A ‘Quarrel between Two Brothers’: Eméric Bergeaud’s Ideal History of the Haitian Revolution
A ‘Quarrel between Two Brothers’: Eméric Bergeaud’s Ideal History of the Haitian Revolution
This chapter argues that the Haitian author Eméric Bergeaud’s historical romance of the Revolution, Stella (1859), complicates the archetypal portrait of the tragic “mulatto/a.” Stella provides a passionate reversal of the notion that differences in skin color encouraged family (read: national) conflicts. Instead, Stella offers a celebration of Haiti’s diversity by arguing that the union between people of different skin color during the War of Independence was the productive process responsible for the liberation of the country. Bergeaud’s novel consequently forces us to recognize the complicated and indeed conflicting meanings of the “mulatto,” which was the primary symbol of the both the family tragedy and violent rebellion (and, therefore, national uncertainty) in nineteenth-century European and U.S. American depictions of people of color, yet is described as an empty “racial” signifier left over from colonialism in much of post-revolutionary Haitian letters.
Keywords: Bergeaud, Haitian literature, Haitian independence, Scientific Racism, Miscegenation, Tragic Mulatto/a, Fratricide, Patricide, French Revolution, Enlightenment
Liverpool Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs, and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us.
