What do you think?
Rate this book
Property
From the acclaimed author of Mary Reilly, a groundbreaking novel that reexamines the questions of power and resistance, violence and sex, which inform all her work.
Set in the surreal heat of the antebellum South during a slave rebellion, Property takes the form of a dramatic monologue, bringing to the page a voice rarely heard in American fiction: the voice of a woman slave holder. Manon Gaudet is pretty and petulant, self-absorbed and bored. She has come to a sugar plantation north of New Orleans as a bride, bringing with her a prized piece of property, the young slave Sarah, only to see Sarah become her husband's mistress and bear his child. As the whispers of a slave rebellion grow louder and more threatening, Manon speaks to us of her past and her present, her longings and dreams--an uncensored, pitch-perfect voice from the heart of moral darkness.
Property is riveting fiction, fast, richly plotted, shimmering with visual detail. It is also an invitation to re-examine the traditions of the Southern novel and the myth of the chivalrous South, and a haunting meditation on what Valerie Martin has called "the fantastic and constant perversity of the oppressor to feel victimized by the oppressed."
Set in the surreal heat of the antebellum South during a slave rebellion, Property takes the form of a dramatic monologue, bringing to the page a voice rarely heard in American fiction: the voice of a woman slave holder. Manon Gaudet is pretty and petulant, self-absorbed and bored. She has come to a sugar plantation north of New Orleans as a bride, bringing with her a prized piece of property, the young slave Sarah, only to see Sarah become her husband's mistress and bear his child. As the whispers of a slave rebellion grow louder and more threatening, Manon speaks to us of her past and her present, her longings and dreams--an uncensored, pitch-perfect voice from the heart of moral darkness.
Property is riveting fiction, fast, richly plotted, shimmering with visual detail. It is also an invitation to re-examine the traditions of the Southern novel and the myth of the chivalrous South, and a haunting meditation on what Valerie Martin has called "the fantastic and constant perversity of the oppressor to feel victimized by the oppressed."
193 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2003
318 people are currently reading
10537 people want to read
About the author
Valerie Martin
64 books256 followersValerie Martin is the author of nine novels, including Trespass, Mary Reilly, Italian Fever, and Property, three collections of short fiction, and a biography of St. Francis of Assisi, titled Salvation. She has been awarded a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts and a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, as well as the Kafka Prize (for Mary Reilly) and Britain’s Orange Prize (for Property). Martin’s last novel, The Confessions of Edward Day was a New York Times notable book for 2009.
A new novel The Ghost of the Mary Celeste is due from Nan Talese/Random House in January 2014, and a middle-grade book Anton and Cecil, Cats at Sea, co-written with Valerie’s niece Lisa Martin, will be out from Algonquin in October of 2013.
Valerie Martin has taught in writing programs at Mt. Holyoke College, Univ. of Massachusetts, and Sarah Lawrence College, among others. She resides in Dutchess County, New York and is currently Professor of English at Mt. Holyoke College.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 688 reviews
September 3, 2016
The evils and barbarity of slavery are effectively conveyed in this powerful and spellbinding novel. The time period is 1828 and set in Louisiana nearly 40 years before the Civil War. “Property” as a title fittingly describes the main premise of this book as it reveals the marital subjugation of Manon Gaudet, a bitter and unhappy wife of a sugar plantation owner; and Sarah, a slave girl given to her as a wedding gift (and the mother of two illegitimate children from Manon’s husband).
Both women seethe with hatred and rage over their domination, although we mostly only hear from Manon. As a slave, Sarah isn’t allowed the luxury of divulging her inner emotions. Because Sarah’s voice was so rarely heard, it was all the more astounding when she finally reveals her own hatred of the Gaudets.
The tension is palpable between Manon Gaudet, her plantation owner husband and Sarah and it’s played out against a backdrop of a looming slave rebellion. I was absolutely transfixed by this tight and eloquent novel as it explores the amoral underbelly of a system that victimized other humans and debased their oppressors.
Both women seethe with hatred and rage over their domination, although we mostly only hear from Manon. As a slave, Sarah isn’t allowed the luxury of divulging her inner emotions. Because Sarah’s voice was so rarely heard, it was all the more astounding when she finally reveals her own hatred of the Gaudets.
The tension is palpable between Manon Gaudet, her plantation owner husband and Sarah and it’s played out against a backdrop of a looming slave rebellion. I was absolutely transfixed by this tight and eloquent novel as it explores the amoral underbelly of a system that victimized other humans and debased their oppressors.
August 14, 2015
This won the orange prize in 2003. The novel is from the perspective of Manon Gaudet, a plantation owners wife. It is set in 1828 in Louisiana. It is rather brief and reads very easily, despite the horrors it describes. The book is in three parts; the build up to the slave revolt, the revolt and the aftermath.
Spoilers ahead
Manon is the daughter of a slave owner and her husband (who she hates). She describes the difficulties of her life with him; he has a child with one of the house slaves, Sarah. She also watches him through a spyglass while he plays sadistic, semi-sexual games with the early teenage male slaves. She hates plantation life and following her husband's death moves to the small town house left by her mother.
The book has been criticised because there is no redemption at the end, the slaves have no voice and it is unremittingly bleak. I think this misses the point. This story is an analysis of the slaveowner mentality, of someone who does not even begin to question slave-owning and all that goes with it. The slaves are commodities to be bought and sold, killed if necessary. They are property. Manon is not as physically cruel as her husband, but her house slaves are valued for what they can do for her. The vindictiveness with which she pursues her slave Sarah, when she escapes during the revolt is chilling. There is no economic imperative, just a desire to make Sarah suffer. There is also a sense that Manon too is property, being a woman. She is never likely to marry again; the one man she does like following her husband's death marries someone else because of her wealth. Manon does not question her situation and just has her husband wielded power, she too wields the power she has over her slaves, with similar effect.
As an analysis of the slaveowner it comes to rather a bleak and very sudden ending. The reader is left with the conclusion that the battle of ideas will have no effect on this class of people and change will have to come by force.
Spoilers ahead
Manon is the daughter of a slave owner and her husband (who she hates). She describes the difficulties of her life with him; he has a child with one of the house slaves, Sarah. She also watches him through a spyglass while he plays sadistic, semi-sexual games with the early teenage male slaves. She hates plantation life and following her husband's death moves to the small town house left by her mother.
The book has been criticised because there is no redemption at the end, the slaves have no voice and it is unremittingly bleak. I think this misses the point. This story is an analysis of the slaveowner mentality, of someone who does not even begin to question slave-owning and all that goes with it. The slaves are commodities to be bought and sold, killed if necessary. They are property. Manon is not as physically cruel as her husband, but her house slaves are valued for what they can do for her. The vindictiveness with which she pursues her slave Sarah, when she escapes during the revolt is chilling. There is no economic imperative, just a desire to make Sarah suffer. There is also a sense that Manon too is property, being a woman. She is never likely to marry again; the one man she does like following her husband's death marries someone else because of her wealth. Manon does not question her situation and just has her husband wielded power, she too wields the power she has over her slaves, with similar effect.
As an analysis of the slaveowner it comes to rather a bleak and very sudden ending. The reader is left with the conclusion that the battle of ideas will have no effect on this class of people and change will have to come by force.
August 6, 2008
I was livid at the end (or the last page) of this book. It was like it ended in the middle of the book! As I was heading toward the last 10 pages of this book, I kept wondering, "How is she going to finish this in 10 pages?". Well....she didn't. It just stopped. Nothing resolved. It is about the relationship of a slave and her owners. The character of the slave is never developed....at all. I suppose that the author wants you to read between the lines but I didn't get it. The book was well written and intriguing but incomplete. I was extremely disappointed.
October 31, 2020
This is a book I’ve had on my shelf forever and not hot around to reading.
We all know the history of black slavery. And appalled by historical events of this but we can only go forward.
History, we can always learn from.
This book won an award and I can easily see why.
There are two main female characters in this story.
We have Sarah the servant.
And we have the Lady of the house.
The fascinating thing for me was how both women were confined, but in different ways and to varying degrees.
This is the first book I’ve read by this author and it’s a stunner of a read. It’s written with so much thought and gives the reader plenty to think about.
We all know the history of black slavery. And appalled by historical events of this but we can only go forward.
History, we can always learn from.
This book won an award and I can easily see why.
There are two main female characters in this story.
We have Sarah the servant.
And we have the Lady of the house.
The fascinating thing for me was how both women were confined, but in different ways and to varying degrees.
This is the first book I’ve read by this author and it’s a stunner of a read. It’s written with so much thought and gives the reader plenty to think about.
September 29, 2024
4,5*
“O médico tem razão”, disse "tu és desequilibrada.”
“É esse o teu diagnóstico?”
(…) Desequilibrada, pensei. Era então esse o nome que eles davam a uma mulher que não era capaz de fingir que um homem desprezível era tão bom como um homem decente.
“Propriedade” decorre no estado do Luisiana em 1828, mais de 30 anos antes da abolição da escravatura por Abraham Lincoln, mas já então se sentiam as sementes de rebelião no Sul, com revoltas e fugas nas plantações. Dividido entre a acção que decorre em Nova Orleães e a que decorre numa plantação de cana-de-açúcar nas suas imediações, tudo neste livro gira em torno do conceito de propriedade. Para além dos espaços físicos que pertencem aos homens brancos e passam de mão, há as pessoas escravizadas na posse deles e, em última instância, a mulher branca que está sujeita ao poder e vontade do marido.
“Já acabaste?”, perguntei-lhe em tom aprazível.
“Não estou interessado em fazer amor com um cadáver”, disse ele.
Eu ri-me. Que encantador, ele chamar “fazer amor” àquilo que estávamos a fazer, e como era divertido que o limite para ele fosse um cadáver. “Se estou morta”, disse eu, “é porque tu me mataste.”
Nesta hierarquia, temos na base Sarah, que foi dada como prenda de casamento a Manon, num matrimónio de conveniência com um homem que não só não ama como, na realidade, abomina, que é pai de pelo menos um dos filhos da jovem escravizada.
Não podia haver nada mais ridículo do que a comovedora cena da nossa partida: o senhor diz adeus à sua mulher e à serva, trémulo de receio de que uma delas possa não voltar. Mas qual delas? Deseja que eu morra de cólera, e receia que possa ser ela a morrer. Eu desejo que ele seja morto enquanto andar a disparar sobre os negros fugitivos. Ela deseja a morte de nós dois.
Contado na primeira pessoa, é fácil empatizar com a sarcástica Manon na sua condição de mulher infeliz que sonha com a independência, mas a sua relação com Sarah torna-a um ser horrendo e, quando se dá uma insurreição na plantação que altera o destino de todas as personagens, todas elas revelam o pior de si. Valerie Martin sabe tecer uma narrativa cheia de tensão e reviravoltas, sem descurar a caracterização dos intervenientes, mas nesta história de poder, deita as expectativas do leitor por terra, não se prendendo no esperado maniqueísmo das dicotomias homens-mulheres, brancos-negros. Em “Propriedade” não há bonzinhos, mas antes um pódio de prepotência, egoísmo e insensibilidade. Se o marido (nunca nomeado) roça a psicopatia, Manon, apesar da sua amargura justificada, é uma racista fria e arrogante, sendo seguida de perto por Sarah. Sendo uma personagem curiosa, simbolicamente silenciosa, manifesta-se sobretudo por trejeitos e meias-palavras e, apesar de ser vítima da opressão da sua proprietária e do abuso sexual do amo, ou precisamente por isso, tem para com o filho, um menino surdo e com deficiência cognitiva, um comportamento chocante.
“Será que o facto de a escrava que eu levei comigo quando casei ter tido um filho dele, e de essa criatura ter a liberdade de correr pela casa como um animal selvagem, será que isso, na sua opinião, é motivo suficiente para uma mulher desprezar o marido?”
Ele encolheu os ombros. “Mrs. Gaudet, há muitos casos semelhantes. Com certeza que não ignora isso.
“É justamente disso que eu me queixo”, expliquei. “De ser uma coisa comum.”
“Por que não vende a rapariga?”
“Não. Ele simplesmente arranjava outra. E esta convém-me. Ela odeia-o tanto como eu.”
Vi que uma centelha de comiseração lhe atravessava o semblante, mas não pensei que fosse por mim. Ele sentia pena do meu marido, preso entre duas megeras.
“O médico tem razão”, disse "tu és desequilibrada.”
“É esse o teu diagnóstico?”
(…) Desequilibrada, pensei. Era então esse o nome que eles davam a uma mulher que não era capaz de fingir que um homem desprezível era tão bom como um homem decente.
“Propriedade” decorre no estado do Luisiana em 1828, mais de 30 anos antes da abolição da escravatura por Abraham Lincoln, mas já então se sentiam as sementes de rebelião no Sul, com revoltas e fugas nas plantações. Dividido entre a acção que decorre em Nova Orleães e a que decorre numa plantação de cana-de-açúcar nas suas imediações, tudo neste livro gira em torno do conceito de propriedade. Para além dos espaços físicos que pertencem aos homens brancos e passam de mão, há as pessoas escravizadas na posse deles e, em última instância, a mulher branca que está sujeita ao poder e vontade do marido.
“Já acabaste?”, perguntei-lhe em tom aprazível.
“Não estou interessado em fazer amor com um cadáver”, disse ele.
Eu ri-me. Que encantador, ele chamar “fazer amor” àquilo que estávamos a fazer, e como era divertido que o limite para ele fosse um cadáver. “Se estou morta”, disse eu, “é porque tu me mataste.”
Nesta hierarquia, temos na base Sarah, que foi dada como prenda de casamento a Manon, num matrimónio de conveniência com um homem que não só não ama como, na realidade, abomina, que é pai de pelo menos um dos filhos da jovem escravizada.
Não podia haver nada mais ridículo do que a comovedora cena da nossa partida: o senhor diz adeus à sua mulher e à serva, trémulo de receio de que uma delas possa não voltar. Mas qual delas? Deseja que eu morra de cólera, e receia que possa ser ela a morrer. Eu desejo que ele seja morto enquanto andar a disparar sobre os negros fugitivos. Ela deseja a morte de nós dois.
Contado na primeira pessoa, é fácil empatizar com a sarcástica Manon na sua condição de mulher infeliz que sonha com a independência, mas a sua relação com Sarah torna-a um ser horrendo e, quando se dá uma insurreição na plantação que altera o destino de todas as personagens, todas elas revelam o pior de si. Valerie Martin sabe tecer uma narrativa cheia de tensão e reviravoltas, sem descurar a caracterização dos intervenientes, mas nesta história de poder, deita as expectativas do leitor por terra, não se prendendo no esperado maniqueísmo das dicotomias homens-mulheres, brancos-negros. Em “Propriedade” não há bonzinhos, mas antes um pódio de prepotência, egoísmo e insensibilidade. Se o marido (nunca nomeado) roça a psicopatia, Manon, apesar da sua amargura justificada, é uma racista fria e arrogante, sendo seguida de perto por Sarah. Sendo uma personagem curiosa, simbolicamente silenciosa, manifesta-se sobretudo por trejeitos e meias-palavras e, apesar de ser vítima da opressão da sua proprietária e do abuso sexual do amo, ou precisamente por isso, tem para com o filho, um menino surdo e com deficiência cognitiva, um comportamento chocante.
“Será que o facto de a escrava que eu levei comigo quando casei ter tido um filho dele, e de essa criatura ter a liberdade de correr pela casa como um animal selvagem, será que isso, na sua opinião, é motivo suficiente para uma mulher desprezar o marido?”
Ele encolheu os ombros. “Mrs. Gaudet, há muitos casos semelhantes. Com certeza que não ignora isso.
“É justamente disso que eu me queixo”, expliquei. “De ser uma coisa comum.”
“Por que não vende a rapariga?”
“Não. Ele simplesmente arranjava outra. E esta convém-me. Ela odeia-o tanto como eu.”
Vi que uma centelha de comiseração lhe atravessava o semblante, mas não pensei que fosse por mim. Ele sentia pena do meu marido, preso entre duas megeras.
January 27, 2011
"Property" is, in my experience, one of the rare page-turners that is not YA or fantasy/sci-fi. "Property" is set in antebellum Louisiana, on a sugar cane plantation. The protagonist and narrator is Manon Gaudet, the young wife of the plantation owner (whom she loathes). She and her husband are both fixated upon Sarah, a beautiful slave in their house who has born two children by her owner.
Manon can hardly be called a heroine, but she is both the best and worst thing about the book. She is a fascinating narrator, with a wonderfully snide voice, and her longing for independence is wholly sympathetic. But she's not a "nice" woman. "Property" is not a "nice" book. Manon is beyond selfish; she is utterly devoid of empathy. She never expresses the slightest shred of caring for her mother, or Sarah, or Walter, the deaf child of Sarah and Gaudet who is treated more like a dog than a boy. She is incredibly racist and inexplicably cruel towards Sarah, despite the fact that she knows her husband has repeatedly raped the young woman.
Sarah is the most likable character in the novel, but she remains to some extent an enigma because Manon studies her intently yet refuses to see her as more than property. As a writer, I imagine it would have been tempting to write this book from Sarah's perspective, or to create an entirely different protagonist, perhaps one who could, you know, feel empathy for another human being. It would have been tempting, but I greatly respect Valerie Martin for her choice of protagonist; in writing Manon, she chose to forgo the easier path, the one that is familiar and understandable to us. This is why I say that Manon is both the best and worst thing about the book: worst because she is not a good person, and best for precisely the same reason. She is not a good person, but she is terribly believable and she is nothing if not fascinating as a narrator.
I will leave you with this passage, a conversation between Manon and a doctor about why she has not yet conceived a child despite being physically healthy:
"It is because I despise my husband," I said.
He looked up at me briefly, but without surprise, then turned his attention to his eyeglasses. "Unhappy marriages still produce children," he said.
"Perhaps they are not unhappy enough," I replied.
"Has it occurred to you that a child might be a comfort to you in your suffering?"
"I am not in need of comforting," I said.
He put the glasses down and gave me his full, unfocused attention. "Did you love your husband when you married him?" he asked.
"I hardly knew him. Ours was considered an advantageous match."
"And how did he earn your enmity?"
"Well, let me think," I said. "Would the fact that the servant I brought to the marriage has borne him a son, and that this creature is allowed to run loose in the house like a wild animal, would that be, in your view, sufficient cause for a wife to despise her husband?"
He shrugged. "Mrs. Gaudet, there are many such cases. This cannot be unknown to you."
"That is precisely my grievance," I explained. "That it is common."
"Why not sell the girl?"
"No. He would only find another. And this one suits me. She hates him as much as I do."
Manon can hardly be called a heroine, but she is both the best and worst thing about the book. She is a fascinating narrator, with a wonderfully snide voice, and her longing for independence is wholly sympathetic. But she's not a "nice" woman. "Property" is not a "nice" book. Manon is beyond selfish; she is utterly devoid of empathy. She never expresses the slightest shred of caring for her mother, or Sarah, or Walter, the deaf child of Sarah and Gaudet who is treated more like a dog than a boy. She is incredibly racist and inexplicably cruel towards Sarah, despite the fact that she knows her husband has repeatedly raped the young woman.
Sarah is the most likable character in the novel, but she remains to some extent an enigma because Manon studies her intently yet refuses to see her as more than property. As a writer, I imagine it would have been tempting to write this book from Sarah's perspective, or to create an entirely different protagonist, perhaps one who could, you know, feel empathy for another human being. It would have been tempting, but I greatly respect Valerie Martin for her choice of protagonist; in writing Manon, she chose to forgo the easier path, the one that is familiar and understandable to us. This is why I say that Manon is both the best and worst thing about the book: worst because she is not a good person, and best for precisely the same reason. She is not a good person, but she is terribly believable and she is nothing if not fascinating as a narrator.
I will leave you with this passage, a conversation between Manon and a doctor about why she has not yet conceived a child despite being physically healthy:
"It is because I despise my husband," I said.
He looked up at me briefly, but without surprise, then turned his attention to his eyeglasses. "Unhappy marriages still produce children," he said.
"Perhaps they are not unhappy enough," I replied.
"Has it occurred to you that a child might be a comfort to you in your suffering?"
"I am not in need of comforting," I said.
He put the glasses down and gave me his full, unfocused attention. "Did you love your husband when you married him?" he asked.
"I hardly knew him. Ours was considered an advantageous match."
"And how did he earn your enmity?"
"Well, let me think," I said. "Would the fact that the servant I brought to the marriage has borne him a son, and that this creature is allowed to run loose in the house like a wild animal, would that be, in your view, sufficient cause for a wife to despise her husband?"
He shrugged. "Mrs. Gaudet, there are many such cases. This cannot be unknown to you."
"That is precisely my grievance," I explained. "That it is common."
"Why not sell the girl?"
"No. He would only find another. And this one suits me. She hates him as much as I do."
July 28, 2020
Compact and satisfying. I'm always impressed by an author who can give me a complex, fully realized story in under 200 pages. Slave rebellion, yellow fever, dirty family secrets, it's all in there.
The story is told through the eyes of Manon, a plantation wife in Louisiana in 1828. She comes across as being quite sullen, but not in an off-putting way. She has reasons to be sullen. Dowries were still a thing back then, and women who didn't have money often had to make a "profitable" marriage rather than one based on love and respect. Manon's husband is a putz, and she is essentially his property. In those days, if a married woman inherited money or real estate, it automatically became the property of her husband, to do with as he pleased. So women had almost no opportunity for self-determination. Manon is bored and unfulfilled, and disgusted by her husband's offspring from the slave girl Sarah.
And who had even less of a chance to choose their own life path? The slaves. But they never stopped trying. Some were willing to risk everything to be free, hatching elaborate escape plans and organizing bloody uprisings. Manon is so steeped in the slave-owning tradition that she can't see them as anything more than a piece of property. Thus the book's title is doubly fitting.
This isn't strictly historical fiction, as it doesn't cover actual events, but it has the feel of authenticity. The author did some impressive research.
February 2, 2017
What did I just read?
Dear Author,
I don't mean to be mean or disrespectful towards a work that is obviously your baby as all works by authors are. However, I do need to ask a question that is very important to me. A lot of my fellow readers may also agree that it is a topic of much importance. I will not delay and will forthwith deliver my inquiry into this most pressing of concerns. Please, if at all possible tell me what IN THE SAM HILL WAS THE PLOT??!!
Respectfully
This Confused Reader
OKAY...That sentiment out of the way, let's dig in. The title in comparison to the subject matter. Yes, I can see that. It's about slavery. Slave holders did consider people that they enslaved their property. (Disgusting!) One of the main protagonist felt she was property of her husband. (Whom she hated.) It was kind of a weird story. In the back the acknowledgment states that the author was particularly inspired by The Library of America's Slave Narratives which I have made good headway through and have still been progressively reading off and on for the past year or two. These are highly inspirational stories. However, (Here's where we put a however in here.) I still don't feel like the collective thoughts the author has brought together make a cohesive tome. The reader is wondering what is the point? What is the message? Because there doesn't seem to be a plot the reader is left attempting to guess, (For lack of other wording..) what the hell? Is this about a white woman who had a bad marriage because her husband fell in love with her slave and her jealous hate turned into some strange debauched desire for said as well? Is this about slavery in New Orleans? Is it about a slave revolt and the precarious relationship between master and slave. Is this about some personal experience or feeling the author has toward the mixing of the races because there is a definite dislike and mistreatment of all of the light skinned and mulatto people. The author treats them as if they are slippery and sly. As if the constant undertone is "Who do they think they are?"(To which my answer is they are exactly who you made them.) And there is this treatment of darker skinned people as the barbarians. They are the revolters. This reader totally dislikes the blatant continuation of stereotypical Colorism in this book and the lack of plot leads one to believe it's less story and more personal view.
2 stars. This reader did not find it structurally sound or cohesive. There were a lot of random thoughts and I don't feel that they gave reason to one another. They didn't even connect. The subject matter of course pisses me off but I've read stories concerning slavery before. If there was a story or a point I could have been more open. I skimmed a lot to finish and I don't even feel the ending was conclusive. I don't recommend it, honestly. I don't think I'll purposely read anything more by this author. I always tell it how I feel it..this was only my observation.
Dear Author,
I don't mean to be mean or disrespectful towards a work that is obviously your baby as all works by authors are. However, I do need to ask a question that is very important to me. A lot of my fellow readers may also agree that it is a topic of much importance. I will not delay and will forthwith deliver my inquiry into this most pressing of concerns. Please, if at all possible tell me what IN THE SAM HILL WAS THE PLOT??!!
Respectfully
This Confused Reader
OKAY...That sentiment out of the way, let's dig in. The title in comparison to the subject matter. Yes, I can see that. It's about slavery. Slave holders did consider people that they enslaved their property. (Disgusting!) One of the main protagonist felt she was property of her husband. (Whom she hated.) It was kind of a weird story. In the back the acknowledgment states that the author was particularly inspired by The Library of America's Slave Narratives which I have made good headway through and have still been progressively reading off and on for the past year or two. These are highly inspirational stories. However, (Here's where we put a however in here.) I still don't feel like the collective thoughts the author has brought together make a cohesive tome. The reader is wondering what is the point? What is the message? Because there doesn't seem to be a plot the reader is left attempting to guess, (For lack of other wording..) what the hell? Is this about a white woman who had a bad marriage because her husband fell in love with her slave and her jealous hate turned into some strange debauched desire for said as well? Is this about slavery in New Orleans? Is it about a slave revolt and the precarious relationship between master and slave. Is this about some personal experience or feeling the author has toward the mixing of the races because there is a definite dislike and mistreatment of all of the light skinned and mulatto people. The author treats them as if they are slippery and sly. As if the constant undertone is "Who do they think they are?"(To which my answer is they are exactly who you made them.) And there is this treatment of darker skinned people as the barbarians. They are the revolters. This reader totally dislikes the blatant continuation of stereotypical Colorism in this book and the lack of plot leads one to believe it's less story and more personal view.
2 stars. This reader did not find it structurally sound or cohesive. There were a lot of random thoughts and I don't feel that they gave reason to one another. They didn't even connect. The subject matter of course pisses me off but I've read stories concerning slavery before. If there was a story or a point I could have been more open. I skimmed a lot to finish and I don't even feel the ending was conclusive. I don't recommend it, honestly. I don't think I'll purposely read anything more by this author. I always tell it how I feel it..this was only my observation.
June 2, 2020
A very readable, sparing novel set in the deep South in 1828. Manon Gaudet is stuck in an unhappy marriage - her husband is more interested in her slave, Sarah, than he is in his wife. She resents him, resents Sarah, resents Sarah and the child Sarah had had with her (Manon's) husband. I didn't much like Manon, though I did feel sympathy for her at times. As a woman she is her husbands property, has no rights etc. She feels the unfairness of this bitterly, and has every right to, yet she is unable take this injustice and apply it to the slaves around her, who have even less rights.
Manon's attitudes towards slaves, and in particular Sarah, are troubling not just for how dehumanizing they are, the many ways in which she rationalises and justifies slavery, but because they were really quite typical for the time. She isn't unusual. This is an interesting viewpoint to explore in a novel -- I realised while reading it that I haven't encountered this so relentlessly in a novel about slavery before, from the one close-minded perspective.
Sarah and Manon actually have more in common than Manon is able to acknowledge. They are both 'property' of the same man. They both hate him. They are both trapped with him. Of course, Sarah's situation is entirely worse, but Manon is unable to see that. Manon despises her husband in every way. She observes, 'He is so bound by the lies he tells himself; he can only play at feelings he thinks he should have.' She is right, but her observations would apply equally well if she directed them at herself, though of course she does not. She has as much in common with her husband as she does with Sarah.
Rather unexpectedly, given the Coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic that we currently find ourselves in, the book details a cholera epidemic. 'The graveyards are overflowing; there are not enough gravediggers to keep up with the demand. No one goes out but to obtain food, there are no parties, no public gatherings of any kind. The city is as it might be under enemy siege.'
There is some truly beautiful writing in this book. I especially like this line: 'His letter was a perfect miniature of the monument to falsity he has made of my life.' While I am reader who quite enjoys descriptive, even long-winded books, I both enjoyed and admired the way Valerie Martin says so much with so little. I will be interested in reading more of her work.
Manon's attitudes towards slaves, and in particular Sarah, are troubling not just for how dehumanizing they are, the many ways in which she rationalises and justifies slavery, but because they were really quite typical for the time. She isn't unusual. This is an interesting viewpoint to explore in a novel -- I realised while reading it that I haven't encountered this so relentlessly in a novel about slavery before, from the one close-minded perspective.
Sarah and Manon actually have more in common than Manon is able to acknowledge. They are both 'property' of the same man. They both hate him. They are both trapped with him. Of course, Sarah's situation is entirely worse, but Manon is unable to see that. Manon despises her husband in every way. She observes, 'He is so bound by the lies he tells himself; he can only play at feelings he thinks he should have.' She is right, but her observations would apply equally well if she directed them at herself, though of course she does not. She has as much in common with her husband as she does with Sarah.
Rather unexpectedly, given the Coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic that we currently find ourselves in, the book details a cholera epidemic. 'The graveyards are overflowing; there are not enough gravediggers to keep up with the demand. No one goes out but to obtain food, there are no parties, no public gatherings of any kind. The city is as it might be under enemy siege.'
There is some truly beautiful writing in this book. I especially like this line: 'His letter was a perfect miniature of the monument to falsity he has made of my life.' While I am reader who quite enjoys descriptive, even long-winded books, I both enjoyed and admired the way Valerie Martin says so much with so little. I will be interested in reading more of her work.
April 29, 2019
The day I finished this book, it had me thinking all night. What a 'tour de force' it is! To be able to write such a book from a first person point of view and keep you reading with the kind of woman the narrator is -- I'm in awe. And though she isn't a sympathetic character, you see the society that has made her the way she is and will always be. Chilling.
December 5, 2008
A short, severe read
The day before Thanksgiving I picked up the books I’d ordered at my local library. I wanted to be sure there were plenty of choices at home since the library would be closed for two days. I found my stash on the “hold” shelf where I recognized the first two books but had no recollection why I’d ordered the third, nor even a clue as to the subject of the thin novel.
“Property” by Valerie Martin turned out to be a compelling if shocking read. The story revolves around Manon Gaudet, a pretty young woman who’s made a bad bargain in her choice of husbands. Now she’s stuck on a lonely plantation outside New Orleans with a boorish spouse who flaunts his bastard child by his mistress, Sarah, his wife’s slave and the property she brought to the marriage.
There’s cholera and yellow fever in the city; threats and murmurings of slave uprisings in the countryside; family secrets and confused memories at home. And running like razorwire thoughout is Manon’s petulant monologue.
Author Carol Shields, in a cover blurb, calls Manon “as complex and disaffected as Edna Pontellier in Kate Chopin’s ‘The Awakening.’” Complex, yes; disaffected, certainly. Manon is, after all, mistress of the plantation and yet property herself, given the marital laws of the day.
But this is no story of a woman’s awakening. It is a look inside relationships that are as dark and twisted as the institution of slavery. Martin calls her tale a meditation on “the fantastic and constant perversity of the oppressor to feel victimized by the oppressed.”
It was, perhaps, not the most obvious choice for Thanksgiving reading. And yet it proved a proper meditation for the day — and for the month in which an African American was elected president.
The day before Thanksgiving I picked up the books I’d ordered at my local library. I wanted to be sure there were plenty of choices at home since the library would be closed for two days. I found my stash on the “hold” shelf where I recognized the first two books but had no recollection why I’d ordered the third, nor even a clue as to the subject of the thin novel.
“Property” by Valerie Martin turned out to be a compelling if shocking read. The story revolves around Manon Gaudet, a pretty young woman who’s made a bad bargain in her choice of husbands. Now she’s stuck on a lonely plantation outside New Orleans with a boorish spouse who flaunts his bastard child by his mistress, Sarah, his wife’s slave and the property she brought to the marriage.
There’s cholera and yellow fever in the city; threats and murmurings of slave uprisings in the countryside; family secrets and confused memories at home. And running like razorwire thoughout is Manon’s petulant monologue.
Author Carol Shields, in a cover blurb, calls Manon “as complex and disaffected as Edna Pontellier in Kate Chopin’s ‘The Awakening.’” Complex, yes; disaffected, certainly. Manon is, after all, mistress of the plantation and yet property herself, given the marital laws of the day.
But this is no story of a woman’s awakening. It is a look inside relationships that are as dark and twisted as the institution of slavery. Martin calls her tale a meditation on “the fantastic and constant perversity of the oppressor to feel victimized by the oppressed.”
It was, perhaps, not the most obvious choice for Thanksgiving reading. And yet it proved a proper meditation for the day — and for the month in which an African American was elected president.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
February 19, 2023
A strangely disturbing & beautiful look at our twisted past...,
The characters in this novel are not really center, in my humble opinion. The story isn't even really central. The thing that this book holds at its core is a dramatization of the sickness in all of us, the glaring truth of the fact that everyone is self-centered and self-loathing at the same time.
The use of the harsh, despicable realities of slavery creates a discomfort that made me feel disjointed, not sure whom I should be feeling is the victim. Clearly, slaves were the victims and I don't mean to minimize this. What I mean by victim here is that our storyteller, Manon, spends the majority of the book feeling sorry for herself whilst subjecting those around her to the extreme loathing that she feels for herself.
I won't go in to details about the story as the plot summary has been covered in other reviews. I will state that the people who dogged this book in reviews may have missed something in seeking a deeper story, and the people who lauded it may have missed something in their search to attack slavery, which is certainly understandable.
I recommend this be read with an eye and a mind for the understanding of human nature, both in the extremes to which people will go to justify evils as disgusting as slavery, and in the attempts of people to blind themselves of the fact that the same racism is alive, accepted and defended in the whitewashing of history and stereotypes.
Perhaps I’m off in this but this is how the book spoke to me.
The characters in this novel are not really center, in my humble opinion. The story isn't even really central. The thing that this book holds at its core is a dramatization of the sickness in all of us, the glaring truth of the fact that everyone is self-centered and self-loathing at the same time.
The use of the harsh, despicable realities of slavery creates a discomfort that made me feel disjointed, not sure whom I should be feeling is the victim. Clearly, slaves were the victims and I don't mean to minimize this. What I mean by victim here is that our storyteller, Manon, spends the majority of the book feeling sorry for herself whilst subjecting those around her to the extreme loathing that she feels for herself.
I won't go in to details about the story as the plot summary has been covered in other reviews. I will state that the people who dogged this book in reviews may have missed something in seeking a deeper story, and the people who lauded it may have missed something in their search to attack slavery, which is certainly understandable.
I recommend this be read with an eye and a mind for the understanding of human nature, both in the extremes to which people will go to justify evils as disgusting as slavery, and in the attempts of people to blind themselves of the fact that the same racism is alive, accepted and defended in the whitewashing of history and stereotypes.
Perhaps I’m off in this but this is how the book spoke to me.
March 28, 2013
Rarely do I finish a book and think, "what's the point?" as I try to go where the author takes me. However, Valerie Martin took me in many different directions - e.g., the comparative relationship between a daughter and each of her parents, slave vs. master relationship, slave vs. mistress relationship, slaves vs. freedmen, Creole vs. Whites, etc. - that I had difficulty understanding the foci of the story. Perhaps there wasn't one. Yet, with all of the slave narratives that exist, I expected more of a book that had received such accolades. There was additional insight into the institution of slavery, there was no gripping emotion, there was no clear protagonist ... but maybe this is the point. There is none.
June 22, 2012
Disturbing.
Discomfiting.
Dark.
Those are the first words that come to mind upon finishing "Property".
"Property" is not a story that I can say that I liked-there is nothing to like here.
Manon Gaudet is the wife of a plantation owner in 1828 Louisiana. Her marriage is irretrievably broken, both by her husband's actions and by her own choice. She is vain, arrogant, cold, and uncaring, judgmental in the extreme, and prone to extremism. She hates the plantation on which she lives, despises her husband, and is by turns cold toward and dismissive of the slaves who make her life of ease possible. In an era of paranoia about slave uprisings, Manon is indifferent to her husband's fears (until they turn out to have merit), choosing instead to enjoy through her spyglass the sadistic torments visited upon the slaves of the plantation by the overseer and her husband. To her husband's handicapped bastard son, fathered with the slave with which Manon was gifted upon her marriage, she is heartless. Even her own mother is treated with impatience. In short, Manon Gaudet is probably the most unlikable protagonist to come down the pike since Humbert Humbert.
And yet.
While the story is not enjoyable at all, the book itself is a marvel of brevity and a brave work by a talented writer. The language is rich and evocative of the times. Period detail is spot on, as is the history (though I do wonder if quite so many slaves were killed and maimed at that time for rebellion as the narrator documents--perhaps this is a detail to be taken as from an unreliable narrator). Manon, as the main character and speaking in her own words/thoughts, is the most well drawn, of course, but through her equivocations and sneering commentary, we get a decent view of the other principle characters: her husband and her slave, Sarah. And Martin accomplishes this is a scant 193 pages.
Aside from the previous things I liked, I admire Martin for keeping her protagonist in character. Manon is impossible to like, absolutely impossible. Even when it clear to the reader that she is as much property as the slaves she owns, even when she acknowledges that fact, she is never humbled, never once takes that as a reason to be compassionate to those in a similar situation. I think that is a very true to life fact, though most authors pander to our need to believe that under pressure most people do the right thing. Martin has hit upon a deeper truth: though we might want to believe most people are noble, many are not, and for some people the only way to deal with their own untenable situation is by clinging to their feelings of superiority over someone else. Don't we see that in the rise of racism every time the economy is bad?
Another thing I liked was Martin's resistance to making the slaves angelic, or at least better than human. This is often an issue in books dealing with this most troubling time in American history: in zeal to distance themselves from the practice of slave holding, many authors make the slaves more sympathetic, more heroic, more angelic than their masters. In other words, less human. In any relationship, no matter who holds the power, there are both the good and the bad on both sides. Even within a single human being there are lovely and not so lovely sides. I liked that Sarah, clearly the loser on any scale of measurement, is not automatically the most sympathetic character. Her behavior toward her handicapped son is abominable. (In fact, that son, Walter, is the only character for which I consistently had sympathy). Again, she is very human in a decision she makes that could conceivably cost Manon her life. There is no comfortable, "We're all in this together; let's help each other in sisterhood" camaraderie (which I think would happen if this book was popular fiction or, God forbid, a movie). It's a Hobbsian every man for himself world.
Manon's husband seems to garner a lot of vitrol in reviews, but I found him more sympathetic than the protagonist, despite how horrible he can be (there is truly no one to like in this book). He's presented through her eyes, so we see a man who is dimwitted, slow to speech, dull, sadistic, animalistic...then we see through Manon's retelling of the story of their early marriage how she's treated him with cold dismissiveness almost from the time they first wed. We see his tears when she shuns him and his worry when she's away, his care in keeping her as up to date about the plantation and the neighborhood as any man of the time would be wont to do. He notices little things about her, even after many years of emotional estrangement--not something to be expected from one who felt nothing for her. We see him go to great lengths to save her life. All of his attributes are presented as signs of his weakness,of course, by a woman who has chosen to despise him. To be clear, he is no angel, either--the first scene of him tormenting slaves for his own enjoyment is ghastly, one of the hardest scenes I've ever had the displeasure of reading.
Finally, I liked the end. I've read some other reviews where that is an issue for the reviewer, but I found it refreshing. As tempting as it must have been to inject a tiny but of humanity in Manon, Martin keeps her true to the character she created at the start: cold, self centered, haughty.
"Property" is not a book for those looking for soft scenes or easy answers. It is hard and cold; it resolves nothing; there is not a single likable character. It is challenging, thought provoking, and ugly. It is lovely.
Discomfiting.
Dark.
Those are the first words that come to mind upon finishing "Property".
"Property" is not a story that I can say that I liked-there is nothing to like here.
Manon Gaudet is the wife of a plantation owner in 1828 Louisiana. Her marriage is irretrievably broken, both by her husband's actions and by her own choice. She is vain, arrogant, cold, and uncaring, judgmental in the extreme, and prone to extremism. She hates the plantation on which she lives, despises her husband, and is by turns cold toward and dismissive of the slaves who make her life of ease possible. In an era of paranoia about slave uprisings, Manon is indifferent to her husband's fears (until they turn out to have merit), choosing instead to enjoy through her spyglass the sadistic torments visited upon the slaves of the plantation by the overseer and her husband. To her husband's handicapped bastard son, fathered with the slave with which Manon was gifted upon her marriage, she is heartless. Even her own mother is treated with impatience. In short, Manon Gaudet is probably the most unlikable protagonist to come down the pike since Humbert Humbert.
And yet.
While the story is not enjoyable at all, the book itself is a marvel of brevity and a brave work by a talented writer. The language is rich and evocative of the times. Period detail is spot on, as is the history (though I do wonder if quite so many slaves were killed and maimed at that time for rebellion as the narrator documents--perhaps this is a detail to be taken as from an unreliable narrator). Manon, as the main character and speaking in her own words/thoughts, is the most well drawn, of course, but through her equivocations and sneering commentary, we get a decent view of the other principle characters: her husband and her slave, Sarah. And Martin accomplishes this is a scant 193 pages.
Aside from the previous things I liked, I admire Martin for keeping her protagonist in character. Manon is impossible to like, absolutely impossible. Even when it clear to the reader that she is as much property as the slaves she owns, even when she acknowledges that fact, she is never humbled, never once takes that as a reason to be compassionate to those in a similar situation. I think that is a very true to life fact, though most authors pander to our need to believe that under pressure most people do the right thing. Martin has hit upon a deeper truth: though we might want to believe most people are noble, many are not, and for some people the only way to deal with their own untenable situation is by clinging to their feelings of superiority over someone else. Don't we see that in the rise of racism every time the economy is bad?
Another thing I liked was Martin's resistance to making the slaves angelic, or at least better than human. This is often an issue in books dealing with this most troubling time in American history: in zeal to distance themselves from the practice of slave holding, many authors make the slaves more sympathetic, more heroic, more angelic than their masters. In other words, less human. In any relationship, no matter who holds the power, there are both the good and the bad on both sides. Even within a single human being there are lovely and not so lovely sides. I liked that Sarah, clearly the loser on any scale of measurement, is not automatically the most sympathetic character. Her behavior toward her handicapped son is abominable. (In fact, that son, Walter, is the only character for which I consistently had sympathy). Again, she is very human in a decision she makes that could conceivably cost Manon her life. There is no comfortable, "We're all in this together; let's help each other in sisterhood" camaraderie (which I think would happen if this book was popular fiction or, God forbid, a movie). It's a Hobbsian every man for himself world.
Manon's husband seems to garner a lot of vitrol in reviews, but I found him more sympathetic than the protagonist, despite how horrible he can be (there is truly no one to like in this book). He's presented through her eyes, so we see a man who is dimwitted, slow to speech, dull, sadistic, animalistic...then we see through Manon's retelling of the story of their early marriage how she's treated him with cold dismissiveness almost from the time they first wed. We see his tears when she shuns him and his worry when she's away, his care in keeping her as up to date about the plantation and the neighborhood as any man of the time would be wont to do. He notices little things about her, even after many years of emotional estrangement--not something to be expected from one who felt nothing for her. We see him go to great lengths to save her life. All of his attributes are presented as signs of his weakness,of course, by a woman who has chosen to despise him. To be clear, he is no angel, either--the first scene of him tormenting slaves for his own enjoyment is ghastly, one of the hardest scenes I've ever had the displeasure of reading.
Finally, I liked the end. I've read some other reviews where that is an issue for the reviewer, but I found it refreshing. As tempting as it must have been to inject a tiny but of humanity in Manon, Martin keeps her true to the character she created at the start: cold, self centered, haughty.
"Property" is not a book for those looking for soft scenes or easy answers. It is hard and cold; it resolves nothing; there is not a single likable character. It is challenging, thought provoking, and ugly. It is lovely.
October 6, 2016
Valerie Martin’s “Property” narrates the chilling story of a sugar plantation and slave owner’s wife, Manon Gaudet, who hates the plantation, despises her husband, dismisses the slaves, and strongly judges the characters around her. She tells her bitter narrative from a haughty yet victimized point of view: she is appalled by her fate as the wife of a boorish man who has made a raped mistress out of their wedding gift. The young slave Sarah becomes the mother of her husband’s two children, while she herself remains childless.
Sarah, as a slave is ‘property,’ but Manon, in her marital subjugation, is also the property of her husband. Manon continually imagines better scenarios for herself: she fantasizes about getting married to a ‘decent’ man with whom she would willingly have children for, yet she is much too mature to be tricked by her own delusions. She very well understands, to the point of cynicism, the conditions that relationships are built on: she recognizes the ‘lie at the center of everything’ which ‘leaves no room for honesty’: she knows that no man is going to save her for the love of her as a woman, but for his own personal interest in money, much like she knows that Sarah’s savior is not going to buy her for her person, but to save his own face by getting married to a woman with a lighter color.
While Sarah’s voice is not directly expressed throughout the novel, we are inclined to sense that both Sarah and Manon harbor deep resentment at being personally subjugated, while they also conjure up the fantasy of escaping. The very essence of both Manon and Sarah’s characters is that they are stuck: they are bound by social limitations, and crippled by their imposed status. As a result, they suffer with irreversible damages, all the while yearning for independence. The following lines shed light on that longing to be set free:
“[Husband]: ‘… I knew, if you could have your own way, you would never return.’
This straightforward statement of the simple truth took me by surprise.
… ‘No,’ I said, ‘If it were not my obligation I would never return here.”
Reading this novel set my teeth on edge, and I was captivated by Manon’s description of her husband already from the first two pages in which she is horrified by the kind of man she is married to. The haunting memory for me from this book relates to how each Manon and Sarah experience freedom for a short-lived moment: Manon feels what it is like to have her ‘own’ property: to be in her own house when her husband was at the office by himself, her mother dead in the other room, and Sarah there to provide the same sensation for her as that which her husband had tasted. As for Sarah, she experienced sitting at a table as a free woman and had someone offer her tea. Each of them, separately and temporarily, got to feel what it would be like as a ‘free white man’. Ironically, Manon could not understand why the doctors named a ‘woman who could not pretend a villain was as good as a decent man’ as ‘unbalanced,’ yet she describes Sarah’s desire to be free as having ‘gone mad’.
January 30, 2012
The year is 1828
.....a sugar plantation in Louisiana, where Slavery is in flower for both the slaves and slave owners
The Slave Owners see “slave rebellions” around every corner..as they should, since their entire way of life is dependent on the labor of their “lowly blacks”.....and, our “heroine” Manon Gaudet, is no exception...though she is but the wife of a boorish “Massa”, Manon is not stupid...just crippled by her social status (she is “chattel” to her husband, as much as his slaves) and her relationship to Sarah (her personal slave..and her husband’s mistress..mother to his bastard children)
This is not a pretty story....and Manon’s situation isn’t new (how many women do you know who resent their husband’s cheating...but, merely, seethe...rather than kick the bastard out??)...but I admire Ms Martin’s delivery here..
The story is told in Manon’s “cold” voice...full of anger and frustration... I actually felt sorry for her
Sarah?......had a taste of Freedom....was captured and returned
I find the last pages painfully ironic...where Manon is “dumbfounded” by certain aspects of Sarah’s oh-so-short Freedom
Recommended
4 Stars
.....a sugar plantation in Louisiana, where Slavery is in flower for both the slaves and slave owners
The Slave Owners see “slave rebellions” around every corner..as they should, since their entire way of life is dependent on the labor of their “lowly blacks”.....and, our “heroine” Manon Gaudet, is no exception...though she is but the wife of a boorish “Massa”, Manon is not stupid...just crippled by her social status (she is “chattel” to her husband, as much as his slaves) and her relationship to Sarah (her personal slave..and her husband’s mistress..mother to his bastard children)
This is not a pretty story....and Manon’s situation isn’t new (how many women do you know who resent their husband’s cheating...but, merely, seethe...rather than kick the bastard out??)...but I admire Ms Martin’s delivery here..
The story is told in Manon’s “cold” voice...full of anger and frustration... I actually felt sorry for her
Sarah?......had a taste of Freedom....was captured and returned
I find the last pages painfully ironic...where Manon is “dumbfounded” by certain aspects of Sarah’s oh-so-short Freedom
Recommended
4 Stars
November 16, 2025
Property [2003] – ★★★★
Louisiana, 1828. Manon Gaudet, the wife of a domineering owner of a sugar plantation, tells us about her life, at times recalling her past. Her husband rules the house and the plantation with an iron fist, signalling slave girl Sarah as his lover. However, their stable life is soon repeatedly threatened by slaves’ rebellions in their region, making both re-evaluate their life positions. Although the novel is uneven and the narrator is made intentionally unlikeable, Valerie Martin still wrote a chilling, eye-opening and interesting account of slavery and the meaning of ownership in the mid-nineteenth century US, not least because of her particular focus on the perspective of a slave-owner.
“It never ends. I watched him though the spyglass to see what the game would be” [Martin, 2003: 3], begins the novel. The wife tells us how, while reading from the Scripture, her husband engages a number of slave boys under his command in humiliating water dips. What follows is a diary-like narration from the perspective of Manon Gaudet, as we get to know the situation inside their home and around the plantation, including Manon’s feelings on the people around her, especially her feelings regarding Sarah, her husband’s obsession. The author excels in describing the sheer horror on the plantation dressed up as “scenes of quiet domesticity”, and this makes for an unnerving read. Manon is constantly bored, and passes her time monitoring her husband’s erratic behaviour, while also occasionally making time to flirt with the family’s friend, handsome Joel.
Unlike such books as Twelve Years a Slave [1853] or The Underground Railroad [2016], where we heard from, and sympathised with, the actual black slaves, who either tried to escape and were hunted by ruthless slave catchers, or tried to come to terms with their situation, Valerie Martin decided in her book to show the viewpoint of one plantation owner’s wife. This is both the biggest attraction and the biggest weakness of the book, because some readers need their sympathetic narrators and they may be put off by Manon’s coldness and haughtiness. However, this was also precisely the point of the author. Subtly and cleverly, Martin could even be said to satirise the life of this wife on the plantation. Manon seems to seek our sympathy in her narrative, complaining of her loneliness and of her husband’s behaviour, but we also know that her loneliness and “marriage shackles” are nothing in comparison to the plight of her slaves. And, it is in this contrast that Martin makes her biggest and acutest point, as she contrasts Manon’s quest to be liberated from her husband with the quest of black people to live as free individuals. Manon seems to think only of herself, and, although she is convinced that her husband is a “villain”, she also feels indifference towards her slaves’ plight, people who have far more rights to protest their enslavement because they are living through a far greater hell than Manon: “my husband marvels at their savagery; I am more astonished by their boldness” [Martin, 2003: 58]. At another point, Manon talks about how she can get all of her inheritance without her husband touching any of it, while, in the same line, she also quite carelessly expresses sorrow that her mother’s old cook would not even fetch one hundred dollars at sales.
Slaves’ uprisings are not the only thing that worries the married, but childless couple on the plantation. Cholera and yellow fever ravage the area as well, and soon Manon is afraid for her mother who resides in populous New Orleans. She decides to briefly move there with Sarah. It is interesting to read about the complex psychological inter-relationship between Manon, her husband and Sarah, and in some quiet way, slave girl Sarah in the story becomes the symbol of black people’s inward resilience and fighting spirit. Despite being abused and mistreated, Sarah‘s often cool demeanour and compliance remain unshakeable, and behind her robotic expressions and gestures there hides a spirit of rebellion so many white people come to fear. Towards the end, the book becomes more of a southern plantation thriller, without giving much thought to the depth or themes it had established prior, and it finishes on an indeterminate note.
Valerie Martin relied on some real historical accounts in penning her book, such as on Slave Narratives (incorporating the real story of William and Ellen Craft), and the result is a lucid and entrancing account of a life on a sugar plantation in the 1820s from the perspective of a slave owner, emphasising the wilful blindness of the comfortably-seated owners.
Louisiana, 1828. Manon Gaudet, the wife of a domineering owner of a sugar plantation, tells us about her life, at times recalling her past. Her husband rules the house and the plantation with an iron fist, signalling slave girl Sarah as his lover. However, their stable life is soon repeatedly threatened by slaves’ rebellions in their region, making both re-evaluate their life positions. Although the novel is uneven and the narrator is made intentionally unlikeable, Valerie Martin still wrote a chilling, eye-opening and interesting account of slavery and the meaning of ownership in the mid-nineteenth century US, not least because of her particular focus on the perspective of a slave-owner.
“It never ends. I watched him though the spyglass to see what the game would be” [Martin, 2003: 3], begins the novel. The wife tells us how, while reading from the Scripture, her husband engages a number of slave boys under his command in humiliating water dips. What follows is a diary-like narration from the perspective of Manon Gaudet, as we get to know the situation inside their home and around the plantation, including Manon’s feelings on the people around her, especially her feelings regarding Sarah, her husband’s obsession. The author excels in describing the sheer horror on the plantation dressed up as “scenes of quiet domesticity”, and this makes for an unnerving read. Manon is constantly bored, and passes her time monitoring her husband’s erratic behaviour, while also occasionally making time to flirt with the family’s friend, handsome Joel.
Unlike such books as Twelve Years a Slave [1853] or The Underground Railroad [2016], where we heard from, and sympathised with, the actual black slaves, who either tried to escape and were hunted by ruthless slave catchers, or tried to come to terms with their situation, Valerie Martin decided in her book to show the viewpoint of one plantation owner’s wife. This is both the biggest attraction and the biggest weakness of the book, because some readers need their sympathetic narrators and they may be put off by Manon’s coldness and haughtiness. However, this was also precisely the point of the author. Subtly and cleverly, Martin could even be said to satirise the life of this wife on the plantation. Manon seems to seek our sympathy in her narrative, complaining of her loneliness and of her husband’s behaviour, but we also know that her loneliness and “marriage shackles” are nothing in comparison to the plight of her slaves. And, it is in this contrast that Martin makes her biggest and acutest point, as she contrasts Manon’s quest to be liberated from her husband with the quest of black people to live as free individuals. Manon seems to think only of herself, and, although she is convinced that her husband is a “villain”, she also feels indifference towards her slaves’ plight, people who have far more rights to protest their enslavement because they are living through a far greater hell than Manon: “my husband marvels at their savagery; I am more astonished by their boldness” [Martin, 2003: 58]. At another point, Manon talks about how she can get all of her inheritance without her husband touching any of it, while, in the same line, she also quite carelessly expresses sorrow that her mother’s old cook would not even fetch one hundred dollars at sales.
Slaves’ uprisings are not the only thing that worries the married, but childless couple on the plantation. Cholera and yellow fever ravage the area as well, and soon Manon is afraid for her mother who resides in populous New Orleans. She decides to briefly move there with Sarah. It is interesting to read about the complex psychological inter-relationship between Manon, her husband and Sarah, and in some quiet way, slave girl Sarah in the story becomes the symbol of black people’s inward resilience and fighting spirit. Despite being abused and mistreated, Sarah‘s often cool demeanour and compliance remain unshakeable, and behind her robotic expressions and gestures there hides a spirit of rebellion so many white people come to fear. Towards the end, the book becomes more of a southern plantation thriller, without giving much thought to the depth or themes it had established prior, and it finishes on an indeterminate note.
Valerie Martin relied on some real historical accounts in penning her book, such as on Slave Narratives (incorporating the real story of William and Ellen Craft), and the result is a lucid and entrancing account of a life on a sugar plantation in the 1820s from the perspective of a slave owner, emphasising the wilful blindness of the comfortably-seated owners.
September 7, 2024
CONTENT and/or TRIGGER WARNINGS
This book contains themes that might be sensitive or potentially distressing to some readers, including slavery, racism, violence and sexual assault.
Characters
Manon Gaudet
Sarah
Mr. Gaudet
Joel Borden
Walter
Summary
Review
A gripping and thought-provoking novel that delves into the complex themes of power, ownership, and identity in the context of the antebellum American South. Martin's vivid descriptions, meticulous attention to historical detail, and character development make ‘Property’ an immersive and evocative read. Through Manon's first-person narrative, Martin explores the inner conflicts and contradictions that arise when one's perceived privilege and sense of self-worth are intrinsically tied to the institution of slavery.
The novel's greatest strength is its ability to provoke deep introspection. Martin challenges the reader to examine the moral complexities of Manon's character as she wrestles with her own complicity in the brutal system of slavery. As Manon navigates the treacherous waters of her marriage, her interactions with her slaves, and her inner struggles, readers are forced to confront uncomfortable truths about the time period and the human capacity for both cruelty and self-delusion.
‘Property’ is an unsettling exploration of the corrosive effects of power and privilege. The tale of two women, Manon and her slave Sarah, whose lives are inextricably linked by circumstances beyond their control. The dynamic between these two characters is at the heart of the novel, and Martin's portrayal of their complex and shifting relationship is both poignant and challenging.
In conclusion, ‘Property’ by Valerie Martin is a masterfully crafted work of historical fiction that will linger in your thoughts long after you've turned the final page. It's a novel that not only captures the dark realities of the antebellum South but also serves as a powerful commentary on the enduring legacy of slavery and the intricate web of human relationships that it wove. This book is a must-read for anyone interested in exploring the complexities of history and identity.
3/5⭐️
This book contains themes that might be sensitive or potentially distressing to some readers, including slavery, racism, violence and sexual assault.
Characters
Manon Gaudet
Sarah
Mr. Gaudet
Joel Borden
Walter
Summary
Review
A gripping and thought-provoking novel that delves into the complex themes of power, ownership, and identity in the context of the antebellum American South. Martin's vivid descriptions, meticulous attention to historical detail, and character development make ‘Property’ an immersive and evocative read. Through Manon's first-person narrative, Martin explores the inner conflicts and contradictions that arise when one's perceived privilege and sense of self-worth are intrinsically tied to the institution of slavery.
The novel's greatest strength is its ability to provoke deep introspection. Martin challenges the reader to examine the moral complexities of Manon's character as she wrestles with her own complicity in the brutal system of slavery. As Manon navigates the treacherous waters of her marriage, her interactions with her slaves, and her inner struggles, readers are forced to confront uncomfortable truths about the time period and the human capacity for both cruelty and self-delusion.
‘Property’ is an unsettling exploration of the corrosive effects of power and privilege. The tale of two women, Manon and her slave Sarah, whose lives are inextricably linked by circumstances beyond their control. The dynamic between these two characters is at the heart of the novel, and Martin's portrayal of their complex and shifting relationship is both poignant and challenging.
In conclusion, ‘Property’ by Valerie Martin is a masterfully crafted work of historical fiction that will linger in your thoughts long after you've turned the final page. It's a novel that not only captures the dark realities of the antebellum South but also serves as a powerful commentary on the enduring legacy of slavery and the intricate web of human relationships that it wove. This book is a must-read for anyone interested in exploring the complexities of history and identity.
3/5⭐️
February 26, 2017
A riveting read for anyone interested in knowing about the relationship between slaves and their masters before the Civil War.
September 21, 2020
A compact study of slavery that unfolds through the relationship between a New Orleans plantation owner’s wife and her husband’s mistress. Manon Gaudet has never been happy in her marriage, but when their slave girl, Sarah, bears her husband a second child, she decides she has had enough of silently condoning his behavior. A slave uprising and cholera and yellow fever outbreaks provide some welcome drama, but the bulk of this short novel is an examination of the psyche of a woman tormented by hatred and jealousy. Ownership of another human being is, if not technically impossible, certainly not emotionally tenable. Manon’s situation is also intolerable because she has no rights as a woman in the early nineteenth century: any property she inherits will pass directly to her husband. Though thoroughly readable, for me this didn’t really add anything to the corpus of slavery fiction.
March 18, 2019
This book didn’t do much for me. It felt like the end of the book was the middle of the book and left me feeling like their was a cliff hanger.
1800’s New Orleans Story of a young woman that marries a older plantation owner. The slave that tends to her is is also the mistress to the husband, whom she hates. She escapes the plantation when a group of escaped slaves kill the land owner. She attempts to head north but is captured.
1800’s New Orleans Story of a young woman that marries a older plantation owner. The slave that tends to her is is also the mistress to the husband, whom she hates. She escapes the plantation when a group of escaped slaves kill the land owner. She attempts to head north but is captured.
January 18, 2023
For the first 50 or so pages, I appreciated the quality of the writing but I couldn't see why the book is so acclaimed. Past that point I began to see how much power is subtly, quietly packed into such small book. The narrator/main character, Manon, is a perfect exemplar of the enslaver society's ability to deny their brutal nature by dressing it up with public displays of punctilious manners and costly possessions and projecting their brutality onto the enslaved instead. Yet my feeling of revulsion toward Manon is complicated by the fact that she is brutalized in turn by her husband. Feeling even a tiny inkling of sympathy for a loathsome character is a deeply unsettling thing - is it complicity or just recognition of how deeply complex human life can be?
My copy of the book has a blurb by Toni Morrison - in fact it's what got me to read the book. Like Morrison, Martin's writing is all showing - no telling , no describing or scene-setting. The reader lives the book along with the characters.
My copy of the book has a blurb by Toni Morrison - in fact it's what got me to read the book. Like Morrison, Martin's writing is all showing - no telling , no describing or scene-setting. The reader lives the book along with the characters.
May 12, 2008
That America was built on the free labor of its slaves is common knowledge and many have heard the axiom , "Our possessions possess us" as well as "the sins of the fathers are vistited upon the heads of the children." It's hard to determine how many have considered what an institution such as slavery, in which Sarah, Midge, Delphine, and Walter are actual property, does to that "property" and to the owners. It appears both become intimate enemies, owner and slave entwined in an amoral system that although the institution is no longer, created a debt humanity can never repay nor correct.
Valerie Martin explores slavery in all of its demeaning guises in clear, unsentimental prose. Instead of an high contrast polemic, Martin presents a subtle and powerful rendering of the institution from all perspectives: master, slave, revolutionist, abolitionist, burgeoning suffragette, free 'Negroes,' Americans, Southerners, in which the reader comes to understand how pervasive slavery was, and how easily human bondage came to be commonplace, part of the natural order of daily life and God's will and that any deviation from that order was against God's and man's law.
"Property" examines the underbelly of a democracy on the cusp of realizing a liberty for all, not just white males. It is a book that compels the reader to keep reading.
Valerie Martin explores slavery in all of its demeaning guises in clear, unsentimental prose. Instead of an high contrast polemic, Martin presents a subtle and powerful rendering of the institution from all perspectives: master, slave, revolutionist, abolitionist, burgeoning suffragette, free 'Negroes,' Americans, Southerners, in which the reader comes to understand how pervasive slavery was, and how easily human bondage came to be commonplace, part of the natural order of daily life and God's will and that any deviation from that order was against God's and man's law.
"Property" examines the underbelly of a democracy on the cusp of realizing a liberty for all, not just white males. It is a book that compels the reader to keep reading.
October 16, 2015
The thing:
This book may be another victim of poor timing, of me being at a point in my life where just about everything about this book annoys me. It is possible that it would improve on another reading at a different time.
The problem:
Very little about this book makes me want to read it again.
I think I'm maxed out reading books, (particularly told in first-person) about people of relative privilege who only see what they don't have and are unwilling to suffer for change. This is too harsh a critique of main character, Manon, and likely a hold-over from many of the books I read previous to this. But Manon is hardly worthy of your sympathy. She would likely not welcome it if it were offered. Also, I think Martin created some new PoV: the omniscient first-person. Several times it seemed Manon came to conclusions without any sort of actual figuring, she just knew.
There is no one to like in this book. This is such a risk that I don't understand why I seem to find so many books that employ this strategy. I like to read about people I can be made to care about. That didn't happen here. The book was a quick read but my interest was directed toward the author's creativity (the overall story arc...or steady decline into abject misery) and not the lives of the characters.
This book may be another victim of poor timing, of me being at a point in my life where just about everything about this book annoys me. It is possible that it would improve on another reading at a different time.
The problem:
Very little about this book makes me want to read it again.
I think I'm maxed out reading books, (particularly told in first-person) about people of relative privilege who only see what they don't have and are unwilling to suffer for change. This is too harsh a critique of main character, Manon, and likely a hold-over from many of the books I read previous to this. But Manon is hardly worthy of your sympathy. She would likely not welcome it if it were offered. Also, I think Martin created some new PoV: the omniscient first-person. Several times it seemed Manon came to conclusions without any sort of actual figuring, she just knew.
There is no one to like in this book. This is such a risk that I don't understand why I seem to find so many books that employ this strategy. I like to read about people I can be made to care about. That didn't happen here. The book was a quick read but my interest was directed toward the author's creativity (the overall story arc...or steady decline into abject misery) and not the lives of the characters.
March 14, 2016
This book is an uncommon take on antebellum life in the South: a tale told from the perspective of a white woman whose husband owns slaves. And that fact--that it is her HUSBAND who owns slaves--is key here. For the "property" that the novel depicts is not just the slaves themselves, and the children of those slaves, but also the material property that white women ceded to their husbands upon their marriage. Martin very skillfully communicates the various binds that hold African Americans, white women, and white men in their respective "places" in the region and culture of the time. And all this is aside from the fine writing itself (the book won the Orange Prize). I for one will find it impossible to forget the scene that takes place on pages 75-76. I would have given the book five stars if it weren't for the abrupt and wholly unsatisfying ending. All in all, this is a captivating novel that incisively shows the tangle of race that framed southern life before the Civil War.
April 11, 2021
When this novel opens in Ascension Parrish Louisiana in 1828, Manon Gaudet is watching her husband play a cruel sex game with the young negro slave boys on his sugar plantation. It is an obscene, humiliating and uncomfortable scene. Manon is the sole narrator, ready to tell her story but in a way that keeps the listener on her side. She wants the reader to see the world through her eyes and from her point of view; she wants their understanding, their compassion and their concern. And so she takes this first step, confident as she pulls the reader into her world.
Many would consider Manon a privileged white woman living in the South on her husband’s sugar plantation. She has two slaves to help her manage the household, her cook Delphine and her personal maid Sarah, a wedding gift from her Aunt. But Manon is unhappy in the country, preferring life in the city with its luncheons, people to meet for tea and frequent evening socials and dinner parties.
Manon finds her husband a bore and a tyrant, a cruel man for whom she no longer has any affection. After many years of marriage she remains childless, although her husband has two children by Sarah. The older child is Walter, a deaf retarded boy who Manon calls “the creature” and who runs uncontrolled through the house, raising havoc and making unintelligible noises that even Sarah does not understand. The second child Nell is still nursing at Sarah’s breast as she carries her about doing the housework.
Mr. Gaudet is a man very much in debt, suffering from what is commonly known as “planter’s disease”. He continues to buy land although he does not have the resources to cultivate it. Manon has read his account books and knows he is close to ruin. She realizes that if the plantation fails it would bring her down as well, but there are days she longs for it.
After Sarah gave birth to Walter, Manon lost all desire for her husband, at first discouraging his ardor by downing a combination of port and opiates and Mr. Gaudet complained that he felt he was making love to a corpse. Manon finally gave up the charade and simply banned him from her bed.
Manon quietly nurtures her self righteous anger as she and Sarah negotiate their lives within the confines of the house. They rarely speak to each other and when they do, their conversation is minimal and stilted with just enough said to communicate what is absolutely necessary. Manon shouts at Sarah with short curt demands, always aware that Sarah is her property and should be treated as such. She reluctantly admits that Sarah is a good housekeeper and a wonderful hairdresser, yet never acknowledges this to Sarah.
Although the two live in close proximity, Sarah has found ways to effectively distance herself from her mistress. She rarely speaks when she is brushing Manon’s hair, washing her or changing her clothes and simply maintains a placid expression on her face. The reader never knows her and wonders what goes on in her head, what she thinks and how she feels. With much left unsaid between them, the two women quietly seethe, barely tolerating each other’s presence, locked in a perpetual stand-off.
Meanwhile slaves have been secretly gathering in the countryside, planning a revolt. Several have escaped from neighboring plantations and Manon’s husband and other land owners have been arming themselves against them. Her husband and the others often go out at night to chase down the runaways who have escaped from the estates nearby. The rumors of a revolt grow louder every day. Chasing the negroes is dangerous work and each night when Mr. Gaudet goes out, Manon quietly hopes he never returns, praying to become a widow.
When cholera and yellow fever invade New Orleans, Manon returns home to nurse her dying mother in the family home. She takes Sarah with her, determined not to leave her alone on the plantation with her husband. The scene as she leaves for the city is telling: Mr. Gaudet fears Sarah will die in the epidemic, Manon hopes he will be shot by the revolting negroes and Sarah wishes them both dead.
After Manon’s mother dies, she becomes heir to the family home, its furnishing and her mother’s estate, enough to support herself comfortably alone. It is all hers, but at the same time, none of it is hers. Everything she inherits will automatically become her husband’s and she knows he will use it all to pay off his enormous debts. This infuriates her.
The day that Manon returns home from New Orleans is the day the rebels invade the plantation, burning buildings and looting and wrecking the house. They kill her husband and in the melee, Sarah escapes to the countryside with her young baby, leaving her older child Walter behind. Manon’s face is slashed and her shoulder is badly wounded but she escapes to the woods evading the rebels who believe she is dead and abandon the chase.
It is after Sarah’s escape that Manon Gaudet shows her true colors. Up to this point she seemed to live in the shadow of her husband, but now she proves she can be just as cruel and heartless as he was. She becomes obsessed with Sarah’s escape, furious that Sarah has tasted a sense of freedom even she has never known. Manon is determined to get her back where she belongs, as a piece of her property.
Manon retreats to New Orleans and settles in her mother’s house to heal her wounds and consider her options. She carries no grief for the loss of her husband but with her facial scars and useless arm, she is no longer beautiful and a candidate for marriage. Nor does she have enough money to catch Joel Borden, the man who has paid her attention in the past. Borden marries a very ordinary but wealthy young girl so he can live in town, attend parties and balls and enjoy his passion for gambling.
With another marriage out of the question, Manon dedicates her attention to finding Sarah who has simply disappeared. All Manon’s efforts to find her fail until she decides to pay an exorbitant fee to an aggressive slave catcher to bring Sarah home. Her thoughts are not of preserving her investment, but of vengeance and revenge. After all, Sarah is her property. Manon is also determined that Sarah never find happiness with Everett Roget, the black man who has longed to marry her and who Manon suspects has assisted her escape. She also wants to make sure Sarah continues to carry the burden of caring for Walter, the living proof of her coupling with Manon’s husband. She is a vindictive woman bent on revenge.
This short novel is tightly plotted with interesting characters and a theme which explores the corrupting, dehumanizing power of ownership, as both Manon and Sarah are viewed as property by those who “own” them.
It presents two strong characters, Manon the self absorbed and angry slave owner who is impossible to like and Sarah the beautiful young slave trapped in an untenable situation for whom the reader has some sympathy. When Mr. Gaudet was alive, one would think they would help each other against their common enemy. But the gulf between slave and slave owner was too great to allow them to work towards a common goal. In presenting these two characters, Martin has accomplished something unusual. Generally the reader connects with the narrator, but few if any readers grow to have continuing concern for Manon as she sinks into her unending search for vengeance.
This is entirely Manon Gaudet’s story and we come to know her through her actions, a self pitying woman who cannot see how the relationship she has with Sarah is similar to the one between herself and her husband. Manon raged constantly about her husband’s mistreatment, his unremitting and undisputed control over her body and her fortune. She completely failed to notice the similarity between her situation and Sarah’s or to notice that she treated Sarah the same way her husband treated her.
Manon cannot imagine why Sarah would ever want to be anything more than her prized possession. What could ever lead her to think such nonsense? Why is she so ungrateful? Manon controls Sarah in ways that are intimate and shocking. Although we only know Sarah through Manon’s eyes, we know she is beautiful and intelligent, born to a life she has not chosen, yet determined to do the best she can.
Martin does not offer any answers to the questions raised in “Property”. Instead she allows the reader to watch the events unfold against a dark and brooding background, observing the power of the master over the slave and seeing how that relationship affects both the person holding the power as well as the captive.
The story ends abruptly and none of the issues are resolved. Manon condemns herself to lifelong bitterness although she does soften towards Walter as the story closes. But that is not because she is generous or because she purposefully extends herself towards caring for the boy she calls her “husband’s little bastard”. It simply seems to happen.
This was a compelling read, well written, with strong characters and a powerful message.
Many would consider Manon a privileged white woman living in the South on her husband’s sugar plantation. She has two slaves to help her manage the household, her cook Delphine and her personal maid Sarah, a wedding gift from her Aunt. But Manon is unhappy in the country, preferring life in the city with its luncheons, people to meet for tea and frequent evening socials and dinner parties.
Manon finds her husband a bore and a tyrant, a cruel man for whom she no longer has any affection. After many years of marriage she remains childless, although her husband has two children by Sarah. The older child is Walter, a deaf retarded boy who Manon calls “the creature” and who runs uncontrolled through the house, raising havoc and making unintelligible noises that even Sarah does not understand. The second child Nell is still nursing at Sarah’s breast as she carries her about doing the housework.
Mr. Gaudet is a man very much in debt, suffering from what is commonly known as “planter’s disease”. He continues to buy land although he does not have the resources to cultivate it. Manon has read his account books and knows he is close to ruin. She realizes that if the plantation fails it would bring her down as well, but there are days she longs for it.
After Sarah gave birth to Walter, Manon lost all desire for her husband, at first discouraging his ardor by downing a combination of port and opiates and Mr. Gaudet complained that he felt he was making love to a corpse. Manon finally gave up the charade and simply banned him from her bed.
Manon quietly nurtures her self righteous anger as she and Sarah negotiate their lives within the confines of the house. They rarely speak to each other and when they do, their conversation is minimal and stilted with just enough said to communicate what is absolutely necessary. Manon shouts at Sarah with short curt demands, always aware that Sarah is her property and should be treated as such. She reluctantly admits that Sarah is a good housekeeper and a wonderful hairdresser, yet never acknowledges this to Sarah.
Although the two live in close proximity, Sarah has found ways to effectively distance herself from her mistress. She rarely speaks when she is brushing Manon’s hair, washing her or changing her clothes and simply maintains a placid expression on her face. The reader never knows her and wonders what goes on in her head, what she thinks and how she feels. With much left unsaid between them, the two women quietly seethe, barely tolerating each other’s presence, locked in a perpetual stand-off.
Meanwhile slaves have been secretly gathering in the countryside, planning a revolt. Several have escaped from neighboring plantations and Manon’s husband and other land owners have been arming themselves against them. Her husband and the others often go out at night to chase down the runaways who have escaped from the estates nearby. The rumors of a revolt grow louder every day. Chasing the negroes is dangerous work and each night when Mr. Gaudet goes out, Manon quietly hopes he never returns, praying to become a widow.
When cholera and yellow fever invade New Orleans, Manon returns home to nurse her dying mother in the family home. She takes Sarah with her, determined not to leave her alone on the plantation with her husband. The scene as she leaves for the city is telling: Mr. Gaudet fears Sarah will die in the epidemic, Manon hopes he will be shot by the revolting negroes and Sarah wishes them both dead.
After Manon’s mother dies, she becomes heir to the family home, its furnishing and her mother’s estate, enough to support herself comfortably alone. It is all hers, but at the same time, none of it is hers. Everything she inherits will automatically become her husband’s and she knows he will use it all to pay off his enormous debts. This infuriates her.
The day that Manon returns home from New Orleans is the day the rebels invade the plantation, burning buildings and looting and wrecking the house. They kill her husband and in the melee, Sarah escapes to the countryside with her young baby, leaving her older child Walter behind. Manon’s face is slashed and her shoulder is badly wounded but she escapes to the woods evading the rebels who believe she is dead and abandon the chase.
It is after Sarah’s escape that Manon Gaudet shows her true colors. Up to this point she seemed to live in the shadow of her husband, but now she proves she can be just as cruel and heartless as he was. She becomes obsessed with Sarah’s escape, furious that Sarah has tasted a sense of freedom even she has never known. Manon is determined to get her back where she belongs, as a piece of her property.
Manon retreats to New Orleans and settles in her mother’s house to heal her wounds and consider her options. She carries no grief for the loss of her husband but with her facial scars and useless arm, she is no longer beautiful and a candidate for marriage. Nor does she have enough money to catch Joel Borden, the man who has paid her attention in the past. Borden marries a very ordinary but wealthy young girl so he can live in town, attend parties and balls and enjoy his passion for gambling.
With another marriage out of the question, Manon dedicates her attention to finding Sarah who has simply disappeared. All Manon’s efforts to find her fail until she decides to pay an exorbitant fee to an aggressive slave catcher to bring Sarah home. Her thoughts are not of preserving her investment, but of vengeance and revenge. After all, Sarah is her property. Manon is also determined that Sarah never find happiness with Everett Roget, the black man who has longed to marry her and who Manon suspects has assisted her escape. She also wants to make sure Sarah continues to carry the burden of caring for Walter, the living proof of her coupling with Manon’s husband. She is a vindictive woman bent on revenge.
This short novel is tightly plotted with interesting characters and a theme which explores the corrupting, dehumanizing power of ownership, as both Manon and Sarah are viewed as property by those who “own” them.
It presents two strong characters, Manon the self absorbed and angry slave owner who is impossible to like and Sarah the beautiful young slave trapped in an untenable situation for whom the reader has some sympathy. When Mr. Gaudet was alive, one would think they would help each other against their common enemy. But the gulf between slave and slave owner was too great to allow them to work towards a common goal. In presenting these two characters, Martin has accomplished something unusual. Generally the reader connects with the narrator, but few if any readers grow to have continuing concern for Manon as she sinks into her unending search for vengeance.
This is entirely Manon Gaudet’s story and we come to know her through her actions, a self pitying woman who cannot see how the relationship she has with Sarah is similar to the one between herself and her husband. Manon raged constantly about her husband’s mistreatment, his unremitting and undisputed control over her body and her fortune. She completely failed to notice the similarity between her situation and Sarah’s or to notice that she treated Sarah the same way her husband treated her.
Manon cannot imagine why Sarah would ever want to be anything more than her prized possession. What could ever lead her to think such nonsense? Why is she so ungrateful? Manon controls Sarah in ways that are intimate and shocking. Although we only know Sarah through Manon’s eyes, we know she is beautiful and intelligent, born to a life she has not chosen, yet determined to do the best she can.
Martin does not offer any answers to the questions raised in “Property”. Instead she allows the reader to watch the events unfold against a dark and brooding background, observing the power of the master over the slave and seeing how that relationship affects both the person holding the power as well as the captive.
The story ends abruptly and none of the issues are resolved. Manon condemns herself to lifelong bitterness although she does soften towards Walter as the story closes. But that is not because she is generous or because she purposefully extends herself towards caring for the boy she calls her “husband’s little bastard”. It simply seems to happen.
This was a compelling read, well written, with strong characters and a powerful message.
June 13, 2017
Manon Gaudet lives in the deep South at a time when it's common to view certain people as less than human based simply on the color of their skin. She grew up in a slave holding household and naturally continues the family tradition when she marries. Thus, when she moves with her new husband to his sugar plantation just north of New Orleans, she takes with her Sarah, a family house servant gifted to her by her mother. But she soon discovers her new husband has found other uses for Sarah beyond catering to her mistress's demands -- and that marriage is not the panacea she had hoped it to be.
Sarah has two children by Manon's husband, children Manon loathes almost as much as she loathes the man who fathered them. Yet they all continue to share the same space, barely disguising their bitter resentments toward each other until several events occur that give Manon hope of release from her 'bondage' and misery: 1) Manon's mother dies leaving her house in town as her daughter's inheritance, and 2) a slave uprising frees her of the husband who, by law as the man of the household, holds rights to that inheritance. He intends to sell the property that had been Manon's only hope of escape.
The story is seen from Manon's unique perspective as the slave owner and as a female living at a time when women have little to no say in the unfolding of their own lives. Interestingly, she is unable to see the irony of her own perceived oppression within the context of her continued cruel oppression of Sarah.
While Manon is far from a sympathetic protagonist, she offers us a glimpse into the skewed reasoning of women in such a setting. and their utter inability to comprehend the enormous injustice they heap upon those who find themselves on the other side of this scenario -- those who truly are "property."
I found this an interesting and thought provoking story that provides further insight into the time period in which my own novels are set - the early to middle 19th century.
Sarah has two children by Manon's husband, children Manon loathes almost as much as she loathes the man who fathered them. Yet they all continue to share the same space, barely disguising their bitter resentments toward each other until several events occur that give Manon hope of release from her 'bondage' and misery: 1) Manon's mother dies leaving her house in town as her daughter's inheritance, and 2) a slave uprising frees her of the husband who, by law as the man of the household, holds rights to that inheritance. He intends to sell the property that had been Manon's only hope of escape.
The story is seen from Manon's unique perspective as the slave owner and as a female living at a time when women have little to no say in the unfolding of their own lives. Interestingly, she is unable to see the irony of her own perceived oppression within the context of her continued cruel oppression of Sarah.
While Manon is far from a sympathetic protagonist, she offers us a glimpse into the skewed reasoning of women in such a setting. and their utter inability to comprehend the enormous injustice they heap upon those who find themselves on the other side of this scenario -- those who truly are "property."
I found this an interesting and thought provoking story that provides further insight into the time period in which my own novels are set - the early to middle 19th century.
January 6, 2018
In the early 19th century Manon is married to a plantation owner in the south of America. Her marriage isn't happy though and she longs to return to her old life in New Orleans. There are also problems with the slaves and rebellion is in the air. It was hard to feel sorry for Manon in some respects because she was part of the system that took people from their homes in Africa and treated them no better than animals. But Manon was also a victim of the patriarchy and she found herself trapped in a loveless marriage, nothing more than the property of her husband. The title of this novel covers so many aspects of the word and how, for so long, certain people were considered the property of others through no fault of their own.
August 24, 2020
Very simply, one of the best books I have ever read about slavery. I will undeniably be reading a lot more of Ms. Martin's work. The story is told through the eyes of Manon Gaudet, a self-absorbed wife of a sugar plantation owner whose husband's relationship with Sarah, a beautiful, young, slave has Manon left feeling resentful and unsatisfied with her life.
July 3, 2020
I’m glad I found this novel. It seems like the anecdote to Gone With the Wind—the truth about the impact of slavery on human culture. There is no kindness, no love, only relentless cruelty and degradation.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 688 reviews