Haiti and the Black Romantics: Enlightenment and Color Prejudice After the Haitian Revolution in Alexandre Dumas’s Georges (1843)

Abstract

MARLENE L. DAUT Haiti and the Black Romantics: Enlightenment and Color Prejudice After the Haitian Revolution in Alexandre Dumas’s Georges (1843) F or well over ioo years, the Haitian revolution haunted romantic fictions on both sides of the Atlantic.1 The Revolution appears in Leonora Sansay’s gothic romance Secret History, or the Horrors ofSt. Domingo (1808), Heinrich von Kleist’s tragic “Die Verlobung in Santo Domingo” (1811), Victor Hugo’s quasi-captivity narrative Bug-Jargal (1826), Harriet Martineau’s epic three-volume The Hour and the Man (1841), and Alphonse de Lamartine’s verse drama, Toussaint Louverture (1850). While all of these fictional works have become relatively well-known, the contributions of writers ofAfrican descent to a transatlantic tradition ofromancing the Hai­ tian Revolution has been far less acknowledged. After the Louisiana born francophone author Victor Sejour’s serialized short story, “Le Mulatre” (1837), and the Haitian author Emeric Bergeaud’s historical romance, Stella (1859), Alexandre Dumas’s adventure novel Georges (1843) is probably the most understudied of the black Romantic fictions of the Haitian Revolu­ tion. One reason for the lack of critical attention to the relationship of Dumas’s novel to the Haitian Revolution is likely due to the fact that like Herman Melville’s “Benito Cereno” (1855), Georges can only be consid­ ered an indirect representation of the Revolution.2 While both the plot i. For a bibliography of over 200 works written on the Haitian Revolution from 17871900 , see my website: http://www.haitianrevolutionaryfictions.com. 2. In Representations ofRevolution (1789-1820) (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983), Ronald Paulson describes indirect representations of the French Revolution: “Day-to-day actions were therefore understood in terms of analogues or fictions which related to the shifting policies (foreign and domestic) of the government of the moment, or of different SiR, $6 (Spring 2017) 73 74 MARLENE L. DAUT and characters found in Georges reflect Haitian revolutionary themes and the Haitian Revolution is directly mentioned as the inspiration for a (foiled) slave revolt, the actual location of the story is not Saint-Domingue nor Haiti. Dumas’s novel, instead, tells the story of Georges Munier, a free person of color living in Ile-de-France (present-day Mauritius) in the era of the Napoleonic Wars (1803-1815). Georges, the son of Pierre Munier, a rich planter of color, has one older brother, Jacques, who, importantly, be­ comes a slave-trader. Because the Muniers are free people of color, much like Dumas’s own father had been in colonial Saint-Domingue, they are subject to cruel treatment by a powerful family of “white” slaveholders, the Malnredies. The major conflict between these two families occurs when at the age of twelve Henri de Malmedie steals a flag that Pierre Munier won in a battle against the British. Pierre Munier had given the flag to his son, but Henri cites the fact that he is “white” as proof that he deserves the flag for himself. When Henri cuts Georges’s forehead with a saber, leaving Georges with a scar to forever remind him of the prejudice that Henri has exhibited towards him, Georges and his brotherJacques leave the island for France, vowing to seek revenge at a later date. While in France, Georges embarks upon a self-enlightenment project that he likens to a combat with civilization, which includes proving that he can resist the temptation of women, that he is not afraid to die, and that he is immune to the addiction of gambling. When Georges completes his mental, physical, and intellectual “enlightenment,” he returns to the re­ named island of lie de Maurice (now British controlled), determined to prove his humanity to the Malnredies. Georges soon realizes, however, that his skin color outweighs his education, good looks, and studied valor and that the same prejudices that existed there at the time ofhis departure some fourteen years earlier exist still upon his return. As a result, Georges frees all ofhis own slaves and joins forces with a runaway slave from the Malmedie plantation, La'iza, with whom he plots a general slave rebellion in an effort to pursue his “war to the death against color prejudice.”3 The slave...