Georges by Alexandre Dumas - Literature review Example

Client Georges by Alexandre Dumas Alexandre Dumas wrote a lesser known novel en d Georges that was a work that addressed racial issues in an age where those issues were extremely volatile in France. The issue, however, was personal to Dumas because of his own heritage. While this book exhibits the classic structure and themes of a novel of the French Romantic period, it embraces a topic that is less examined in that time period. With a prolific career and a flamboyantly spent life, Dumas gives his stories passion and romance, while injecting intrigue and adventure. In Georges, however, a unique opportunity arises to examine the issue of race, an issue that still gives our society difficulty in this age. Alexandre Dumas wrote some of the most well-known tales of adventure in history. His historical epic adventures listed The Count of Monte Cristo, The Man in the Iron Mask, and The Three Musketeers among his many titles, although originally his fame was derived from the plays that he wrote in Paris. He was born on July 24, 1802 with the name Dumas Davy de la Pailleterie and laid to rest on December 5, 1870. He wrote prolifically using many styles and genre’s to complete his portfolio. He wrote plays, novels, children’s stories, magazine articles, and even Alexandre Dumas‘ Dictionary of Cuisine. His career began with writing for magazines, but by 1829 he 1 Client Last Name would see his first play produced. That play, Henry III and his Court would be followed the next year by Christine. His career was a success by his intuition on marketing his work and it was the business of writing that created a successful career for him along with the talent for the work. In 1840 he would marry an actress by the name of Ida Ferrier, but it would be one of his four illegitimate children, Alexandre Dumas fils, who would write the novel La Dame aux Camelias, from which Giuseppe Fortunino Francesco Verdi would develop his famous opera, La Traviata. Because of the success of both writers, the father would be known as Alexandre Dumas pere, and the son as Alexandre Dumas fils. Dumas did a great deal of collaborating in order to develop his work. The Count of Monte Cristo, and The Three Musketeers were developed by Auguste Maquet who would create the plot and the characters after which Dumas would add in the details and dialogue. This collaboration would create speculation about the extent to which Dumas contributed, however “ninety-nine surviving pages of Maquet’s manuscript outline for The Three Musketeers reveal that he not only supplied significant and historical detail, but also furnished a substantial but agreed ’treatment’ which Dumas followed in parts, but radically altered in others.” (Dumas, p.xiv) According to David Coward in the introduction of his translation of the text of The Three Musketeers, the material that Maquet would provide would be expanded into hundreds of pages of content rich text and well developed details. In the late 1700’s, the French Revolution had taken its toll on France and the 2 Client Last Name colonies. However, one of the blessings that came from the Revolution was the emancipation of French slaves, held mostly in the Caribbean colonies, but still under French ownership. According to William Cohen and James D. Le Sueur, in their book entitled The French Encounter with Africans, “The Revolution,. . . forbad all slavery, and the introduction of slaves into France, which had been allowed under certain circumstances under the Ancien Regime.” In 1791, those of African decent were given “all the rights of citizenship” and “once slavery was abolished, these rights would be upheld equivocally.”. The Resolution would read “The National Convention declares slavery abolished in all the colonies; in consequence it decrees that all men, without distinction of color living in the colonies are French citizens.” In 1802, the year of Dumas’ birth, Napoleon would bring slavery back to the colonies. Napoleon would be the instrument through which a great deal of prejudice and discrimination would ensue during the early 1800’s, much of which was a fear of intermixing the races. (Cohen, p.118-119) This would be the world into which Dumas’ would be born. Dumas’ paternal grandmother was Marie-Cesette Dumas, an Afro-Caribbean former slave which gave him a heritage of mixed race. Dumas’ bold looks that were contrived of the ethnic mix in his lineage would give him bold looks and a striking demeanor. In the writing of Georges, he would explore the issues of race and expand upon his experiences of having an ethnically variant ancestry. Georges is set on the island of Mauritius, where the British lands an expedition to 3 Client Last Name overtake the island from the French. Pierre Munier, a planter of means, but considered a ‘mulatto’, tries to join the fight, but is not allowed because of his heritage. He creates an army of his own out of others who were refused the right to fight because of race, and is victorious over the British. After the French are ultimately defeated by the British and the colony is under British control, Pierre sends his sons away to France to become educated because of a conflict between himself and the leading white plantation owner. His youngest son, Georges, has become an educated and wealthy man of society. He returns to his home island with the a British friend who will be the new Governor. As with all romances, irony will find its way into his life when Georges falls in love with Sara, the sister of Henri and daughter of the white planter with which his father had found himself in conflict. Georges wishes to marry Sara, but Henri refuses and also refuses to conduct a duel with Georges based on his status as a ’mulatto’. When an incident occurs at a horse race where Georges whips Henri across the face, Henri still refuses to fight and gathers a mob to punish Georges. They horsewhip him, leaving him broken and shunned from society. Georges then leads a slave rebellion, which puts him at odds with his friend Sir William Murray who captures the Georges and condemns him to death. Georges’ brother, Jacques, who now is in now a slave-trader, swash buckles in at the last minute to save Georges who married Sara before his impending execution. In the end, after a battle at sea in which Sir William’s ship is set on fire and sinks, Jacques, Georges, Sara, and 4 Client Last Name their father, Pierre, are finally free of the oppression of the island and sail away together. Dumas is very clear in his feelings toward the unfair treatment of those of mixed race in his book. However, his feelings toward slavery seem to be more ambivalent. He applies ethics to the characters in regards to the ownership of slaves, his character Pierre, himself a slave owner. The brother, Jacques who is in the business of selling slaves, is given the ethic of only dealing with slaves who are in a dire situation to which slavery might be seen as an improvement - that is according to the text. While the rebellion is squashed by the imprudent consumption of alcohol, a clearly prejudicial plot ploy, the slave, Laiza, is an example of bravery and dies in efforts to protect Georges. This novel is an example of French romantic literature of the nineteenth century. French literature had moved into a period that was more secular in nature. According to Geoffrey Strickland who wrote, Stendhal: The Education of a Novelist, quotes Professor Charles Moraze about the move to secular styled literature. “The widespread popularity, Moraze argues, of anti-religious ideas in the eighteenth century and of an idealistic secular humanism, can be explained partly in economic terms.” Strickland goes on to describe the first half of the nineteenth century as having “The widespread religious skepticism . . .going with this, the popular cult of religious sentiment as opposed to religious belief.(Strickland, p. 11) This lead to the ideals of the romantics who sought out stories that were not necessarily in line with religious ideals which dominated literature before this time. The writer who would be considered the hero of Romanticism would be François- 5 Client Last Name René, vicomte de Chateaubriand. He is considered the founder of French Romanticism. It would be his definition of the vague des passions (the intimations of passion), that would become the foundation of the Romantic movement in French literature. This could be defined as “the felt inadequacy of any particular object of desire.” Chateaubriand wrote: The more people advance in civilization, the more this condition of the vague des passions increases. . . The great number of examples one has before one’s eyes, the multitude of books that deal with man and his sentiments, make one clever without experience. . . One inhabits with a full heart an empty world; and, without making use of anything, one is disabused of all. (Larmore, p. 68) In other words, Chateaubriand maintained that while the world was a cold place, men harbored delusions of sentiment and passion that were reflected in the literature. The work of Alexandre Dumas upheld this directive with great fervor. His work was full of adventure, honor, and triumph. In Georges, he would let the hero win the lady and sail off into the sunset. This ‘happily ever after’ scenario could be associated with Chateaubriand’s definition of vague des passions. Although, Dumas would not always go for the ’happily ever after’, but would substitute the theme of ‘vengeance is mine’. Georges would have several concepts that would be reused in Dumas’ work The Count of Monte Cristo. As recorded in an excerpt from an introduction to The Count of Monte Cristo: Dumas did not generally define himself as a black man, and there is not much evidence that he encountered overt racism during his life. However, his works were popular among the 19th-century African-Americans, partly 6 Client Last Name because in The Count of Monte Cristo, the falsely imprisoned Edmond Dantès, may be read as a parable of emancipation. In a shorter work, Georges (1843), Dumas examined the question of race and colonialism. The main character, a half-French mulatto, leaves Mauritius to be educated in France, and returns to avenge himself for the affronts he had suffered as a boy. (The Count of Monte Cristo) The theme of exile and a return for revenge is prevalent in both novels. Although, the theme of revenge is a much more complex and less triumphant in the end of The Count of Monte Cristo. Revenge is served cold and calculating with little regard to what will happen after that revenge is accomplished. Edmund is as much a victim of his own will for revenge as those upon whom he takes vengeance. This plot has a deeper sophistication in its complexity, and the will of the character is not determined by the classic hero status that suggests that all will be well in the end. The work in Georges has the appearance of a personal manifesto for Dumas. While his biographies do not mention any particular evidence of racism, in the Napoleonic era of fear over the issue of interracial conception, one would assume that this issue was raised during his life. The novel shows a preference to the interracial offspring that are persecuted without a proclamation against the ownership of those of African descent. This condemnation against discrimination is specific to those termed ’mulatto’. This would be the racial classification that he would have had to deal with, being one quarter African descent. While Georges is not one of Alexandre Dumas’ most known works, and the novel is not a lengthy work, the impact of this type of literature on the people of the time, and 7 Client Last Name on those who would read it today, would speak to inner truths about the way in which thought about race issues is processed. During the time of the work, the race issue had been going through decades of turmoil in France. The slaves were emancipated, they were citizens, then they were slaves once more, their blood considered a taint on the bloodlines of the French. Georges was a hero, yet he was of a race that was suspect in the eyes of some of the French. If he could act with such honor and in such love, his value as a human being could not possibly be less than a lighter counterpart. As well, in this modern day time period, Georges can be read and examined for its distinctions between the mulatto and the African descent slaves. Such a fine line establishes the ridiculous nature of using skin color to make judgments about the humanity of individuals. Anthropologists maintain that there is no such thing as race. In a statement on the issue of race in 1998, the American Anthropological Association, clearly stated that: The "racial" worldview was invented to assign some groups to perpetual low status, while others were permitted access to privilege, power, and wealth. The tragedy in the United States has been that the policies and practices stemming from this worldview succeeded all too well in constructing unequal populations among Europeans, Native Americans, and peoples of African descent. Given what we know about the capacity of normal humans to achieve and function within any culture, we conclude that present-day inequalities between so-called "racial" groups are not consequences of their biological inheritance but products of historical and contemporary social, economic, educational, and political circumstances. (American Anthropological Association) Skin color is just melanin. What contemporary society can take from Georges is that there should be no distinction of “race”. Human beings love, have honor, are courageous, 8 Client Last Name and have faults. Skin is not a factor in how those things are enacted - circumstance determines the nature of a person. 9 Client Last Name Works Cited American Anthropological Association Statement on "Race". 17 May 1998. The American Anthropological Association. 07 December 2008. Cohen, William B. and Le Sueur, James D. 2003. The French Encounter with Africans. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, . 06 December 2008. Dumas, Alexandre forward and translation by David Coward. The Three Musketeers. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991. Larmore, Charles E. 1996. The Romantic Legacy. New York: Columbia University Press. 05 December 2008. Strickland, Geoffrey. 1974. Stendhal: The Education of a Novelist. New York: Cambridge University Press. 05 December 2008, 10 Client Last Name The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas. 2000-2005. About the Author. E- Books. 7 December 2008. 11 Read More