Property

Property takes place in 1820's Louisiana and tells the story of Manon Gaudet, the wife of a sugar plantation owner. Manon has an idealized view of marriage to a planter until she finds out that her husband has forced Manon's slave, Sarah, to become his mistress and is the father of Sarah's two children. Manon is devastated by the betrayal and becomes bitter. She rails against the system that treats her as nothing more than the property of her husband and wills her self not to have children. Manon is freed from the oppressive grip of her husband when a slave revolt occurs on the plantation. Manon's husband is killed and Sarah and her baby daughter escape. Manon sells the plantation and moves to New Orleans with Sarah's deaf son and two house servants. An inheritance from her mother lets Manon be self sufficient in New Orleans and she focuses much of her wrath towards the runaway Sarah, expending great time, energy and money in attempting to bring her back to Louisiana. Manon is very intelligent and knows the system of plantation patriarchy curbs her freedom, but she is unable to let her self see that Sarah is also a victim of her husband and of society, and she obtains great joy and satisfaction in tracking Sarah down and bringing her back to Louisiana. Valerie Martin's book is smart and extremely well written. The story is captivating, and is unlike anything I have ever read. Manon is complex; you do not like her but you can feel the pain of her husband's betrayal and the limitations society has placed on her. Ms. Martin effectively is able to portray the brutality of slavery in the United States, while at the same time and with the same skill shows how the system restricted white women. The book was outstanding and I would recommend it without reservation. 5 stars. Reviewed by misrich

'Property' relays the life experiences of Manon, the white wife of a Louisiana plantation owner during the time of slavery. Manon is disgusted by her husband but is hardly more sympathetic herself. The book expresses the hypocrisy and evils of slave ownership through Manon's petty distinctions between her vulgar, brutal husband, and her idealized view of her father. Ultimately, there are no hero's of this tale. Each character is uniquely flawed and human, and the beauty of this book is its realistic recreation of the time period without appealing to sentimentality or melodrama. This is an excellent book, and a very easy read. Like any good depiction of the human grotesque, reading 'Property' feels like watching a car accident, you are disgusted and appalled, yet you can't look away.

This is an interesting story of two antebellum women (one white, one black) in Louisiana, both of whom are "property". The main character in this story (told from her point of view), Manon Gaudet, is a young, white, married woman living on a sugar plantation in Louisiana in 1828. I think that the author does an excellent job illustrating how desensitized white property owners (of human chattel, that is) had to have been in order to justify the existence of slavery to themselves. Manon is NOT a likeable, nor even a sympathetic character. She hates her own status as "chattel", yet she never seems to make the connection that she is no different from the slave Sarah, nor any other slave on her husband's plantation, nor does she ever understand the slaves' desire to be free despite her own yearnings of freedom from the slavery of her marriage. (Women were "chattel", i.e., the property of their husbands, and had absolutely no rights of their own once they married. The money or property that a woman brought to the marriage in the form of a dowry became her husband's upon their marriage. If he gambled or drank it away, or spent it all on a mistress or prostitutes she had no legal recourse because a wife was not considered a person in the eyes of the law. She could not sue to get it back, nor could she even protect it from creditors if her husband was in debt. There was no way for her to try to change the system because women were not only not educated in the same way that men were educated, but were prohibited from the professions such as doctor or lawyer, and, even more importantly, they could not vote! Married women were not even permitted to own property until the mid-19th century, and even then, once this law was passed, subsequent legislation was passed which chipped away at this basic principle.) The status (or lack thereof) of women (married women in particular) is a secondary theme running throughout the book, and just when the readers begin to feel a bit of sympathy for Manon, the author shifts to show readers how devoid of feelings Manon truly is. She actually thinks that the white plantation owners have done a huge favor for the blacks by making them slaves! She shows again and again that she considers them inferior beings in every way (much the way men consider women inferior beings), and then wonders why slaves show resentment when their own families are torn apart by masters who sell off children, "spouses", or parents. The way she and her aunt or even her husband discuss how much another human being will bring at market is appalling. Readers could substitute "chair" or "painting" or even a "tract of land" for the slave--there was no sense that they ever understood that it was a human being they were discussing! The human being is reduced to an item, which loses value depending upon age, gender, etc. Her view of slaves and her failure to see them as other than something which exists only to meet her every need is chilling. Her husband was n

Unusual and extraordinary - these are the first 2 words that come to my mind when trying to describe this book. I've never read anything like it (...and to think, I read it only 2 sittings!)!This was a fictional slave narrative in the most unusual sense ... from the point of view of a remorseless female slave owner. It examines the psyche of the oppressor, making one even more sympathetic toward the oppressed! Valerie Martin skillfully created a fascinating portrait of an insolent and self-centered young woman and, in doing so, delved into that "peculiar institution" that denied freedom to whole race of people and was tolerated for so long in this country! VERY POWERFUL! I would definitely consider reading more of Ms. Martin's work.