an enslaver’s narrative or a lesbian narrative―that is a narrative about how slavery transforms the enslaver or about how sexual desire or passion is expressed in the context of chattel slavery. However, Manon is a more complex character than any other fictional depictions of southern mistresses in American literature, as she is both victim (of her husband) and victimizer (of Sarah in particular). Insufficient attention has been paid to this paradox or to the interior life of Manon, the focus and voice of the novel. This essay aims to scrutinize the interior life of the plantation mistress by exploring how Manon reconciles with slavery, particularly to assert her identity within the patriarchal and slaveholding Southern society in which she finds herself entangled. Subject to her husband but mistress to her slaves, Manon comes to find in slavery a necessary evil for her protection and the renewal of her identity. This she accomplishes by going from passive collaborator to an intentional abuser of Sarah and a supporter of slavery and the power of white slaveholding Southerners over black slaves.
Abstract
Valerie Martin’s novel Property unfolds with Manon Gaudet as its central character, a white mistress consumed by voyeuristic fascination with the house slave Sarah. The narrative intricately captures Manon’s internal struggles as she grapples with understanding and signifying Sarah within the sociopolitical context of the antebellum South. Despite Manon’s continuous observation and interpretation of Sarah’s gestures through the lens of her racial fantasy, Sarah’s deliberate reticence frustrates the mistress’s attempts to integrate her into the knowledge system of the time. Many critics of the novel have seen in the relationship between the mistress of the planation, Manon Gaudet, and the house slave, Sarah, either an enslaver’s narrative or a lesbian narrative―that is a narrative about how slavery transforms the enslaver or about how sexual desire or passion is expressed in the context of chattel slavery. However, Manon is a more complex character than any other fictional depictions of southern mistresses in American literature, as she is both victim (of her husband) and victimizer (of Sarah in particular). Insufficient attention has been paid to this paradox or to the interior life of Manon, the focus and voice of the novel. This essay aims to scrutinize the interior life of the plantation mistress by exploring how Manon reconciles with slavery, particularly to assert her identity within the patriarchal and slaveholding Southern society in which she finds herself entangled. Subject to her husband but mistress to her slaves, Manon comes to find in slavery a necessary evil for her protection and the renewal of her identity. This she accomplishes by going from passive collaborator to an intentional abuser of Sarah and a supporter of slavery and the power of white slaveholding Southerners over black slaves.
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