Property Book

This won the orange prize in 2003. The novel is from the perspective of Manon Gaudet, a plantation owners wife. It is set in 1828 in Louisiana. It is rather brief and reads very easily, despite the horrors it describes. The book is in three parts; the build up to the slave revolt, the revolt and the aftermath.

Spoilers ahead

Manon is the daughter of a slave owner and her husband (who she hates). She describes the difficulties of her life with him; he has a child with one of the house slaves, Sarah. She also watches him through a spyglass while he plays sadistic, semi-sexual games with the early teenage male slaves. She hates plantation life and following her husband's death moves to the small town house left by her mother.

The book has been criticised because there is no redemption at the end, the slaves have no voice and it is unremittingly bleak. I think this misses the point. This story is an analysis of the slaveowner mentality, of someone who does not even begin to question slave-owning and all that goes with it. The slaves are commodities to be bought and sold, killed if necessary. They are property. Manon is not as physically cruel as her husband, but her house slaves are valued for what they can do for her. The vindictiveness with which she pursues her slave Sarah, when she escapes during the revolt is chilling. There is no economic imperative, just a desire to make Sarah suffer. There is also a sense that Manon too is property, being a woman. She is never likely to marry again; the one man she does like following her husband's death marries someone else because of her wealth. Manon does not question her situation and just has her husband wielded power, she too wields the power she has over her slaves, with similar effect.

As an analysis of the slaveowner it comes to rather a bleak and very sudden ending. The reader is left with the conclusion that the battle of ideas will have no effect on this class of people and change will have to come by force.