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A review by elle_ette
Property by Valerie Martin
2.0
1.5 stars rounded up.
Manon Gaudet is the bitter wife of a Louisiana sugar plantation owner whom she has hated for nearly all their years of marriage for his cruelty and ignorance, his terrible ways with their money and with their slaves, one in particular named Sarah who Manon brought to their marriage as her personal property, with whom he has a bastard child. Through her eyes she provides a snippet of the life she leads, the hatred she feels and her crumbling family life against a backdrop of rebellion stirring.
I read this for the first time many years ago when I was completing my GCSE in English Literature, and picked it up again because I had vague memories of enjoying it. Those memories were false. Despite an intriguing premise, an awful tale of the horror and injustice of slavery told from the point of view of the plantation owner’s wife who hates the man as much as his slaves do could have made for an interesting perspective, but it falls incredibly flat with bland, dislikeable characters, all of whom have exactly zero redeeming features despite the plot angling for us to take some pity on them. Manon had the potential to become an interesting character as she embodies a lot of clever literary techniques such as the gothic double, and could have become an ideal parallel to Sarah for Martin to discuss the roles of women and forced detachment, but she quickly becomes two dimensional and despite being under the thumb of her abusive husband is arguably no better than him despite thinking that she is. The only character I felt anything for was Sarah, who in turn was an incredibly problematic representation and a cold, unpleasant character, if only for the situation she was in and her drive to make do when faced with the choice of do this or die.
The opening chapter harbours a lot of potential and I think this is what my memories must have hinged themselves upon because it goes downhill quite fast, and even quicker around the halfway mark. The struggles of enslaved men and women almost felt like a prop to set up Manon’s woe-is-me responses to comparatively trivial situations, and any attempts to address them were flawed and underdeveloped.
One thing that I did like however is that the book is told from Manon's perspective instead of Sarah's, which I think I am in the minority for. There is no doubt that most readers would be moved by Sarah's point of view, feeling her trauma as she speaks of slavery, sexual assault and the loss of her children, but telling it from Manon's perspective set the book on a completely different level; we are forced to recognise that for a long time, this was normal and unquestioned, so much so that to many white men and women, no matter the injustices that they faced themselves, it never occurred to them that they could be doing something wrong. Manon never understands that Sarah might aspire to be more than a possession, and again, I think that if better care had been given to the development of the women in this novel, this could have been much harder hitting than it inevitably was.
Despite being a quick read at just over 200 pages, Property left me with no feelings of resolution at the end, positive or negative. It is relatively well written up until the final few chapters where I got the distinct feeling that Martin simply didn’t know how to end it, so she decided she’d stop mid chapter and call it a day. An interesting concept about a delicate situation that simply was not done well or delivered with care, a commentary on women's rights and women as property regardless of their skin colour or social standing could have been something quite special, but as it stands I don’t really understand how this won such a prestigious award in 2003 when there were so many better contenders on the long list, aside from its accessibility as a simple read.
Manon Gaudet is the bitter wife of a Louisiana sugar plantation owner whom she has hated for nearly all their years of marriage for his cruelty and ignorance, his terrible ways with their money and with their slaves, one in particular named Sarah who Manon brought to their marriage as her personal property, with whom he has a bastard child. Through her eyes she provides a snippet of the life she leads, the hatred she feels and her crumbling family life against a backdrop of rebellion stirring.
I read this for the first time many years ago when I was completing my GCSE in English Literature, and picked it up again because I had vague memories of enjoying it. Those memories were false. Despite an intriguing premise, an awful tale of the horror and injustice of slavery told from the point of view of the plantation owner’s wife who hates the man as much as his slaves do could have made for an interesting perspective, but it falls incredibly flat with bland, dislikeable characters, all of whom have exactly zero redeeming features despite the plot angling for us to take some pity on them. Manon had the potential to become an interesting character as she embodies a lot of clever literary techniques such as the gothic double, and could have become an ideal parallel to Sarah for Martin to discuss the roles of women and forced detachment, but she quickly becomes two dimensional and despite being under the thumb of her abusive husband is arguably no better than him despite thinking that she is. The only character I felt anything for was Sarah, who in turn was an incredibly problematic representation and a cold, unpleasant character, if only for the situation she was in and her drive to make do when faced with the choice of do this or die.
The opening chapter harbours a lot of potential and I think this is what my memories must have hinged themselves upon because it goes downhill quite fast, and even quicker around the halfway mark. The struggles of enslaved men and women almost felt like a prop to set up Manon’s woe-is-me responses to comparatively trivial situations, and any attempts to address them were flawed and underdeveloped.
One thing that I did like however is that the book is told from Manon's perspective instead of Sarah's, which I think I am in the minority for. There is no doubt that most readers would be moved by Sarah's point of view, feeling her trauma as she speaks of slavery, sexual assault and the loss of her children, but telling it from Manon's perspective set the book on a completely different level; we are forced to recognise that for a long time, this was normal and unquestioned, so much so that to many white men and women, no matter the injustices that they faced themselves, it never occurred to them that they could be doing something wrong. Manon never understands that Sarah might aspire to be more than a possession, and again, I think that if better care had been given to the development of the women in this novel, this could have been much harder hitting than it inevitably was.
Despite being a quick read at just over 200 pages, Property left me with no feelings of resolution at the end, positive or negative. It is relatively well written up until the final few chapters where I got the distinct feeling that Martin simply didn’t know how to end it, so she decided she’d stop mid chapter and call it a day. An interesting concept about a delicate situation that simply was not done well or delivered with care, a commentary on women's rights and women as property regardless of their skin colour or social standing could have been something quite special, but as it stands I don’t really understand how this won such a prestigious award in 2003 when there were so many better contenders on the long list, aside from its accessibility as a simple read.