This page was created by Jaleesa Harris.  The last update was by David Squires.

Keys to the Archive: Miss Jane Pittman

Novel Connections

In the novel, Creoles of color isolate themselves from both white and black communities. This isolation appoints privilege and superiority over the African Americans outside of the Creole community and autonomy from the white community. For example, the chapter introducing Creoles into the story, “The LeFabre Family,” highlights instances where the group exerts superiority over other black, non-Creole people. Readers gain insight into the history of one former, Creole Place resident and the new Samson Plantation teacher, Mary Agnes. Historically, New Orleans was home to much of the Creole population, before the Civil War. However, Gaines’s Creoles have chosen to relocate from New Orleans. Pittman is unsure what causes the dispersion of Agnes’s family from their home but considers Creole Place as a type of “settlement for them” because other Creoles live there as well (167). Through dispersion, a new community forms, a community Pittman explains as for them only: “Creole Place was for the mulattoes there; everybody else keep out” (107). The postbellum introduction does not provide much insight into why the Creole community is isolated or mostly autonomous.

Additionally, the small window into antebellum Creole life explained through the grandmother of Mary Agnes reveals a concession placed on lighter Creole women. Pittman explains the type of events the grandmother would have had to attend before the Civil War: "a ball where “white men used to go to choose their colored women.”  After the selection, “sometimes they kept them the rest of their life,” and in doing so, she would inherit, “money and property—even slaves” (166). Historically, this is also true of Creole or free people of color in the southern parts of Louisiana.

Later in the novel, dialect is used to distinguish the two groups. The Creole dialect is a blending of languages, chiefly French, which appears in the concluding chapter of the novel. After hearing "takalapala," Jimmy, who does not speak Creole, “was interested in the way the words sounded” (286). Other Creole characters speak the language as readers discover through Pittman. However, this is the only instance the languages is directly included in the novel.  

Physical, economic, and linguistically separations are clear marks of distinction between the two groups, while colonial beauty standards are subtle marks of distinction. Pittman identifies black women by their physical stature, size, or skin color. For example, “Big Laura,” is “big just like her name say, and she was tough as any man I ever seen” (17). “Black Harriet” is “tall, straight, tough, and blue-black” (137). When Pittman introduces Creoles or Cajuns, their beauty or attractiveness is among the first descriptors given. Pittman considers “someone pretty like [Mary Agnes]” too attractive to concern herself with fixing her ancestor’s mistakes (166). Adeline Cluveau, who is a Cajun woman of color, is described as a “big fine gal, big pretty legs” (129). Those examples are all subtle but concrete references to the physical appearance of women of color in the novel. 

The inclusion of Creoles in the novel acts as another patch weaved into Pittman’s historical tapestries, and by proxy Louisiana’s as well.

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