-
1. A Dying Exoticism: The Enigmatic Fiction of Suzanne Lacascade
- Louisiana State University Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
26 26 1 A Dying Exoticism The Enigmatic Fiction of Suzanne Lacascade Qu’est-ce après tout que l’engagement sinon la restitution de quelque aspect de la vérité que l’on a choisi d’illustrer? What is engagement, after all, if not the restoration of some aspect of the truth that one has chosen to illustrate? —maryse condé, “La littérature féminine de la Guadeloupe” (1976) When Claire-Solange, âme africaine was published in 1924, the novel allegedly created such a stir that its author, Guadeloupean writer Suzanne Lacascade, was forced to leave her island home.1 Yet Lacascade is perhaps best known for being unknown; that is, it is her inscrutability that often precedes and intersects with critical examinations of Claire-Solange, her sole publication.2 What little biographical information is available verges on the nonexistent, as in writercritic Maryse Condé’s admission that “nous ne savons rien de Suzanne lacas- 27 A Dying Exoticism cade, de sa vie, de ses expériences” (“we know nothing about Suzanne lacascade , about her life, [or] about her experiences”).3 As a result, Claire-Solange is not only a literary text but also a historical document, the record of an otherwise unknowable black modernist woman writer. While such a claim rightly raises concerns about collapsing authorial and fictional identities, my aim here is to read the intersection between Lacascade’s life and her novel as evidence of the enigmatic nature of much early Francophone Caribbean fiction. Written between the death of exoticism and the birth of Negritude, Claire-Solange conjures and contradicts the work of predecessors, successors, and peers alike. It is fluent in the rhetoric of exoticism yet nevertheless advances a project of racial valorization that foreshadows Caribbean Negritude’s reclamation of the region ’s African heritage. It coincides with the literature of regionalism yet embraces a diasporic perspective whose reach extends far beyond the Caribbean archipelago. And, finally, Claire-Solange recalls the models of exemplarity proffered by Negritude and regionalism yet does so through a protagonist who is too feminist for the former movement and too acerbic for the latter. As a result, I am interested in how Lacascade’s novel, rather than conforming to fixed literary models, instead slips between them, revealing their permeability , points of contention, and, ultimately, interdependence. If the narrative of Claire-Solange,âme africaine is at times melodramatic, an assessment to which I will return later, it is a narrative whose flaws reveal the shortcomings of both exoticist escapism and Negritude “engagement.” When the protagonist ’s unmitigated praises about her native (Caribbean) and ancestral (African) homes seem to reach a fever pitch, it is then, and perhaps only then, that one realizes the extent to which much of Claire-Solange’s persona is deliberate, strategic performance. The character not only boldly asserts a self-determined identity but, being conscious of others’ desire to define her, also positions herself as a living tableau to be read critically, indeed, to be regarded carefully, rather than through the rose-colored lenses of exoticist or Negritude stereotypes. It is in this unexpected and original narrative turn that I locate Lacascade’s modernism . Set principally in World War I–era Paris, Claire-Solange opens with a cable announcing the imminent arrival of the title character, the twenty-year-old daughter of Aurore Duflôt Hucquart, a deceased Martinican mulâtresse (mulatta ), and Étienne Hucquart, a white Frenchman.4 A devoted daughter, ClaireSolange reluctantly leaves Martinique to accompany an ailing Étienne to France. There father, daughter, and various members of the Duflôt family settle into [44.200.82.195] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 11:59 GMT) Race, Gender, and Comparative Black Modernism 28 the home of Étienne’s widowed sister-in-law. This generous but strained hospitality soon proves more mercenary than altruistic: convinced that she married the wrong brother, Jeanne Hucquart, the consummate Parisian bourgeoise, plans to woo Étienne by welcoming his Caribbean extended family into her home. To ensure success Jeanne enlists Jacques Danzel, her godson, to court Claire-Solange, thus persuading her to remain in Paris with Étienne.Yet neither Jeanne nor Jacques is prepared for the vehemence with which Claire-Solange rebuffs their advances. She dismisses the former as her “tante blanche” (“white aunt”; 63), the latter as her “pseudo-cousin” (62). Claire-Solange further distances herself from French society by proudly declaring her difference, alternately identifying herself as nègre, africaine, and mulâtresse française. This resistance extends...