Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction Chercher la femme: Traces of an Ever-Present Absence
- 1 The (White) Female Creole Body: Bearer of Culture and Cultural Signifier
- 2 Falling from Grace: Creole Gothic, Flawed Femininity, and the Collapse of Civilization
- Coda I (Re)writing History: Revival of the Declining Creole Nation and Transatlantic Ties
- 3 Sexualizing and Darkening Black Female Bodies: Whose Imagined Community?
- 4 Colonial Democracy and Fin-de-Siècle.artinique: The Third Republic and White Creole Dissent
- Coda II Heritage and Legacies
- Notes
- Glossary
- Bibliography
- Index
4 - Colonial Democracy and Fin-de-Siècle.artinique: The Third Republic and White Creole Dissent
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction Chercher la femme: Traces of an Ever-Present Absence
- 1 The (White) Female Creole Body: Bearer of Culture and Cultural Signifier
- 2 Falling from Grace: Creole Gothic, Flawed Femininity, and the Collapse of Civilization
- Coda I (Re)writing History: Revival of the Declining Creole Nation and Transatlantic Ties
- 3 Sexualizing and Darkening Black Female Bodies: Whose Imagined Community?
- 4 Colonial Democracy and Fin-de-Siècle.artinique: The Third Republic and White Creole Dissent
- Coda II Heritage and Legacies
- Notes
- Glossary
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Ici, c'est nous qui sommes les bleus. Nous ne regardons pas à l'épiderme— car il est aussi des noirs sous la peau desquels on retrouverait le blanc.
Nous reconnaissons comme bleus, et nous acceptons pour tels dans nos rangs ceux qui, avec nous, ont un mot d'ordre: République et Egalité.
(Here, we are the bleus.Republicans]. We do not focus on complexion because it is also under black skin that you might find the blanc.royalist]. We identify as les bleus. and as such we accept among our ranks those who, like us, have one call to order: Republic and Equality.)
— ‘.lancs et bleus,’ L'Opinion. February 8, 1896The writing of the white Creole writer René Bonneville (1871–1902) illustrates that Jenny Manet's influence and the role of serialized novels published in local newspapers should not be underestimated in the development of Martinican literature and Martinican constructions of national identity and self. While Manet, in Maïotte.1896), explores the négresse.#x0027;s misfortunes and avoids political commentaries, Bonneville, in Le triomphe d'Églantine.1897), revels in the mulâtresse.#x0027;s reformed life as a means of promoting the Third Republic in Martinique. In so doing, he actively combats the prevalent préjugé de race.race prejudice).
Bonneville's serialized novel showcases both the people of color's republican stance against white Creole domination and their participation in colonialism; and it uses a rhetoric of victimization to depict the plight of people of color. The story, which takes place in the capital Saint-Pierre between the early 1860s and the mid-1890s, recounts the social ascent of the poor mulâtresse.#x00C9;glantine and her two children after her Creole lover Raoul Cauvert deserts them. In Le triomphe d'Églantine. Bonneville singles out Saint-Pierre; he gives priority to the urban space, and by extension to a more modern Martinique with its population's conflicted sexual, familial, racial, and political relationships. As the story negotiates between several discourses from France and its colonies, it promulgates the social emancipation of people of color and displays a more positive example of discursive cross-pollination than we have previously examined.
Unlike most white Creole writers, Bonneville praises the woman of color as a positive agent of progress, modernity, and nationalism. He thus subverts the values of his class in his remarkable portrayal of the woman of color.
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- Dangerous Creole LiaisonsSexuality and Nationalism in French Caribbean Discourses from 1806 to 1897, pp. 169 - 216Publisher: Liverpool University PressPrint publication year: 2016