The Grandissimes: A Story of Creole Life
The Grandissimes: A Story of Creole Life is a novel by
Key characters
- Honoré Grandissime, the head of the French/white part of the prominent Grandissime family of New Orleans
- Honoré Grandissime, the mulatto half-brother of the white Honoré Grandissime
- Joseph Frowenfeld, a Philadelphia native and abolitionist
- Agricola Fusilier, Honoré Grandissime's uncle, who seeks to preserve slavery, the foundation of the European Grandissime family's way of life
- Aurora Nancanou, a destitute widow whose husband was murdered by Fusilier in a gambling dispute
- Palmyre, Aurora Nancanou's slave maid
- Bras Coupé, an enslaved African prince on a Spanish Creole plantation, also Palmyre's fiancé
Plot
Honoré Grandissime, head of the French Creole family, takes in Joseph Frowenfeld, whose family has died of yellow fever. He describes the New Orleans caste system, which had three racial groups, to Frowenfeld, an abolitionist. His desire to end slavery would destroy the labor base of the plantations, which revenues supported city life. Frowenfeld and Grandissime's uncle Agricola Fusilier, soon get into a dispute. Fusilier seeks to preserve the Grandissime way of life, which means continuing slavery.
Grandissime and his quadroon half brother, also named Honoré Grandissime, want to go into business together. Grandissime also wants to help Aurora Nancanou, widowed since Fusilier killed her husband. Grandissime is secretly in love with her.[6]
Grandissime later tries to help Bras Coupé, a slave engaged to Palmyre, Aurora's maid. After Coupé attacks his white overseer, a mob of Creole aristocrats, including Fusilier, captures the slave as he tries to escape through swamps outside the city. Grandissime tries to intervene, but the mob brutally lynches Coupé, in an act demonstrating the darkness at the heart of their society.[7]
Adaptations
The book is known for its descriptions of local dialects and the practice of
The book features an adaptation of the story of Bras-Coupé, the fictitious name of a fugitive slave named Squire who was lynched in 1837.[8]
The novel was adapted for the opera Koanga, with music by Frederick Delius.
References
- ISBN 0-87805-149-X
- ISBN 978-0-547-20166-5
- ISBN 978-0-8103-1149-7
- ^ Rubin LD (1966). Writers of the Modern South: The Faraway Country. University of Washington Press, ASIN B00128IG4G
- ISBN 978-0-89356-089-8
- ISBN 978-0-8057-3991-6
- ISBN 978-0-393-31671-1
- ^ Catherine M. Downs, Becoming Modern: Willa Cather's Journalism, Susquehanna University Press, 2000, page 83
External links
- George Washington Cable, The Grandissimes, via Project Gutenberg
- "Bio of Cable and Summary of novel: The Grandissimes: A Story of Creole Life", Documenting the American South, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
- Edwin Mims (1920). . Encyclopedia Americana.