Marie

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 American Indians 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.

First sentence: In his 1938 biography of M. Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859), George Wilson Pierson establishes the powerfull influence of Tocqueville's lifelong friend and fellow lawyer, Gustave de Beaumont (1802-1866), on the conclusions advanced in Democracy in America.

Year

1958

Language

English

Publisher

The Johns Hopkins University Press

Editions

1

Pages

288

ISBN

9780801860645

Data source: Wikidata