Fathers, Daughters, and Slaves: Women Writers and French Colonial Slavery by Doris Y. Kadish (review)

Reviews 217 opposition to Nazi tanks roaming in attack formations throughout the forests of the Dordogne.Weapons such as bazookas, parachuted in from England, became lifesavers in front of the Panzer tank,“le gros insecte” (Malraux 53) that menaced the countryside looking for partisans trying to get organized in secret places.“Non”also anecdotally bears witness to the roles women played in the Resistance. Other memories that still speak to us today recall, for example:“nos amis communistes”(Malraux 27) when the Left and the Right worked together for the same goal; the galvanizing moment when Jean Moulin was arrested at Caluire in Lyon; the use of torture by both sides to acquire information; and the specific uses of language such as the tutoiement employed among Resistors as opposed to the vouvoiement preferred among the Resistance leaders. Some illuminating stylistic comments by Malraux survive, such as his choice to use the present rather than the past tense for his narrative and his decision to keep Grandet in the back-story. Five articulate addresses by Malraux constitute an appendix to“Non” that is riveting in recalling the sacrifices made by the Resistors. Trinity University (TX) Roland A. Champagne Kadish, Doris Y. Fathers, Daughters, and Slaves: Women Writers and French Colonial Slavery. Liverpool: Liverpool UP, 2012. ISBN 978-1-84631-846-7. Pp. ix + 186.£64. This book by a pioneer in race and gender studies in early nineteenth-century French literature was worth waiting for. Packing much into a slim volume, Kadish’s approach and findings broaden our view of the field by devoting a chapter each to Germaine de Staël and Claire de Duras but also to three of their lesser-known contemporaries: Charlotte Dard, Marceline Desbordes-Valmore, and Sophie Doin. The author compares and contrasts the question of fathers, daughters, and slaves in these five writers’ lives and writings from a variety of angles (biographical, historical, textual) and related primary material by white and non-white men and women— from lesser known early nineteenth-century novels, stories, and memoirs to twentiethand twenty-first-century postcolonial fiction. Kadish’s book also includes a discussion of Bernardin de Saint-Pierre’s Paul et Virginie as background and analyzes three paintings: Massot’s little-known “Mme de Staël à côté du buste de son père” and two more famous images, Girodet’s “Portrait du citoyen Bellay, ex-représentant” and Géricault’s“Radeau de la Méduse.”If this sounds like a potpourri, it does not read like one. Though drawing upon some of Kadish’s published research, the volume is not a loose-knit collection of previously published articles. On the contrary, at the risk of occasional redundancy, the book never loses sight of its main argument and ties together clearly its many strands. While other scholars in this field have recently used queer theory, psychoanalysis, and theories about globalization to deepen our understanding , Fathers, Daughters, and Slaves asks us to turn our attention to a fact so fundamental it can escape attention. Uppermost in the minds of these relatively privileged early-nineteenth-century women writers (none of whom were working class, let alone slaves), were men who exercised authority over them, over persons of color, and over other women, specifically, fathers both real and symbolic. Kadish shows how some of these authors’representations of real or fictional slaves in the days before the abolition of slavery in 1848 attempted to bolster their own beloved father’s image or that of France’s‘benevolent’paternalism. Others, however, followed“in the footsteps of substitute fathers, constructing themselves as the paternal authority, pledging allegiance to new political leaders, or denouncing illegitimate father figures” (2). The book continually demonstrates in-depth knowledge of the Atlantic slave trade and French racial politics that brings important and sometimes surprising light to bear on all five authors, even the best-known ones. The chapter on Ourika is exemplary in this regard, for the insights it offers on a text that has been studied so much one could well imagine it had nothing left to yield.Throughout there are side notes to little-known texts and authors and bibliographical references that scholars will be...