In "La Belle Zoraïde," white women seem almost completely unwilling or unable to recognize the humanity of Black women or female slaves. Madame Delarivière, the mistress of the beautiful but doomed Zoraïde, thinks that she has done her mixed-race slave and goddaughter a good turn by bringing her up to be well-mannered and cultured. She insists that Zoraïde marry well in order to bring honor to herself and to gratify her own pride. She tells the young woman,

Remember, Zoraïde, when you are ready to marry, it must be in a way to do honor to your bringing up. It will be at the Cathedral. Your wedding gown, your corbeille, all will be of the best; I shall see to that myself. You know, M'sieur Ambroise is ready whenever you say the word; and his master is willing to do as much for him as I shall do for you. It is a union that will please me in every way.

She thinks that she is putting Zoraïde's happiness first, but she is not. She is actually putting her own feelings ahead of the young woman's. Zoraïde does not love—does not even like—M'sieur Ambroise because she finds him to be deceitful and cruel; her mistress only cares about the color of his skin and his good manners. When Zoraïde approaches Madame Delarivière with the truth—that she loves a dark-skinned field hand named Mezor—Madame Delarivière flies into a rage. However, Zoraïde calmly tries to remind her mistress that since she is a slave, it does not really make much difference which other slave she marries. She asks Madame Delarivière, "Am I white [...]?" Her mistress responds quite cruelly, saying,

You white! Malheureuse! You deserve to have the lash laid upon you like any other slave, you have proven yourself no better than the worst.

Here, Madame Delarivière seems to show her truest colors. She does not love Zoraïde for her own sake; her love for the young woman is tied up with her own pride. Now that Zoraïde seems to contradict her, for the first time ever, Madame Delarivière says that she would like to have the young woman whipped, like one of the most disobedient slaves. It turns out, then, that she does view her supposedly beloved Zoraïde as a possession and not a person after all.

In the end, the white woman to whom the story of la belle Zoraïde is told, Madame Delisle, cannot seem to appreciate the humanity of Zoraïde either. When her slave, Manna Loulou, asks if she is asleep, she says,

No, I am not asleep; I was thinking. Ah, the poor little one, Man Loulou, the poor little one! better had she died!

She refers to Zoraïde's child, feeling more sympathy for the child than she does for the mother. Zoraïde had been so overwhelmed by the loss of the man she loves and then by her own child, who she had been told was dead, that she loses her mind with grief. Madame Delisle fails to recognize Zoraïde's humanity just as Madame Delarivière did.