Bellies Demoisellies Plantation
George Washington Cable's "Belles Demoiselles Plantation"
George Washington Cable's "Belles Demoiselles Plantation" seems eerily contemporary, given the racial struggles revealed during the tragic history of Hurricane Katrina. It tells the story of a fine Creole man who owns a beautiful plantation that is secretly rotting from beneath, because of the way that it is built upon the water. Colonel Chaleau, with the knowledge that his home rests on sand, becomes desperate to get rid of the structurally unsound house upon the levy despite his love for the beautiful home. When he hears that his home's days are numbered, he attempts to buy the dilapidated buildings of his distant Indian relative that lie within the city. Charlie is old and half-deaf, and his lifestyle is a stark contrast to the beautiful, genteel existence of the house, where the Colonel's daughters enjoy their life of luxury and delicacy. The Colonel assumes that Charlie is ignorant, and the difference in circumstances between the two men illustrates the racial divides in New Orleans society, and how the Colonel is even willing to disobey the code of his family and people, because Charlie is a racial inferior, although related by blood.
However, Charlie is clever, despite the fact that he has not had the educational and social privileges enjoyed by the Colonel (as is indicated in his rough speech patterns in the story, which are very different from the Colonel's formal English and French). The 'Indian' as the author refers to him, begins to understand the worthlessness of the plantation and why the Colonel is so eager to buy, and then swap their two abodes. But before the two men can argue out their differences, the house falls into the cruel, muddy Mississippi, taking all of the Colonel's family with it into the water. The Colonel, bereft of his beloved daughters, dies of grief at the end of the story, and is eventually reunited with the girls and an image of his beloved home in paradise.
Works Cited
Cable, George Washington. (1874). Belles Demoiselles Plantation. Scribner and Sons.
Cornell University Library. Retrieved February 16, 2009 at http://cdl.library.cornell.edu/cgi-bin/moa/moa-cgi?notisid=ABP7664-0007&byte=204088333
Slow, lingering death lies in the daily carnage of body and spirit- not only of her own, but more so with Tom's. And so on that night, before Steven came and start his abusing spree of the mother and child, Julie prepared a special dinner for her and Tom. She and her son then devoured a delicious bowl of meatball soup, mixed with insecticide. In a matter of hours,
Clearly, color, specifically the color red, plays a significant symbolic role in developing these aforementioned central themes. At the most basic level, in a book that is primarily about slavery, color is a powerful theme as the colors of black and white divide society and is the entire reasoning for the conflicts of slavery. Even after emancipation, the colors of black and white continue to create conflict, as even Sethe
Beloved is a contemporary novel with the appeal of a ghost story, a mystery, and a work of historical fiction. It is a complex literary work that pieces together a story line of complexity with descriptions of how African-American people were treated before, during, and directly after the Civil War. This beautifully written and Pulitzer-Prize wining novel examines three generations of women -- one who was born in Africa and
Beloved by Toni Morrison is a haunting, darkly beautiful and intensely moving novel that depicts the profound traumatic reality of slavery and its repercussions on one woman's life, her mental stability and psychological well-being, her ideas of and abilities in motherhood, her entire sense of self, even her basic humanity. Beloved tells the story of an escaped slave woman who, when faced with capture, slipped into a state of psychosis
"The best thing [Sethe] was, was her children. Whites might dirty her all right, but not her best thing, her beautiful, magical best thing -- the part of her that was clean" (250). She had been made to endure a lot which most slave women experienced during enslavement. They were brutally raped, used and beaten and often had to work as prostitutes. "I got close. I got close. To
Swift unnavigable waters, swinging screaming baboons, sleeping snakes, red gums ready for their sweet white blood.... But it wasn't the jungle blacks brought with them to this place from the other place. It was the jungle whitefolks planted in them. And it grew. It spread....The screaming baboon lived under their own white skin; the red gums were their own. (Morrison, 198-199) The strong bond between Sethe and her children reflects
Our semester plans gives you unlimited, unrestricted access to our entire library of resources —writing tools, guides, example essays, tutorials, class notes, and more.
Get Started Now