In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Reviewed by:
  • Les Deux Enfants de Saint-Domingue by Julie Gouraud, and: L'Esclave de Saint-Domingue by Michel Möring
  • Sophie Heywood
Les Deux Enfants de Saint-Domingue. Par Julie Gouraud. Suivi de L'Esclave de Saint-Domingue. Par Michel Mæring. Présentation de Roger Little. (Autrement mêmes.) Paris: L'Harmattan, 2012. 202 pp.

Roger Little's 'Autrement mêmes' series produces scholarly editions of forgotten or hard-to-find texts that shed light on the French colonial imagination. Here Little has republished two literary representations of the Saint-Domingue slave uprising of 1791. The first stage in the Haitian Revolution, the uprising was a watershed moment in the history of early French colonialism, and one that in the nineteenth century many in France preferred to forget. These are therefore two rare examples of texts that feature the incident, and they are also notable for being addressed to a young readership. The first is a novel for girls by Julie Gouraud, published in 1874, and possibly inspired by her mother's own childhood experiences. The second is Michel Möring's short story from 1860, which is reproduced as an annexe. Little's introductory essay provides biographies of the authors, and sets the books in their literary context, before looking at the relationship between text and images. Gouraud was one of France's most famous children's authors in the mid-nineteenth century. Her Mémoires d'une poupée (Paris: Ébrard, 1839) became the runaway success of the period and inspired many imitations, including the children's classic Mémoires d'un âne (Paris: Hachette, 1860) by the comtesse de Ségur. Gouraud published extensively with Hachette, but also with Catholic publishers, such as Mame. Möring is today forgotten, but he authored a number of titles for children in the 1850s that were re-edited several times, before devoting himself to his career in the Assistance publique. Both texts are accounts of the impact of the revolt on the colons, and feature slaves who save their white masters from certain death at the hands of the insurrectionaries. In both cases the authors try to teach children that the prejudices of their age towards colonial subjects were to be challenged. As Michel Manson notes, Gouraud's book is a good example of the Catholic paternalist interpretation of colonial subjects ('Julie Gouraud et Saint-Domingue: du roman familial au roman pour enfants', Strenae, 3 (2012), <http://strenae.revues.org/517>). While she clearly saw the black characters as the Other, and condemned the slaves' revolt as an act of terrible barbarity, the devotion of the 'good' slaves to their masters provided salutary lessons in Christian charity and the importance of not judging people. Still, as Little notes, the stark offensiveness of the accompanying illustrations serve to undermine Gouraud's nuanced discussion of race and colonialism: 'l'image effraie; le texte rassure' (p. xxi). The juxtaposition of Gouraud's text with Möring's story presents the interest of showing, as Little notes, that slaves were also included in the literary trope of the noble savage, and the strongly paternalistic tone in which such books taught children about the French colonial project. Finally, the select bibliography is useful in that it covers both studies on children's literature and colonial encounters. While Francis Marcoin's and Penny Brown's studies on nineteenth-century French children's literature (Marcoin, La Librairie de jeunesse et littérature industrielle au XIXe siècle (Paris: Honoré Champion, 2006); Brown, A Critical History of French Children's Literature, 1600–Present, 2 vols (London: Routledge, 2008)) and Cécile Boulaire's edited volume on Mame (Mame: deux siècles d'édition pour la jeunesse (Rennes: Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2012)) should be added to the list, this is a minor quibble, particularly in a text designed primarily as a resource for scholars working in postcolonial studies. [End Page 117]

Sophie Heywood
University of Reading
...

pdf

Share