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Cover image of Marie or, Slavery in the United States
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Marie or, Slavery in the United States

A Novel of Jacksonian America

Gustave de Beaumont
translated by Barbara Chapman, with a new introduction by Gerard Fergerson

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Gustave de Beaumont's 1835 work, Marie, or Slavery in the United States is structured as a fascinating essay on race interwoven with a novel. It is the story of socially forbidden love between an idealistic young Frenchman and an apparently white American woman with African ancestry. The couple's idealism fades as they repeatedly face racial prejudice and violence, and are eventually forced to seek shelter among exiled Cherokee people. Notable as the first abolitionist novel to focus on racial prejudice rather than bondage as a social evil, Beaumont's work was also the first to link prejudice...

Gustave de Beaumont's 1835 work, Marie, or Slavery in the United States is structured as a fascinating essay on race interwoven with a novel. It is the story of socially forbidden love between an idealistic young Frenchman and an apparently white American woman with African ancestry. The couple's idealism fades as they repeatedly face racial prejudice and violence, and are eventually forced to seek shelter among exiled Cherokee people. Notable as the first abolitionist novel to focus on racial prejudice rather than bondage as a social evil, Beaumont's work was also the first to link prejudice against Native Americans to prejudice against blacks. This translation, with a new introduction by Gerard Fergerson, provides modern readers with interesting insights into the inconsistencies and injustices of democratic Jacksonian society.

Reviews

Reviews

Beaumont's chef-d'oeuvre was, and has remained, illuminating... It follows that to readers of the present work the book of 1835 will seem strangely and wonderfully familiar... Marie will be a book of echoes.

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Book Details

Table of Contents

Introduction, 1999, by Gerard Fergerson
Publisher's Note
Introduction, by Alvis L. Tinnin
Foreword, by Gustave de Beaumont
Chapter 1. Prologue
Chapter 2. American Women
Chapter 3. Ludovic, of the Departure

Introduction, 1999, by Gerard Fergerson
Publisher's Note
Introduction, by Alvis L. Tinnin
Foreword, by Gustave de Beaumont
Chapter 1. Prologue
Chapter 2. American Women
Chapter 3. Ludovic, of the Departure From Europe
Chapter 4. An American Family
Chapter 5. Marie
Chapter 6. The Baltimore Almshouse
Chapter 7. The Mystery
Chapter 8. The Revelation
Chapter 9. The Test
Chapter 10. Continuation of the Test
Chapter 11. The Test: Episode of Oneda
Chapter 12. The Test: Literature and Fine Arts
Chapter 13. The Riot
Chapter 14. Departure from Civilized America
Chapter 15. The Virgin Forest and the Wilderness
Chapter 16. The Tragedy
Chapter 17. Epilogue
Appendixes:
A. Note on the Social and Political Condition of the Negro Salves and of Free People of Color
B. Note on American Women
C. Note on American Anglophobia
D. Notes on Blue Laws
E. Note on the Indulgence of American Society to Bankrupts
F. Note on Polygamy Among American Indians
G. Note on American Sociability
H. Note on American Crudeness
I. Note on Equality in American Society
J. Note on American Theaters
K. Note on the Present Condition of the Indian Tribes of North America
L. Note on the New York Race Riots of 1834

Author Bios
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Gustave de Beaumont

Gustave de Beaumont (1802-1866) is primarily remembered as Alexis de Tocqueville's travel companion and literary executor. He was co-author, with Tocqueville, of On the Penitentiary System in the United States.