Property: A Novel, by Valerie Martin
Valerie Martin's absorbing new novel takes us to a plantation in Louisiana in the early 1800s. The story is told by a slave-holder's wife, Manon, who seems to have no warm feelings for anyone but her deceased father. She despises her husband, and in her chronicle only deigns to identify him as "he" or "my husband."
There are no heroes or heroines in this novel. The husband can be seen as a villain because of his brutality towards his slaves, but we may still feel pity for him because of his cold wife and admire his bravery in the face of danger.
This short book shows how the degradations and humiliations of slavery twist the lives and thoughts of both slave-owner and slave. Manon, a very intelligent but purposefully repressed woman, sees clearly that she, like the slaves, is the property of her husband. When she returns from a visit to her dying mother, she feels "the sight of him was like a door slamming in my face. I even heard the catch of the latch." Yet she does not translate this understanding to her treatment of slaves. She may not be brutal, but she feels no compassion for their fate. When a free mulatto who is in love with her personal slave, Sarah, offers to buy her for the huge sum of $2,000, twice what she would be worth in the open market, Manon refuses the offer. Sarah belongs to her and will always belong to her.
I highly recommend this novel to anyone who is interested in slavery and its human consequences.
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