Property
by Valerie Martin
Martin's tale of slavery on a nineteenth century plantation in the American South won the 2003 Orange Prize for Fiction against strong competition from Carol Shields, Donna Tartt, Zadie Smith, Anne Donovan and Shena Mackay.
In an almost unrelentingly bleak portrayal of a society on the brink of collapse, Martin conjures up an atmosphere of deep mistrust between husband and wife, and master and slave. Manon Gaudet, the narrator of the novel, is trapped in a loveless marriage with a plantation owner who has turned to one of the house slaves, Sarah, for sexual gratification. Manon is forced to endure the presence of both of them on a daily basis, suffering the humiliation of being waited on by the woman who has borne her husband two children.
At the same time, unrest on the plantations erupts into violence, owners are forced to round up escaped slaves and disease emerges in the nearby town. Danger is everywhere and Manon must negotiate a way through the turmoil.
Martin is particularly good at describing the tangled and complex relationships that exist between all the characters in the book. Manon refuses to submit to her husband, yet is ruthless in her submission of Sarah; without the slaves, the plantations will not run, yet the owners rely on force and degradation to suppress them. Seething resentment and unhappiness pervade every page of this novel, but the power and restraint of Martin's writing drives the reader on regardless.
Extract
Manon Gaudet is unhappily married to the owner of a Louisiana sugar plantation. She misses her family and longs for the vibrant lifestyle of her native New Orleans, but most of all she longs to be free of her suffocating domestic situation. The tension revolves around Sarah, a slave girl given to Manon as a wedding present from her aunt, whose young son Walter is living proof of where Manon’s husband’s inclinations lie. This private drama is played out against a brooding atmosphere of slave unrest and bloody uprisings. And if the attacks reach Manon’s house, no one can be sure which way Sarah will turn…
Beautifully written, Property is an intricately told tale of both individual stories and of a country in a time of change, where ownership is at once everything and nothing, and where belonging, by contrast, is all.
