Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Figures
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction: The “Mulatto/a” Vengeance of ‘Haitian Exceptionalism’
- Part One From “Monstrous Hybridity” to Enlightenment Literacy
- Part Two Transgressing the Trope of the “Tropical Temptress”: Representation and Resistance in Colonial Saint-Domingue
- Chapter Four Moreau de Saint-Méry's Daughter and the Anti-Slavery Muse of La Mulâtre comme il y a beaucoup de blanches (1803)
- Chapter Five ‘Born to Command’: Leonora Sansay and the Paradoxes of Female Benevolence as Resistance in Zelica; the Creole
- Chapter Six ‘Theresa’ to the Rescue! African American Women's Resistance and the Literary History of the Haitian Revolution
- Part Three The Trope of the Tragic “Mulatto/a” and the Haitian Revolution
- Part Four Requiem for the “Colored Historian”; or the ‘Mulatto Legend of History’
- Coda: Today's ‘Haitian Exceptionalism’
- Bibliography
- Index
Chapter Five - ‘Born to Command’: Leonora Sansay and the Paradoxes of Female Benevolence as Resistance in Zelica; the Creole
from Part Two - Transgressing the Trope of the “Tropical Temptress”: Representation and Resistance in Colonial Saint-Domingue
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Figures
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction: The “Mulatto/a” Vengeance of ‘Haitian Exceptionalism’
- Part One From “Monstrous Hybridity” to Enlightenment Literacy
- Part Two Transgressing the Trope of the “Tropical Temptress”: Representation and Resistance in Colonial Saint-Domingue
- Chapter Four Moreau de Saint-Méry's Daughter and the Anti-Slavery Muse of La Mulâtre comme il y a beaucoup de blanches (1803)
- Chapter Five ‘Born to Command’: Leonora Sansay and the Paradoxes of Female Benevolence as Resistance in Zelica; the Creole
- Chapter Six ‘Theresa’ to the Rescue! African American Women's Resistance and the Literary History of the Haitian Revolution
- Part Three The Trope of the Tragic “Mulatto/a” and the Haitian Revolution
- Part Four Requiem for the “Colored Historian”; or the ‘Mulatto Legend of History’
- Coda: Today's ‘Haitian Exceptionalism’
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
‘Je connais, disait un vieux philosophe Anglais, deux choses qui portent dans la tête tout le délire de l'orgueil et de l'impudence: c'est l'encensoir entre les mains d'un homme, et l’écritoire entre celles d'une femme. J'espère que mon titre de femme et d'auteur me fera pardonner cette citation. D'ailleurs, pas un des intéressés ne croira pas la sentence sans appel.’
—Emilie J..t, Zorada; ou la Créole (1801)‘En cette occurrence, comme en bien d'autres, les femmes se montrèrent plus hommes que les hommes.’
—Victor Schoelcher, Colonies étrangères et Haïti (1843)In 1808, Leonora Sansay (born Mary Hassal) anonymously published an epistolary romance which many literary critics and historians take to have been at least partially inspired by the time the author spent in Saint-Domingue during the latter years of the Leclerc-Rochambeau expedition (1801–03), Secret History; or the Horrors of Santo-Domingo in a series of letters, written by a Lady at Cape François to Colonel Burr, Late Vice President of the United States, Principally during the Command of Rochambeau. Historian Tessie Liu writes that the ‘bits of complex life’ described in Secret History, namely the author's affair with U.S. Vice President Aaron Burr, alluded to in the novel's title, ‘suggest that Secret History is largely autobiographical’ (394). Elizabeth Maddock Dillon, for her part, points out that ‘[l]ike Mary's fictional sister, Clara, Sansay was married to a French colonial from Saint Domingue, Louis Sansay,’ concluding that because the names Clara and Mary are used in Secret History and were two of the names Sansay used, ‘the novel is loosely based on Leonora Sansay's experience in Saint-Domingue during the years 1802–03’ (2007, 77–78). In addition, Colin (Joan) Dayan has convincingly argued that the ‘source’ for Sansay's epistolary ‘book of horrors’ was actually a letter Sansay penned to Burr on May 6, 1803, only a year after she had arrived in Saint-Domingue with her husband (1995, 167).
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- Tropics of HaitiRace and the Literary History of the Haitian Revolution in the Atlantic World, 1789–1865, pp. 253 - 287Publisher: Liverpool University PressPrint publication year: 2015