I just finished my second book for the 2020 classics challenge, Georges by Alexandre Dumas, published in 1843 but set mostly in 1824 -- so, again, historical fiction. This is my choice for category #4: Classic in Translation. At first I couldn't come up with a book written in another language that had something to do with slavery. Instead I thought I'd read The Black Spider by Jeremias Gotthelf -- which I ended up also reading, and which turned out to be very creepy, with a little black spot on a woman's cheek becoming a big black spider embedded in her skin, a mark of the Devil. I won't soon forget that image.
But then I came across a mention of Georges. Dumas' grandmother on his father's side was a Black slave in the French colony that became Haiti. While people with African ancestry were treated better in France than in the United States in the 1800s, Dumas still had to deal with a fair amount of discrimination. Georges is apparently his only novel that addresses that issue. The novel is about a young "mulatto" man, Georges Munier, born on Ile de France (aka Mauritius, which switches from a French to a British colony early in the novel) who leaves the island to be educated in Europe and returns to avenge himself on the men who insulted him when he was a boy and who insult his father (nevertheless a successful plantation owner). He falls in love with Sara, a young white woman, leads a rebellion of the slaves on the island, and it all turns out well in the end (sorry about the spoiler, but since this is a romance/adventure story, how could it end otherwise?).The new (2007) translation, by Tina A. Kover, was very readable -- I kept wondering what previous translations were like. I read in the introduction that Dumas never actually visited Mauritius, but the novel's descriptive passages make it sound as though he had.
Although the book was pleasant, it didn't really grab me. The characters are full -- each has a distinctive personality. But I kept counting pages and watching the clock, not a good sign. I read that it was surprising that Georges received less attention than some of Dumas' other works, such as The Count of Monte Cristo and The Three Musketeers. I haven't read those, but maybe they're just better? Georges seems sketchy, incomplete. For example, although Georges' hatred of the de Malmedie men is an important theme for the first 2/3 of the book, after that we don't see them again. Another character given plenty of attention early on, Sara's governess, also drops out of sight as the book progresses.
Probably the most peculiar thing about the book -- for me, a modern reader -- was its treatment of race. Georges' father Pierre, also mulatto, owns hundreds of slaves, and Georges goes with him to purchase more -- from Georges' brother Jacques, who commands a slave ship. True, Georges himself goes around freeing slaves and/or giving them money, and he is mildly unhappy that Jacques traffics in slaves, but there are all sorts of throwaway comments like, "The Negroes fired. In general, they are a race of excellent marksmen..." And of course the famous line describing Chinese merchants as "the Jews of the colony." Much is made of the fact that Georges can pass as white, but is discriminated against when people find out he is mulatto -- implying that if you look white, you should be treated as white, not that you should be treated well regardless of your ancestry. On the other hand, many of the white men in the book (e.g., the de Malmedies) are portrayed as evil or stupid, and there are many positive non-white characters (e.g., Laïza).
It bothers me to type the word "mulatto" -- it seems so old-fashioned and derogatory. But Wikipedia just informed me that "mulatto" was a racial category in the US Census up until 1930, at which point, pressured by "Southern congressmen," Census adopted the one-drop rule and made everyone with any African ancestry into a Black person. Sigh. Now you can check "mixed race."
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