Deciphering Sedition in Sab

Abstract

The colliding agendas of abolitionism, feminism, and nationalism that coexist within Avellaneda's Sab (1841) have encumbered a clear ideological interpretation of the novel. If recent scholarship has demonstrated that Sab functions more as a narrative of feminist liberation than slave emancipation, the critical inclination towards the feminist reading—albeit sound—has overshadowed a handful of seemingly anomalous moments in which the title character alludes to slave uprisings. After one of Sab's insurrectionary moments, the narrator even situates the protagonist's remarks, and the white characters' reaction to them, within the context of the prolonged conflicts that comprise the Haitian revolution (1789–1804). The violent language might cause fleeting discomfort or confusion for the white landowners; however, Sab's words do not bring about any disastrous effect. This study will posit that the coalescence of the incendiary speech and the references to the French colony provides Avellaneda with a stratagem that momentarily bolsters Sab's abolitionist capacity while leaving the feminist reading untouched.

Keywords:

• abolitionism
• Avellaneda
• feminism
• Haiti
• slave uprisings

Notes

1. An excellent example of such critical debate can be found in the four pieces composing the diálogo crítico featured in the Revista de Estudios Hispánicos 32 (1998), in which Susan Isabel Stein (“Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda's Bourgeois Liberal Sab Story” [153–69] and “Speaking of Desire” [187–88]), Doris Sommer (“A Program of Reading, Not a Reading for Program” [171–73]), and William Luis (“How to Read Sab” [175–86]) engage the polemic surrounding Sab's interpretation.

2. Sab's freedom on the Bellavista plantation is most certainly linked to his parentage. Although the name of his father is never revealed (“El nombre de mi padre fue un secreto que jamás quiso revelar,” 109), the narrator explains that he was fathered either by his present master Don Carlos's father (Don Félix) or brother (Don Luis): “Tenía solamente tres años cuando murió mi protector don Luis el más joven de los hijos del difunto don Félix de B … pero dos horas antes de dejar este mundo aquel excelente joven tuvo una larga y secreta conferencia con su hermano don Carlos, y según se conoció después, me dejó recomendado a su bondad. Así hallé en mi amo actual el corazón bueno y piadoso del amable protector que había perdido” (109).

3. Kutzinski observes: “Del Monte, a retired sugar baron turned reformer and patron of the arts, hoped for gradual changes in race relations. Del Monte and his coterie placed their faith in literature, especially in antislavery narratives, as an instrument of such change” (18).

4. Luis notes that Sab was published in serial form in El Museo in Havana in 1883 (“How” 176).

5. Ott observes that “as many as 100,000 slaves were involved in North Province alone, where masses of blacks threatened the safety of Le Cap François” (48).

6. Rosenthal links the novel's prohibition to Avellaneda's promulgation of interracial relationships (88). The critique of racism is readily recognizable in that the societal invalidation of such relationships produces an anguish of such severe effect in Sab that it causes his death.

7. “Dotada de una imaginación fértil y activa, ignorante de la vida, en la edad en que la existencia no es más que sensaciones, se veía obligada a vivir de cálculo, de reflexión y de convivencia. Aquella atmósfera mercantil y especuladora, aquellos cuidados incesantes de los intereses materiales marchitaban las bellas ilusiones de su joven corazón. ¡Pobre y delicada flor!, ¡tú habías nacido para embalsamar los jardines, bella, inútil y acariciada tímidamente por las auras del cielo!” (258).

8. “‘¡Teresa! ¡Teresa!’ exclamó Sab, ‘tú has penetrado pues, en este corazón, tú conoces todos sus secretos, tú sabes cuánto aborrezco esa vida que he salvado dos veces y comprendes todo el precio de mi generosidad’” (187).

9. Garrigus observes that the rapid changes facing Saint-Domingue expedited tension: “In the 1780s Saint-Domingue was torn in three directions. Demographically, the slave trade was making the colony more African than ever before, bringing in twice as many slaves annually in 1788 as in 1764. In its elite culture, the colony was more self-consciously French than it had ever been, with greater private and government investment, a new urban cultural life, and a racial ideology that rejected mixed-race families as nonwhite. Yet the colony was becoming more creole in the 1780s. The economic and social investments that Saint-Domingue's island-born families had made over generations had begun to pay dividends” (194).

10. Nwankwo observes that officials in areas surrounding Haiti “feared that their blacks would replicate the Revolution on their soil. Ultimately, they feared that their blacks would see themselves as ‘linked and interlinked’ with the Haitian revolutionaries” (92).

11. “Don Carlos, padre de la joven, había heredado como sus hermanos un caudal considerable, y aunque se casó con una mujer de escasos bienes la suerte había favorecido a ésta últimamente, recayendo en ella una herencia cuantiosa e inesperada, con la cual la casa ya algo decaída de D. Carlos se hizo nuevamente una de las opulentas de Puerto Príncipe. Verdad es que gozó poco tiempo en paz del aumento de su fortuna pues con derechos quiméricos, o justos, suscitóle un litigio cierto pariente del testador que había favorecido a su esposa, tratando nada menos que anular dicho testamento. Pero esta empresa pareció tan absurda, y el litigio se presentó con aspecto tan favorable para D. Carlos que no se dudaba de su completo triunfo. Todo esto tuvo presente Jorge Otway cuando eligió a Carlota para esposa de su hijo” (109).

12. When restraining his calls for violence, Sab returns to his enlightened, tempered self, again complying with what Fischer has dubbed the “fantasy of the docile slave” (118).

13. The case of martyred, mulatto poet Plácido (Diego Gabriel de la Concepción Valdés) serves as a cogent example of the way in which Cuban colonial officials would have digested such insurrectionary language. Just three years after Sab's publication in 1844, Plácido was executed for having supposedly instigated the Escalera conspiracy, one of two major slave rebellions in nineteenth-century Cuba. Plácido's fate reminds us of the true context in which Sab is uttering his threats. As Nwankwo observes, “the danger of this uprising lies, not simply in its existence, but more importantly in the coming together of people of color across various boundaries. It announces that the boundaries that are supposed to keep these people separated are crumbling. As if to reiterate this point, the document details how these different groups that are supposed to be separate came to unite” (98).

14. Corroborating his eloquence and capacity for polished discourse (and, again, fashioning a hierarchical space between Sab and the other slaves), Fischer notes that Sab's language reads like “pure, Castillian, Spanish” (115).

15. Sab's discursive influence is so strong that it eventually affects even Carlota. The assemblage of texts that postscripts the text reveals, among other things, that Carlota finally understands Sab's devotion to her. His letter to her was indeed so powerful that she even lingers around his grave years after his death. Fischer observes: “Even Carlota eventually comes to this realization. After her marriage to Otway has come unraveled and Sab's secret role in her life has been revealed, Carlota retreats to the site of Sab's burial and devotes herself to the upkeep of his grave” (116).