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Description edit
Valerie Martin’s Property delivers an eerily mesmerizing inquiry into slavery’s venomous effects on the owner and the owned. The year is 1828, the setting a Louisiana sugar plantation where Manon Gaudet, pretty, bitterly intelligent, and monstrously self-absorbed, seethes under the dominion... read more
Ridiculously Simplified Synopsis edit
Characters/People edit
- Manon Gaudet: Female slave owner
- Sarah: Manon's slave and her husbands mistress
- Walter: Sarah and Mr. Gaudet's deaf child
- Joel: Add a description of this character.
- Delphine
- Mr. Leggett
- Mr. Roget
- Dr. Landry
- Rose
- Mr. Sutter
- Mallon
- Charles
- Celeste
- Lelia
- Leo
- Sutter
- Dr. Sanchez
Quotes edit
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“Unbalanced I thought. So that was the name they had for a woman who could not pretend a villain was as good as a decent man.”
Manon
- Popular Highlights from Kindle Customers
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It was the lie at the center of everything, the great lie we all supported, tended, and worshiped as if our lives depended upon it, as if, should one person ever speak honestly, the world would crack open and send us all tumbling into a flaming pit.
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“She has done more than that,” I observed. “She has tasted a freedom you and I will never know.” My aunt looked perplexed. “What is that?” she said. “She has traveled about the country as a free white man.”
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I would hold fast to my independence as a man clings to a life raft in a hurricane. It was all that saved me from drowning in a sea of lies.
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Religion was for the negroes, he said; it was their solace and consolation, as they were ours.
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He drained the color from every scene, the flavor from every bit of food, the warmth from every exchange of sentiment. He had not so much destroyed my life as emptied it, and now that he was gone, I had to pretend there was something alive in me.
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“You will never find her,” he said. “She is no longer your property nor anyone else’s, and you will never see her again.”
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“I thought you would manage better than you have, Manon,” she said. “You neglect your duties and so you have no control in your own house.”
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It was as if I had been in a foreign country, a land where madness was the rule, and returned to find nothing changed but my own understanding.
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Though his ruin entails my own, I long for it.
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He wishes I might die of cholera, and fears that she may instead. I wish he might be killed while shooting rebellious negroes. She wishes us both dead.
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First Sentence edit
I watched him through the spyglass to see what the game would be.
Table of Contents edit
Part 1
Plantation Life
1828
Part 2
En Ville
Part 3
Insurrection
Part 4
En Ville
Themes & Symbolism edit
Authors & Contributors edit
- Valerie Martin (Author)
First Edition edit
Original Language: Add the language.
Publisher: Add the publisher.
Country: Add the country of publication.
Publication Date: Add the publication date.
ISBN: Add the ISBN.
Page Count: 196
Publisher: Add the publisher.
Country: Add the country of publication.
Publication Date: Add the publication date.
ISBN: Add the ISBN.
Page Count: 196
Awards edit
- Orange Prize for Fiction (2003)
Classification edit
- Library of Congress: Add the Library of Congress Classification.
- Dewey: 813.54
Subjects edit
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