[In the following essay, Fivel-Démoret questions whether four Cuban novels written in the late 1830s should be labeled abolitionist, concluding that while they all advocated some level of reform, only Avellaneda's Sab offered a clear denunciation of Cuban slavery.]

This article is based on four Cuban novels written in 1838 and 1839: Francisco, Anselmo Suárez y Romero, 1838-39; Petrona y Rosalía, Félix Tanco y Bosmoniel, 1838; El Ranchador, Pedro José Morillas, 1839; Sab, Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda, 1839.¹ All are set in nineteenth-century Cuba, and as the following summaries will make clear, each discusses some aspect of what was then a vital issue on the island—slavery.

Francisco is the story of a young male slave who acts as a coachman for Doña Dolores' Havana establishment. He falls in love with her seamstress Dorotea, who returns his love, but his request to marry the young mulatress is turned down by their mistress who claims that he is by nature inclined to be morose and therefore unsuitable for marriage. Doña Dolores refuses to give in to the repeated pleas of the young lovers, and finally forbids them to continue to harbour affection for each other or to discuss the matter further with her. Forced into a clandestine relationship, and ‘no vislumbrando ningún rayo de esperanza, mancharon, extraviados, la limpieza de sus amores’.² Indignant at the wilfulness of her slaves, Doña Dolores orders Francisco to be whipped and exiled to the sugar estate. Dorotea's punishment is to be hired out as a washerwoman. After a while, Doña Dolores, relenting, is inclined to allow the marriage. But the young master Ricardo, peeved at the fact that Dorotea has constantly repulsed his advances, preferring a black slave to him, prejudices his mother against Francisco, accusing him of all kinds of misdemeanours. In order to force Dorotea into submission, Ricardo resorts to blackmail. Francisco will be whipped daily until she gives herself to her master. To save Francisco's life, Dorotea gives in, and the beatings stop. Francisco is beginning to recover when a distressed Dorotea comes to bid him goodbye, explaining why she has been avoiding him of late. Disillusioned, Francisco hangs himself in the woods. Dorotea wastes away from depression and dies some years later.

Petrona and Rosalía are two black women, mother and daughter respectively. Petrona is a domestic slave in the house of Don Fernando and Doña Concepción. She becomes pregnant. As a punishment for her ruinous example in a respectable household, her mistress decrees that she must be sent away to the family sugar estate where she is whipped and set to work in the fields. Despite the brutalizing work, Petrona gives birth to a healthy mulatto girl. When this child, Rosalía, reaches her teens, she is taken to the city to serve in her owners' household, and the cycle of ‘seduction’ is repeated. This time the man is Fernando, the young master (who is in fact her half brother). Like her mother she is exiled to the sugar estate. Within two weeks of her daughter's return, Petrona dies, and within three months, Rosalía and her son die ‘de resultas de parto’.³

El Ranchador follows the activities of a Cuban slave hunter, Valentín Páez. While travelling through the Cuban countryside, the narrator encounters a famous ranchador⁴ who tells his story. In the year 1800 his wife and children were murdered by a band of runaways. Ever since that time, to avenge his family, he has single-mindedly tracked down and killed all the runaway slaves possible. The story ends with the narrator witnessing Páez and his partner run down and kill a group of black fugitives.

Each of these three novels voices criticisms of Cuban slavery and its effects on society. Francisco and Dorotea are two exemplary slaves who merely wish to love and live together in what measure of peace and happiness their servile status allows. But they have powerful opponents: a mistress who is not necessarily by nature cruel, but who is so used to wielding absolute power over her slaves that natural compassion is stifled when her authority is challenged, particularly as she is encouraged by a ruthless son who will stop at nothing to satisfy his vanity and lust. The abuse of power by their white owners leads to the destruction of two admirable human beings.

In Petrona y Rosalía, the virtue of the slave victims is even more sharply contrasted with the brutality of their owners, and Tanco y Bosmoniel addresses the issue of cruelty and ‘sexploitation’ much more crudely and directly than does the Romantic Suárez y Romero. The final line of the novel is the reaction of Doña Concepción and her son to the news of the deaths of the two slave women: ‘¡Paciencia … se han perdido mil pesos!’⁵

All the action of El Ranchador is related in the first person through a narrator-traveller. At the beginning of the novel he pities a slave whom he hears cry out from a whipping, which leads him to refer to the black as ‘desgraciado’. The final prey of the slave hunters, torn to ribbons by their hounds, are also ‘desgraciados’ and victims of a massacre that leaves the narrator ‘sumergido en meditaciones tristísimas … maldiciendo el odioso destino de su patria’.⁶

No doubt it is the exposure of such cruelty, of the terrible physical and psychological injuries inflicted on black slaves, that has encouraged critics, almost without exception, to refer to these novels as ‘abolitionist’ or ‘anti-slavery’ works. The Cuban Salvador Bueno, for instance, claims that they represent a persistent ‘lucha contra la esclavitud’.⁷ And for G. R. Coulthard, they evidence ‘an ideological current of protest against the institution of slavery’.⁸

At this point it would be useful to establish a definition of the terms ‘abolitionist’ and ‘anti-slavery’. In my opinion, an ‘abolitionist’ or ‘anti-slavery’ novel is one which deliberately attacks the institution of slavery, and which evidences, implicitly or explicitly, a desire to see it come to an end as soon as possible. The author may or may not expect his or her work to be instrumental in hastening the downfall of the said institution. In the light of the above definition, do Francisco, Petrona y Rosalía and El Ranchador qualify as anti-slavery or abolitionist works? A critical reading of the text reveals some interesting facts.

In Petrona y Rosalía the reader is regularly reminded of the faultless virtue of the two black women, and of the injustice of totally undeserved punishment. As for Francisco, we are constantly reminded that he is a unique individual, sensitive, a model servant of blameless conduct. All of which leads on to questions such as: had Petrona and Rosalía been less saintly, would they then have deserved such punishment? And had Francisco been less sensitive and exceptional, would it then be acceptable that he should be enslaved, cheated of the woman he loves, and driven to despair and suicide?

Morillas' narrator does indeed lament the killing of black runaway slaves by the two ranchadores, but this is undermined by the fact that throughout most of the novel runaway slaves are referred to as ‘perros negros’, ‘hordas de negros’, ‘legiones de demonios’, ‘malditos negros’, etc. (33, 34, 37) by the ranchador Páez whose wife and children have been murdered by runaways. It will no doubt be pointed out that the above perception of the black is not necessarily the author's, but that of the embittered Páez. However, it is significant that no attempt is made by the narrator (evidently the author's voice)⁹ to relate the distant cries of the whipped slave earlier in the novel to the existence and violence of the runaways. As a result their destruction of Páez's family emerges as a mindless act, without reason, provocation or justification. Furthermore the runaways are portrayed as lacking all human compassion, for their victims are helpless children and a woman.

In contrast, upon meeting Páez the narrator is immediately attracted to the stranger, despite the fact that he is so well armed in such a quiet spot. The narrator notes that the ranchador has ‘un rostro … de tan noble y suave fisionomía, que me inspiró confianza’ (33). And once he learns the stranger's identity he is surprised and moved to make the acquaintance of ‘un hombre tan honrado como infeliz, tan valiente como desgraciado; pues su inaudito valor, sus esfuerzos y sus hazañas se agotaban en un campo estéril, donde jamás encontraría un laurel para coronar su frente. Tal es el destino de algunos hombres!’ (34). Morillas may condemn the brutal killing of the cimarrones with his lips, or even on an abstract intellectual level, but his true empathy is clearly with the white ranchador rather than with the black ‘hordes’.

The excesses and abuses of Cuban slavery and slavery-based society are indeed attacked with varying directness and mordacity, but these writers do not challenge its basic premise—that one race should have the right to enslave, to own another. Furthermore, they do not limit themselves to attacking abuse; rather, they actually confirm white dominance. A vital key to this aspect of their message lies in the characterization of the black slave and apparent attitudes to black rebellion.

A striking feature common to Petrona y Rosalía and Francisco is the absolute passivity of the slave protagonists, their monotonous resignation and acceptance of their status as human property. It is true that on the sugar estate of those days the black slave was indeed viewed as an ‘… instrumento de trabajo, tosco, grosero, de inconveniente manejo …’¹⁰ and that his efficiency depended upon his being, effectively, mindless. He must do and be what was required of him, pleasing the master being the whole duty of the slave. Failure in his duties earned him the whip or a miscellany of imaginative tortures. It is therefore hardly surprising that black slaves should generally avoid open physical or verbal confrontation with their white owners. However, while one may understand survival dictating a certain show of conformity, the reader of these novels is struck by the comparative absence of rebellion or dissatisfaction with their status in the privacy of the slaves' thoughts or intimate conversations.

The following conversation, for instance, takes place between mother and daughter following the arrival of Rosalía at the sugar estate:

—Pues, ¿quién ha sido?

—El niño Fernando.

—¿Es posible? Y la señora ha sabido quién fue?

—Ya se lo dije, porque me castigó para que se lo dijera y si no se lo digo me mata.

—Y el niño Fernando no te ha defendido, no te ha dado siquiera los 25 pesos para libertar a su hijo?

—Mamá, usted es muy buena. Y el amo don Antonio la defendió a usted acaso, ni le dio los 25 pesos para libertarme a mí? Ni siquiera un doblón de a cuatro que me ofreció el niño Fernando para un túnico, lo han visto mis ojos.

—¡Qué hombres tan perversos!—exclamó Petrona—; si tienen el corazón como una piedra, Dios los perdone. Ten paciencia, Rosalía, y ofrécele tus trabajos al Señor. Lo que siento es que pronto moriré ya que te dejo en este condenado ingenio.

Así decía Petrona, llorando y abrazada con su hija.

—No llore, mamá—le contestaba Rosalía—, que yo sé sufrir trabajos, quién sabe si Dios quiere que me muera cuando vaya a parir.¹¹

The above conversation appears to suggest that, apart from Petrona's naïve hopes of manumission for Rosalía's child, the women accept their status unquestioningly, though they lament their treatment. The following passage is extracted from an introductory description of Francisco:

De todos sus criados sobresalía uno por lo leal, trabajador y exento de vicios; éste era Francisco. Arrancado de África a los diez años, le fue fácil a la señora Mendizábal amoldarlo a su talante, y mucho más a causa de su carácter humilde …

La señora Mendizábal lo educó a imitación de los mejores dueños de la Isla. Por lo que dice al entendimiento, habría quedado en absoluta ignorancia, si no hubiera aprendido a leer y escribir laborando entre una muchedumbre de inconvenientes; conocimientos bastantes singulares en un siervo y en un siervo de nación …¹²

Además de su claro entendimiento y riqueza de corazón, lo había favorecido Dios concediéndole un físico encantador; de una estatura aventajada, airoso y fácil en los modales, andaba siempre con la cabeza alta; su tez de azabache lucía sobremanera por el blanco purísimo de sus ojos y de sus dientes; y la sonrisa y el mirar melancólicos que esparcían cierta expresión de tristeza en su semblante, aun cuando penetrase en su alma algún rayo de alegría, y aquel modo de hablar patético, arrastraban consigo a cuantos le conocieran. La belleza de Francisco tenía doble valor, a saber: que las facciones revelaban lo noble y generoso de su pecho, a semejanza de las aguas de un río cuando reflejan la imagen de la luna que brilla en el azulado firmamento. Un pesar lo afligía perennemente: ser de condición esclavo; pesar que no bastaban suavizar las distinciones de su ama; pesar que sólo puede extinguirse con la muerte. Este dolor, este tormento insufrible habíase propuesto sofocarlo, en la persuasión de que, publicando el mal, acaso crecerían las penas en vez de mitigarse; su genio apacible se hermanaba perfectamente con la resignación de un cristiano, con el sufrimiento de los estoicos, indicio de un alma grande que permanece serena en medio de los infortunios que la abruman. Por eso aquel tinte lúgubre de su rostro que cautivaba y seducía; aquel tinte con que son representados los mártires de la fe.¹³

Significantly, the revelation that Francisco's servile status constantly weighs on his mind is strategically placed—just after we have been told of his malleable character, singular beauty and intelligence, and just before we are reassured that he is a submissive stoic. Upon his own admission (and this is borne out by biographical accounts), Suárez y Romero did project some of his own personality on to Francisco. Very telling is the prologue to the 1947 edition of Francisco which bears the title, ‘Vida, gloria y pasión de Anselmo Suárez y Romero’.¹⁴

Even more interesting is Suárez y Romero's response to criticism by Domingo Delmonte¹⁵ regarding Francisco's improbable passivity and exceptional nobility of character:

En cuanto al defecto que U. ha encontrado en mi novela, el carácter de Francisco, yo lo confieso, y estimo juiciosa y puesta en razón la crítica de U. En efecto yo trataba de pintar un negro esclavo y quien se halla jimiendo¹⁶ bajo el terrible y enojoso yugo de la servidumbre puede ser tan manso, tan apacible, tan de anjélicas y santas costumbres como él; jimiendo bajo el yugo de la servidumbre, de cuya frente le nacen al hombre todos los males de todas especies, cual de otra caja de Pandora? Francisco es un fenómeno, una escepción muy singular … Aflijido yo, Señor Del Monte, por las miserias de los esclavos mas de lo que U. puede imaginarse, me determiné demonstrar que si hay blancos, acérrimos enemigos de la raza etiópica, no faltan quienes lloren con lágrimas de sangre sus calamidades … desde que comencé a escribir, comencé de consumo a entristecerme: me enojé más y más contra los blancos según fui pintando sus extravíos y como mi carácter, digámoslo de una vez, es amigo siempre de tolerar con paciencia las desgracias de este pobre Valle de lágrimas, vine a dotar a Francisco de aquella resignación y mansedumbre cristianas, flores que no nacen, sino como de milagro, entre los inmundos lodazales, donde la esclavitud pone a los hombres.¹⁷

While Suárez y Romero is anxious to portray his black hero as an admirable, if exceptional, example of virtue in the midst of corruption, Milanés (poet-friend and correspondent of Suárez y Romero) points to the need to engage the sympathies of the reader with the hero and the thesis of the novel:

Con que debía pintarle malo a Francisco para pintarle con verdad? Cierto es que la esclavitud deprava el corazón; pero no contamos con el templo airado o pacífico del individuo? No vemos cada rato exclavos de jenio dulce, que trabajan sin descanso y casi contentos sin ver mas allá del circulo de ideas serviles en que viven? Yo no hallo que usted faltase a la verdad pintando a Francisco de jenio humilde y melancólico; pues aunque ese carácter no sea muy común, existe, y aun su misma escepcionalidad debe escitar doble interés en la obra en que brilla. Ademas, en que descansaría la simpatía de los lectores si no pinta a Francisco contrastando con el cuadro horrendo de los otros blancos y negros entre quienes campea?¹⁸

It is of particular interest to note the qualities which both correspondents consider to be evidence of ‘good’ character in Francisco. For Suárez y Romero, Francisco is ‘manso’, ‘apacible’, ‘de anjélicas y santas costumbres … jimiendo bajo el yugo de la servidumbre …’ The words ‘resignación’ and ‘mansedumbre’ are also used with reference to the black slave. Milanés, apparently unaware of any irony in his words, approves the young novelist's decision not to paint ‘el cuadro … de un color negro y desesperante hasta lo sumo’.¹⁹ His ideal black slave is ‘de genio dulce’, works ‘sin descanso’ and despite a hard life, is almost happy. Implicit in his commentary is that a ‘bad’ Francisco would be disgruntled, frustrated, dissatisfied with his lot, and lazy—or at least unenthusiastic about his work.

Francisco does deplore his situation and wishes for happier days to return. But never does he contemplate running away—an option which, together with outright revolt, was taken by many more slaves than was comfortable for many slave-owners and the authorities of the day to admit.²⁰ In fact, the runaway phenomenon was so prevalent that according to Fernando Ortiz, under the terms of the 1842 amendments to the Reglamento de Cimarrones: ‘Los capitanes de partido tuvieron la obligación de visitar mensualmente los palenques y rancherías de cimarrones²¹ que se formaron en su jurisdicción, lo que prueba como aquellos se renovaban constantemente de un mes a otro mes’.²² Significantly, repeatedly running away is one of the terrible crimes of which Francisco is accused by Ricardo. But Suárez y Romero gives no indication whatsoever that even if these charges were true, a slave has a right to desire freedom and to attempt to attain it. Indeed, as we have seen, for his creator, Francisco's slave status is a ‘pesar que sólo puede extinguirse con la muerte’ (my emphasis). The issue of cimarronaje is not even raised in Petrona y Rosalía. Such assertive action is apparently alien to the passive psychology of these characters.

Unlike Tanco y Bosmoniel and Suárez y Romero, Morillas confronts that particular issue squarely, his short novel revolving round runaways. Whereas the pitiful ‘¡Ay!’ of the whipped slave at the beginning seems to form part of a scene-setting exercise, the runaways are anything but backdrops. Once the real action of the story gets underway, the cimarrón bursts on to the scene, creating a striking contrast with the inertia of the black characters studied so far. Morillas' runaways are none of the things which seem to be admired by Suárez y Romero and Milanés. They are not manumitted, but have grasped freedom with their own hands.²³ Not restricted to reaction, the black runaways take aggressive action; they are not simply on the receiving end of acts of terror, but may provoke them. Their open challenge to general order and the safety of the white population at large is great enough to warrant legislation and encouragement by the authorities of the activities of men like Páez, who is revered throughout white Cuba as a national hero.

This challenge is ultimately incarnated in the young ‘lucumí’²⁴ who dares to take the further step of directing to a white man a personal invitation to man-to-man combat, and this, with an unmistakably racist stance: ‘—Ahora lo verás blanco’ (41). This runaway is physically a striking figure. Even Páez respects him, though grudgingly, as an excellent opponent, but he cannot help exclaiming: ‘¡Que un negro pueda combatirse conmigo! ¡Vive Dios!’ (42). It becomes evident that for an outraged Páez it is not merely his own survival which he is defending but that of the whole white-dominated Cuban social order which is challenged by the defiance of a runaway slave.

In the end the black threat is eliminated. Morillas does not hide the fact that runaway slaves pose a serious security problem, but his runaways are ignorant, superstitious, poorly armed, incompetent opponents, comparatively easy prey for the persistent—apart from the young lucumí, and even he dies in the end. In contrast, two white men despatch ten robust blacks, because the ranchadores are well prepared, tenacious, heroic. Morillas leaves the reader in no doubt that the problem, though serious, is containable.

A further key to the attitudes and intentions of these three novelists is to be found in the answers to Brooks and Warren's questions: ‘Whose story is it? Whose destiny is at stake or central to the novel?’²⁵ Although Francisco stands out from the other works studied so far in that Suárez y Romero shows some genuine interest in slave life for its own sake,²⁶ he, like the others, seems to have been primarily interested in the black slave only in so far as slavery created a number of problems in and for white Cuban society.

The very title of Petrona y Rosalía suggests that the focus of interest should be the two black women. But in fact, a careful reading reveals that the most interesting characterization in what is really a sketchy novelette, the most passionate passages are those describing the Cuban saccharocracy and its many vices.

The runaway theme of El ranchador is evidently little more than a pretext for Morillas to air his ideas on the state of the country. The narrator's most ardent observations are concerned with the economy, the technical backwardness of Cuba, its largely unrealized potential, its need for order, and slavery with its attendant problems is evidently just one more impediment to progress.²⁷ The main aim of these novelists would seem to have been to encourage reform in white Cuban society by white Cubans, for white Cubans, whose material and moral progress is what is truly at stake.

The consciously didactic purpose of these novelists has a further impact on their writing: characters are not so much interesting in themselves as types whose main function is to further an argument, a fact which encourages the polarization of protagonists into goodies and baddies, saints and devils, oppressors and victims, responsible citizens contributing to the advancement of the island and those whose short-sightedness retards progress.

And progress is in fact a concept linking these three novelists. Concerned Cubans of their day could perceive the pernicious social effects of a slavery-based society. Fresh supplies of Africans meant a greater demographic imbalance unfavourable to white dominance.²⁸ The growing number of slave uprisings and runaways made many Cubans look over their shoulders at Haiti with dread.

José Ramón Betancourt, a novelist who was also a member of the Delmontine circle, draws these themes together in his novel Una feria de la Caridad en 183 … in which he promotes progress which for him requires a struggle against ignorance, the rejection of decadent morals and concerted capital investment; he also rejoices that ‘Pronto se introducirán máquinas que ahorren brazos y aumenten los elementos de prosperidad y riqueza’;²⁹ this last sentiment in particular links him directly with Morillas' narrator.³⁰ A vital key to change was the elimination of the slave trade. This would force attitudinal and practical changes in Cuban society, including better treatment of a scarcer and more expensive resource—slave labour—and a move towards greater mechanization. A cessation of the slave trade would not only eliminate many social and moral evils associated with slavery, but would also ease the worrying security problem which tied Cuba to Spanish military protection and thus to colonial status. To the far-thinking and clear-sighted Cuban of the day, and that evidently included the novelists considered in this study, it must have been clear that an end to the slave trade would ineluctably lead to the end of Cuban slavery … eventually, but for the moment they were not ready to confront the issue with all its implications. They wanted Cuba free of the yoke of slavery, but not just yet. They and their readers had much to lose—their fortunes, and a social organization that favoured their class.

This leads us back to the question of who exactly these novelists were, and whom they were writing for. Tanco y Bosmoniel, Suárez y Romero and Morillas were all slave owners (Suárez y Romero, for instance, wrote Francisco while looking after his family's sugar estate), and as far as history records, none of these novelists emancipated his slaves as a token of his opposition to slavery.

Secondly, they were all members of a literary circle dominated by Domingo Delmonte, a leading reformist Creole thinker of their day. The huge collection of letters written to him by friends—including these novelists—contains abundant evidence that Delmonte was an ardent Cuban nationalist, keen on the social and moral reform of Cuba, and decidedly against the slave trade, but most definitely not an abolitionist, although he was labelled as such.³¹ Instant, or even prompt, freedom for Cuba's slaves was not on his political agenda, nor on that of white Cubans as a whole. As later events would prove, white Creoles' vision of liberty, equality and self-determination did not include blacks.³²

As for the readership of these novelists, censorship in Cuba at the time they wrote was extremely rigid. Nothing touching on delicate issues such as colonial government, slavery and the slave trade, or Spanish-Creole animosity could be published in the island.³³ The publication dates of the three novels studied so far speak for themselves:³⁴

These novelists knew very well that their work would never have the wide audience that it should if it was intended to be abolitionist propaganda in Cuba. Their novels could only be read in manuscript form within a very limited group—mainly friends in their circle. Thus we have a curious situation: a literature of propaganda produced and consumed by the same narrow circle of people³⁵—upper-class Cubans, slave owners, naturally. Slave owners who, though relatively open to change compared with the Spanish authorities and many of their compatriots, were not yet ready for a direct attack on the basis of their wealth, nor for any upheaval that might threaten existing social structures. Writers and audience, producers and consumers, all essentially the same small group of people, demonstrated a fundamental ambivalence, aware of the necessity of change in their society, but understandably reluctant to go through with abolition at the expense of their own comfort and profit. Even for those who, like Suárez y Romero, felt guilty about their parasitic existence, and who would no doubt gladly see its end hastened, the spectre of a black rebellion transforming Cuba into the Caribbean's second black republic was evidently enough to provide a powerful brake to revolutionary change—and a more realistic portrayal of black protagonists.

Hence the compromise of reform: better treatment of slaves rather than emancipation, an option which also made good business sense in a transitional period when the Cuban agro-industry could no longer indefinitely assume blacks to be relatively cheap disposable parts, but a resource whose supply could not keep up with demand in an expanding sugar industry, and whose relative scarcity was therefore pushing its price ever higher.³⁶

The confusion and ambivalence of these writers is evident in their novels. Each author deals with some aspect or aspects of reformist philosophy, but none can bring himself to accept a challenge to the dominant role of his race and class. Hence the creation of curious black slaves and situations: inert martyrs, wretched-cum-demonic hordes, heroic massacres, and yet one more reason for the Manichaean characterization of both blacks and whites.

One novel remains for our study—Sab, by Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda;³⁷ the only one of the novelists considered in our study who was not a member of the Delmontine circle. In 1836, thirteen years after her father's death, Avellaneda left Cuba for Europe with her brother, mother and stepfather. She is thought to have begun work on Sab in that same year; the novel was finished by 1839 and published in 1841 in Spain.

The story runs as follows: Sab is a young mulatto slave whose mother was a princess in the Congo before she was captured and taken to the West Indies as a slave. The African princess found the life of a slave in Cuba intolerable until she fell in love. Though Sab never learns the identity of his father from his mother, both he and we deduce it from a number of hints that Sab's father (now dead) was the uncle of the girl whom he adores with single-minded passion: his young mistress Carlota. But the beautiful Carlota is totally unaware of Sab's feelings, and has fallen desperately in love with the Englishman Enrique Otway, who seeks her hand for purely mercenary reasons; he believes, mistakenly, that her family is extremely wealthy. To complicate the emotional tangle even further, Carlota's cousin Teresa (poor relation, quasi-servant and companion to Carlota), a dark, brooding counterpart to Carlota's passionate transparency, is also in love with young Otway. Shared pain creates a bond between her and Sab.

Sab is unhappy with his lot as a slave. He is only too aware that even if Carlota did not love Otway, he would never be considered suitable for a young white woman, especially of Carlota's class. According to the prejudices of white Cuban society, the white man is perforce the natural superior of the black slave, but Avellaneda makes it clear that the despised slave is by far the better man, emphasizing Sab's nobility of character, sensitivity, intelligence and physical beauty. When Otway finally marries Carlota, Sab, half-crazed with grief and despair, expires, apparently from a broken heart. Teresa enters a convent. It is not until much later that an unhappy Carlota learns of the true love she lost in Sab.

Sab is clearly a Romantic work, and as such shares some stock Romantic features with Francisco: a hero who is handsome, a paragon of virtue and a unique individual, solitary, capable of great passion, brooding, of melancholy disposition, sensitive, though compared with the latter, there is more of fire than gentleness in Sab's moroseness and his love. Of course it contains the indispensable ingredient—the immovable obstacle—a love made impossible by racial prejudice. The tragic end is inevitable.

But a parallel mood and mode does not in this case indicate parallel attitudes to slavery. Avellaneda attacks the institution with great forthrightness. She clearly distinguishes Sab as not only equal, but superior, to Otway: a case of class and race treachery whose radical nature, considering the times and the author's background, is perhaps difficult for most twentieth-century readers to appreciate.³⁸

At the very beginning of the novel is Sab's first meeting with Otway, who, deceived by Sab's pale colour and European features, initially mistakes him for a white man, and therefore treats him as an equal. But he immediately alters his tone and switches to the familiar form of address when he learns from Sab that he is a slave, as Sab confesses bitterly that he belongs to ‘aquella raza desventurada sin derechos de hombres … soy mulato y esclavo’.³⁹ It is particularly interesting to note in the course of the novel that Sab not only condemns the colour-based repression of human potential, but also compares the lot of the unhappy but irrevocably married woman with that of the slave.⁴⁰

Later on in the novel, Sab's resentment of his condition of chattel without status or dignity so moves Teresa that she impulsively offers herself to him; Sab tactfully and sensitively declines. Bearing in mind the time in which the novel was written, this is a daring scene.

Sab declares that whereas he used to blame nature for this unequal state of affairs, he has come to realize that ‘la sociedad de los hombres no ha imitado la equidad de la madre común, que en vano les ha dicho: “sois hermanos”. Imbécil sociedad, que nos ha reducido a la necesidad de aborrecerla, y fundar nuestra dicha en su total ruina!’⁴¹ Through Sab, Avellaneda attacks a fundamental concept of slave-owning Cuban society: the assumption and acceptance of inherent and unquestionable white superiority. Note also that unlike the other three novelists, she does not find it necessary to dwell on the horrors of slave abuse as justification for Sab's feelings or her own condemnation of the institution. On the contrary, Sab has been brought up as nearly one of the family as a slave could be.

Yet it is perhaps inaccurate to describe Sab as an abolitionist novel in the sense of a novel of propaganda whose writer saw her work as joining seriously in the Cuban pro-slavery/anti-slavery debate. Given the political climate in the island, and knowing Cuban society as well as she did, Avellaneda certainly could not have expected her work to be published or accepted in the island. There is no evidence that she conceived of it as abolitionist in intent, at least in any overtly political propagandist sense. However, the novel is inarguably abolitionist in content, in that it clearly reveals the author to be an enemy of repression of any kind as a principle. Indeed, although later critics like Emilio Cotarelo⁴² may debate the abolitionist qualifications of Avellaneda's novel, contemporary Cuban censors were in no doubt as to the subversive nature of Sab, for when copies of the novel arrived in Cuba in 1844 they were banned.⁴³

This is not to claim that Avellaneda was totally free of the prejudices and conditioning of twenty-two years of life as a slave-owner in Cuba. Her concept of beauty, for instance, is patently Eurocentric. And she is no less nervous about a possible black uprising than the other three novelists.⁴⁴ While Sab passionately resents his servile status he assures the alarmed Teresa, ‘… tranquilizaos, Teresa, ningún peligro os amenaza; los esclavos arrastran pacientemente su cadena: acaso sólo necesitan para romperla, oír una voz que les grite: “¡sois hombres!”, pero esta voz no sera la mía …’⁴⁵

Thus, on the one hand, Avellaneda cannot bring herself to allow her character to pose an actual violent threat to white society—her kind, after all; in this she is not dissimilar to the other writers, and in fact proves more timid in grappling with the realities of violent conflict and social decadence than are the writers of the Delmontine group.⁴⁶ On the other hand, she is ideologically much more bold and advanced than any of them. Whereas they restrict themselves to attacking the abuses and excesses of slavery, she challenges the basic premises of the racist ideology created to support and defend the institution itself. Sab deserves to be free to run his own life, not because he is an exceptional or sensitive soul (Suárez y Romero's stance), but because he is a man. He is to be pitied not because he is punished unjustly and unmercifully (Suárez y Romero and Tanco y Bosmeniel) but because he is a human being robbed of his full potential. Avellaneda criticizes the suicidal myopia of a society that breeds hatred through systematic oppression; she thus establishes the causal relationship between white oppression and black aggression conveniently glossed over by Morillas.

I believe a number of factors contributed to Avellaneda's radically different stance on the issue of slavery. Firstly, she was marked by her experience of life as a woman in a man's world, and more particularly, as a woman whose intellectual interests challenged contemporary views on the assigned role of women.⁴⁷ More importantly, unlike the other three, she was not writing for a contemporary Cuban readership of her slave-owning social peers, and was not confined by stringent censorship laws. She was therefore in a position to write with a freedom and radical honesty (uncomplicated by financial, social or political considerations) that the Delmontine group could not share.

But there are those who wonder why Avellaneda left Sab out of her collected works published in 1869, and which she allegedly hoped would sell in Cuba. It has been said that her relatives insisted that it be excluded.⁴⁸ But could it be that she recognized that nearly thirty years after the initial banning of her book and one year into the Ten Years' War which was to force the slavery issue, her compatriots and potential readers were still not ready to deal with the basic issues that she had raised in Sab?

Notes

1. For reasons which will become evident later, the four novels mentioned are dealt with separately, Petrona y Rosalía, Francisco, and El ranchador, on the one hand, and Sab on the other.

2. Anselmo Suárez y Romero, Francisco (Havana: Instituto del Libro, 1970), 49. As far as possible, references are to current, or more readily available editions of texts.

3. Félix M. Tanco y Bosmeniel, Petrona y Rosalía (Havana: Editorial Letras Cubanas, 1980), 48.

4. Páez is a ranchador or rancheador. These men were hunters of runaway slaves (or cimarrones), who obtained a permit to do their work and received a reward for their services. But Páez is less interested in money than in avenging the massacre of his family.

5. Tanco y Bosmeniel, Petrona y Rosalía, 48.

6. Morillas, El ranchador, in Noveletas cubanas, I (Havana: Instituto Cubano del Libro, 1974), 30 and 45. Subsequent quotations from this text are to this edition.

7. Salvador Bueno, ‘Los narradores cubanos’, Cuba Internacional, XIV, no. 1149 (April 1982), 18.

8. G. R. Coulthard, Race and Colour in Caribbean Literature (London and New York: Oxford University Press, 1962), 20.

9. Morillas, winner of a prize in 1838 from the Sociedad Económica for his Memoria sobre los medios de fomentar y generalizar la industria, shared his narrator's concern for the economic progress of Cuba.

10. Manuel Moreno Fraginals, El Ingenio, II (Havana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 1978), 14.

11. Tanco y Bosmeniel, Petrona y Rosalía, 46 and 47.

12. ‘Un siervo de nación’ was the phrase used to describe an African-born slave.

13. Suárez y Romero, Francisco, 42 and 43.

14. Mario Cabrera Saqui, ‘Vida, gloria y pasión de Anselmo Suárez y Romero’ (this article first appeared as a prologue to the 1947 edition of Francisco, and was subsequently republished by the Cuban Dirección de Cultura in the 1970 Instituto del Libro edition, 201-26).

15. The leading figure of Cuban men of letters of the day, and mentor of the young novelist, among others.

16. Throughout this study, idiosyncrasies of authors' spelling, etc. are retained.

17. Letter from Suárez y Romero to Domingo Delmonte, 11 April 1839, Centón Epistolario, IV (Havana: 1923), 44.

18. Letter from Suárez y Romero to Domingo Delmonte, 10 May 1839 (and including a quotation from a letter by Milanés to Suárez y Romero), Centón Epistolario, IV, 154.

19. Ibid.

20. See Fernando Ortiz, Los negros esclavos, (Havana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 1975; reprint of the original text, Hampa Afrocubana: Los negros esclavos. Estudio sociológico y de derecho público, published by the Revista Bimestre Cubana), 362-94. See also Luis Yero Pérez, ‘El tema de la esclavitud en la narrativa cubana’, Islas, XLIX (Havana, 1974), 81.

21. These two terms describe settlements of runaway slaves.

22. Ortiz, Los negros esclavos, 373.

23. Salvador Bueno, ‘La primitiva narración antiesclavista en Cuba 1835-39’, Revista de la Universidad de la Habana, CCVII (Jan.-Mar. 1978), 165.

24. African ethnic group.

25. Cleanth Brooks and Robert Penn Warren, Understanding Fiction (New York: Appleton Century Crofts, 1959), 658.

26. An interest echoed in his Colección de artículos, (Havana: Editorial Nacional de Cuba, 1963; originally published 1859), which contains studies of black slave life.

27. Luis Yero Pérez, ‘El tema de la esclavitud …’, 75.

28. 	1827	1841
    Slave population	286,942	436,495
    Free black population	106,494	152,838
    White population	311,051	418,291

    According to Las estadísticas demográficas cubanas (Havana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 1975), 21-23: ‘En ese año la población esclava excedía a la blanca en unas 18,000 personas, mientras que en 1827 ésta superaba en más de 24,000 personas a aquélla, lo que denota que, pese a los subterfugios de los esclavistas y a las presiones inglesas contra la trata de esclavos, esta institución vivía por estos años su época de oro.’

29. José Ramón Betancourt, Una Feria de la Caridad en 183 … (Havana: Imprenta Militar de Soler, 1858), 16.

30. Morillas' narrator is preoccupied with the need for progress in Cuba which far-sighted nationalists perceived could not be achieved without greater capital investment, which in the sugar industry meant increased mechanization and implied a reduced reliance on slave labour.

31. For instance, in a letter to Delmonte dated 15 August 1843, his American friend A. H. Everett expresses his surprise at learning of the Cuban's exile due to alleged abolitionist sympathies thus: ‘After what I have heard from yourself regarding your disapprobation of these projects (abolitionist agitation) and your jealous and active opposition to them, I was a good deal surprised at this proceeding, which must have been, I think, the effect of some mistake or misrepresentation’, Centón Epistolario, V, 121-22.

32. It was military and political necessity rather than democratic or altruistic principles that forced Cuba's white Creole rebels to free slaves who joined their forces. See Raúl Cepero Bonilla, Azúcar y abolición (Havana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 1971), 156.

33. According to Arthur F. Corwin, the aim of the government of the day was that ‘A strict censorship would be exercised over all discussions in the press, public meetings would be outlawed, and mention of the “inciting words” slavery and independence would be forbidden, as would also any public reference to political reform’, Spain and the Abolition of Slavery in Cuba, 1817-1886 (Austin and London: University of Texas Press, 1967), 44.

34. Surely it cannot be coincidental that the work which paints the most negative picture of black slaves and is the most supportive of white dominance was the first to be published in Cuba. Note however that Petrona y Rosalía was only rediscovered in the twentieth century, hence its much later publication.

35. See Aida Julia Toro Gonzales, ‘Algunos aspectos de la novela cubana en la década de 1830-1840’, Islas, XLVIII (May-Aug. 1974), 225.

36. Moreno Fraginals, El Ingenio, I, 272-73.

37. Born in Cuba of a Cuban mother and Spanish father.

38. See Mary Cruz, ‘Sab, su texto y contexto’, introduction to Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda, Sab, (Havana: Instituto Cubano del Libro, 1973), 39.

39. Gómez de Avellaneda, Sab, 137. All references are to the above edition.

40. Sab, 252

41. Sab, 243.

42. Emilio Cotarelo, ‘La Avellaneda y sus obras’, Boletín de la Real Academia Española, XVI (1929), 21.

43. See Edith Kelly, ‘La Avellaneda's Sab and the political situation in Cuba’, The Americas, I (July 1944-April 1945), 303-16. Two of the orders banning Sab and Dos Mujeres (another novel by Avellaneda) accuse the former of containing ‘doctrinas Suvercivas [sic] del sistema de esclavitud’; another claims that Sab contains ‘doctrinas contrarias al sistema de esclavitud’. Copies of official documents concerned with the banning of Sab are published on pp. 350-53 of the above issue of The Americas.

44. Avellaneda may well have been particularly affected by her father's fears of Cuba becoming another Haiti. See Mary Cruz, ‘Sab, su texto y contexto’, 15.

45. Sab, 243.

46. R. Jackson, The Black Image in Latin American Literature (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1976), 5.

47. Avellaneda was herself sharply criticized by her Spanish relatives who disliked and resented her intellectual interests, dubbing her ‘la doctora’. She was a woman who knew what it meant to be misunderstood, unappreciated, circumscribed by rigid social definitions of her proper role as a woman, and she evidently perceived herself to be as bound by her femaleness in a male-dominated world as Sab by his colour in white-dominated colonial Cuba.

48. See ‘Sab, su texto y contexto …’, 51 and 52.