Chapter #3

Hey, so I just finished this intense part of a book, and it's really stuck with me. It’s set on a plantation, and it starts by showing you just how unpredictable and cruel the mistress can be—one minute she’s being generous, the next she’s lashing out, especially at girls like Joséphine, who’s only 8 years old, and Gracieuse, often described as a 'cocotte.' It really highlights the gendered power dynamics and volatile moods of those in charge. You see the master, too, treating people like property in the slave market, inspecting them, even feeling the women’s buttocks, with utter disregard for their humanity, displaying his cold separation of 'business from pleasure.' There's this super disturbing scene where one of the 8 women in the field-slave lot, covered in brands and scars, is just casually tossed aside, literally discarded like trash to Chatelin, a notorious and brutal slave trader. What’s even worse is how the other masters rationalize this brutality, like Villiers who says, “Each man must be able to take the law into his own hands!” This shows the systemic tolerance for violence used to prevent revolts and maintain social order, all while advertisements in L’Affiche Américaine commodify human beings by listing their ages and skills, like a 'Nago Negress, about 28 years old, good cook' or a 'Young Negress, nursing, with 2-month-old infant, good seamstress.'

Then the story really focuses on Lisette, who's enslaved in the big house, observing everything from the mistress’s fear of Gracieuse’s influence to the damp, smoky air of the shacks. She carries this deep family history through her 'memory-work,' remembering her Grandma Charlotte, Ma Augustine, and Ma Thérèse, who all endured incredible hardship at the Limonade plantation. There’s a heartbreaking account of her childhood friend, Samuel, who was just 13 when he died after a hunting accident, shattering Ma Thérèse’s dream for him to learn a trade like wigmaking or tailoring and find eventual freedom. This juxtaposition of Samuel’s playful childhood and his tragic death really emphasizes the vulnerability of youth and the arbitrary nature of loss under slavery. This whole section also brings in the myth of Makandal, this one-armed Mandingo sorcerer whose name, an 'emblem of rebellion,' begins to haunt the masters’ conversations. For Lisette, Makandal becomes a powerful symbol of anti-colonial violence and vengeance, a deep draw to a vision of freedom, even though she knows a 'plantation without masters' is a utopian, dangerous dream.

Later, after 'four months' of agonizing absence, Lisette finally reunites with Vincent by Gallifet spring, and it’s an incredibly raw and emotional encounter. He's visibly traumatized, bearing scars and a missing leg, physical testaments to the brutalities of the Middle Passage and his time under masters like Paultre. He recounts the horrors of the ship journey, the 'sea’s tension' and 'storm of fear,' the death of his father, and witnessing terrible punishments, like what happened to Babette, a washerwoman whose 'scent of oranges and lemons' and tenderness he cherished. Babette’s harsh punishment 'anchors Vincent’s trauma' and fuels his intense desire for vengeance, transforming him from 'The Fearless One' into a figure driven by deep hatred. Despite the ever-present danger and Ma Augustine’s sobering warnings—a reminder that 'courage must be tempered by caution'—Lisette and Vincent cling to each other, finding solace and a shared longing for dignity and agency amidst all the systemic violence and constant threats. Their embrace, where 'hands, breasts, and legs expressing what their voices cannot fully convey,' speaks volumes about their desperate attempt to 'exorcise past horrors' and reclaim their humanity through intimacy, even as the 'weight of danger' looms over their future.