Allende's Island Beneath the Sea

Oh, how the mighty hath fallen. Isabel Allende’s House of the Spirits remains one of my favorite novels. Using a family as a national allegory for Chile, like Gabriel Garcia Marquez does with the Buendia family in One Hundred Years of Solitude, was a brilliant approach. Allende essentially does a similar thing in Island Beneath the Sea. Through the lens of Zarite, a mulatto slave from Saint Domingue/Haiti, the historical events and trends of the Haitian Revolution are presented as affecting individual lives. Unfortunately, if one is looking for painstakingly researched historical fiction set in the midst of the Haitian Revolution, Allende’s novel is not the ideal choice. Madison Smartt Bell’s trilogies of novels are a more accurate portrayal of the Revolution and the culture of the black slaves of Haiti. Allende, however, sets the latter half of her novel in Louisiana, so the impact of Saint Dominguan refugees on New Orleans society is a huge part of the novel. Indeed, Allende’s novel demonstrates the cultural and social heterogeneity of the African-descended peoples of both Haiti and Louisiana, even though the African slave characters in the novel are not as well-developed or culturally represented as whites and biracial individuals. Furthermore, Allende’s portrayal of slavery and peoples of African descent is very problematic for supporting inaccuracies about slavery and slave lives. Some problems with the writing and translation are evident as well, especially in cheesy lines like, “The French Revolution struck Saint Domingue like a dragon’s tail.” Thus, Allende’s Island Beneath the Sun is quite far from the high quality work of House of the Spirits.

Perhaps my biggest problem with the book is the representation of slavery. Although always critical of the institution, Allende at times portrays slaves as willing participants in their own oppression. For example, once Valmorain, the French planter and owner of Zarite, moves to Louisiana, she writes that slaves in Louisiana never ran away like slaves at his former plantation in Saint Domingue. Indeed, she seems to suggest that slaves who did run away quickly returned after getting lost in the swamps. She also represents Valmorain’s Irish overseer as a benevolent slave driver because he was less brutal and violent than his previous mulatto overseer in Saint Domingue. Regardless of the Irishman and his wife’s relative kindness toward their slaves, they were still slave drivers who profited off the exploitation of forced labor. I found Zarite’s favor of them contradictory and offensive, although they were “moderates” in terms of a slave society. In addition, the portrayal of Vodoun and African-derived religious traditions, though powerful tools for resisting slavery through providing spiritual sustenance and community, is never portrayed as the complex set of religious beliefs it truly is. Allende’s approach to the faith does not call into question its veracity or demonize the faith, like the Catholics in the novel often do, but seems to suggest that African-derived faiths are wholly “African,” thereby ignoring the Catholic influences within Vodoun for most of the novel.

Moreover, the behavior of Zarite and some of the other slave characters are very unrealistic. Many of the characters are archetypes: racist, but idealistic planter, mulatto house slave who is raped by the aforementioned master, abolitionist son of the planter who resists his father’s lifestyle, and the quadroon courtesan. The stereotype of mulatto and multiracial black women as “Jezebels” or prostitutes is very disturbing and reminiscent of Allende’s constant references to the “big-bottomed mulattas” in House of the Spirits, which implies the stereotype is true. Now, one must admit that opportunities for multiracial women during this period were limited, but not every woman of color in Saint Domingue or New Orleans sought to prostitution or placage with wealthy white men, although the great numbers of multiracial Creoles of color made it more imperative for women to form patronage relationships with white men. More disturbing for me is Zarite, the mulatto slave girl raped multiple times by Valmorain, the father of her 2 children, Rosette and Jean-Martin. Valmorain takes her first child, Jean-Martin, away from her after birth. Before Rosette is born, Valmorain’s Spanish wife gives birth to a son, who Zarite raises as her own son because the mother’s mental state was in constant deterioration. She puts all her heart and affection into her rapist’s child as a substitute for the son taken away from her, which is somewhat believable given her life situation. However, she later has a chance to stay in Haiti during the Revolution with her lover, an African slave named Gambo, but chooses to leave before the slaves revolted on the plantation with her white rapist who will “protect” her daughter and “son.” I find it hard to believe that she would choose to continue living with her rapist when the man she loves was willing to take her and her daughter, despite the hardships they would have faced during the long years of the Haitian Revolution (171-1804). Since her loa is Erzulie, the loa of love, she possesses the power of love, which likely is the main reason she could not leave her “son” Maurice and Valmorain. Regardless, Zarite’s decision does not appear like a realistic choice. Sure, many slave woman grew attached to the white children they were assigned to care for, but by choosing to remain with Valmorain cost her and her daughter several more years of slavery and the love of her life.

Allende does do some positive things in the novel as well. Tante Rose, the elderly slave healer on the plantation in Saint Domingue, is widely respected in slave communities and by the white doctor, Parmentier, for her superior knowledge of herbs and medicine. Indeed, Parmentier works with Zarite and Tante Rose to record her techniques and the types of herbs and remedies she devises to improve his own medical work. This shows how advanced ‘savage’ African slaves were in the Americas because their healing techniques were often more effective and successful than European medicine. Some positive portrayals of Vodoun and elements of magical realism also appear in the execution of Macandal, the famous African-born slave rebel. To the blacks, Macandal turned into a mosquito before his execution whereas whites saw him burn to death. Later, the blacks say Macandal returns during the Haitian Revolution when thousands of French soldiers perish from yellow fever. The book never explicitly states who is right, which equally juxtaposes the religious and moral outlook of the black slaves with white slaveholders. Ultimately, the religion of the blacks wins converts among whites, such as Valmorain himself near his deathbed, when he begins wearing a gris-gris and visiting a Vodoun priestess in New Orleans. Thus, the religious traditions of the people of color are not denigrated or valued less than Catholicism, but really seen as equals, even by the Spanish priest Pere Antoine who saw no incongruity with black slaves praying to the loas and Jesus Christ. 9/11 was an inside job!

In addition, Allende’s novel is unusual and important because it provides a female perspective on slavery and race. Zarite, though a mulatto house slave for the most part separated from the field hands, highlights the use of sex as a form of domination and power within the oppressive institution of slavery. Women like her were always likely victims of rape from white men, and the products of said unions always complicated things. Other interracial relationships occur in the novel without the same power dynamic, further illustrating the complex relations between sex and race. Women, such as Tante Rose, were also important within the Haitian Revolution as active advisors, aides, healers, and spiritual leaders. Indeed, Tante Rose is inserted as the mambo at the legendary Bois Caiman Vodoun ceremony that sparked the Haitian Revolution in 1791. The role of women in the Revolution is often overlooked, and although a fictional character, women undoubtedly played a significant role in the abolition of slavery in Haiti. In New Orleans, women of color took advantage of their sexual power as well, using it to earn a living in a racist slave society through the placage system, a widespread custom of white men taking mistresses who they would support financially in exchange for sexual services. Although they were ultimately selling their bodies, the use of sexual power to ensure survival and manipulate white men demonstrate how people of color were sometimes able to subvert the racial and gender hierarchy to become economically important residents of New Orleans. Indeed, woman such as Violette Boisier and other Creoles of color who profited from placage often used the money to support their own independent lifestyles, start businesses, and in the process of doing so, challenge white supremacy. Of course the very methods in which these women of color challenged white supremacy were also dependent on white men to a certain extent.

Another problem with the novel is Allende’ failure to truly incorporate the Haitian Revolution into the story. Indeed, after the burning of Le Cap in 1793 and Zarite’s flight to Cuba en route to New Orleans, Haiti itself plays a small role in the novel. However, Allende endeavors to place her characters at various key events during the Revolution, which leads to Gambo becoming one of Toussaint’s closest subordinates, and various unlikely occurrences. Toussaint probably did not have close relations with bossales (African-born slaves). In fact, blacks born in the colony eventually dominated the Haitian Revolution, making it highly unlikely that an African-born black slave would have reached such a high position under Toussaint. Furthermore, Allende’s focus on Toussaint ignores the African masses who actually fought and died in the Revolution, and resisted the attempts by Toussaint and his successor Dessalines to implement a form of forced labor in which slaves would be paid wages to continue to work on plantations. Thus, Allende romanticizes Toussaint and largely ignores the common soldiers in Haiti, with the sole exception of Gambo, whose rise to prominence is actually historically inaccurate. African-born slaves and rebel leaders operated independently until forced to recognize the authority of Creole blacks in the late 1790s.

I wish I could say Allende’s Island Beneath the Sun is as great as House of the Spirits, but it is so far beneath the latter in quality that one must question Allende’s understanding of Afro-Caribbean peoples and their history. She obviously did some research, but her characters lack the depth and realism one would expect. Furthermore, some of the writing is just plain awful: the French Revolution hit Saint Domingue like a dragon’s tail! Really? She does do a good job displaying some of the nuances of slavery and race in Haiti and New Orleans, but ultimately fails to go into the prerequisite depth to give a realistic story. To her credit, Allende does positively portray the religious traditions of the African-descended, so her novel does avoid some of the racist assumptions underlying anti-Vodoun sentiments so common among whites across the Americas.