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
