Background
Ninon is a supporting character in the fictional novel Texaco by Patrick Chamoiseau. While she is only present in the book for a limited period of time, Ninon’s story relates to the historical lives of women who lived on plantations and experienced the first days of freedom after being raised, taught, and enduring the life of an enslaved individual for the entirety of their lifetime up to the point of emancipation. Her story captures the struggles of living on a plantation, finding what direction to take in life, and the trauma that a woman raised in slavery had to overcome during such a hard and dehumanizing period of time.
Character Summary
Ninon was introduced into the novel as the love interest of the deuteragonist of the novel, Esternome. She was an enslaved black woman who worked on the sugar plantations of the békés. She lived in the hutches on the plantation, worked, and ventured into finding a companionship during the confusing period that followed the freedom of slavery in the Caribbean. Ninon eventually moved off the plantation and ventured to the hills to start a new life with Esternome after a series of unfortunate events led her to want to create a new life for herself. After starting civilization in the countryside with Esternome, Ninon began to long for working again. She aspired and dreamed of going to work in the factories that had been arising in the city. This realization soon leads Ninon into disappearing in the night with a musician that would play around the hutches of this new countryside civilization. Shortly after her disappearance, a volcanic eruption destroyed the city of Saint-Pierre, and we are left to question if Ninon survived this tragic disaster.
An important detail to consider is that Ninon is captured through the lens of Esternome as he retells his story to his daughter, Marie-Sophie. Therefore, we get a viewpoint that is skewed by the aspirations and love that Esternome had for Ninon. As Marie-Sophie, narrator of the novel, states, “His eyes, I can tell you, only saw Ninon’s face—a beautiful face I suppose with eyes glittering like childhood’s water, eyebrows curving thickly like strange umbrellas, a mouth for smiling, lips more bluish than the skin, and large voracious teeth” (Chamoiseau 87). While he describes Ninon as a beautiful, loving, and important individual, as a reader, we can gather and dive deeper into the true struggles that Ninon faced that were occasionally dismissed by Esternome. While she was an enchanting woman, the story elaborates on her conflicts about leaving the plantation after the news of freedom spread, her complication with finding, trusting, and engaging in true love, her fear of growing a family, and the distress that occurred after the death of her mother.
Fear of Leaving the Plantation
The novel Texaco takes time to highlight the fear that many freed slaves had of leaving the plantation, and it additionally emphasizes the hope that this population had of receiving portions of land on the plantations after the announcement of freedom. Ninon was one of many that struggled with leaving her small hutch on the plantation. Esternome describes, “In those days Ninon thought the world fit in her hand. Some just God, she thought would harvest our miseries and then divide human existence into parcels of happiness, this is yours, that’s your land, that’s your home” (Chamoiseau 100). The uncertainty that Ninon and others had because of their newfound freedom was overwhelming and paralyzing for many. Many were extremely hopeful, to the point it blinded them from reality. The narrator states, “Then he began to wait with her, like the others (though he had no liquor in him), for someone to come slice the plantation for the right number of blackmen. But the wait was getting to the Beauty” (Chamoiseau 109). With nowhere to go and with an immense amount of hope and faith riding on the sharing of land, Ninon and the others were not willing or rushing to leave an area that they were forcefully confined to for many years. As confusing as it may sound, the familiarity of a place that, although was dehumanizing and painful to live, was home to all these individuals for their entire lives. To pick up and leave, heading toward a place of complete uncertainty, left Ninon struggling to decide whether to follow Esternome or stay in hopes to receive a portion of plantation that may never come.
Although Ninon’s story of deciding to leave the plantation was not a real story, her struggle connects to the real, historical events that happened to slaves after the first news of freedom. The article, “Plantations and Labor in the Caribbean in the Long Nineteenth Century” discusses life on the plantation and how labor continued after the abolition of slavery reached the Caribbean Island. The article states, “Focusing on plantation labor in the Caribbean, it is important to note that those formerly enslaved did not always leave the plantation in droves, and they were reluctant to break social and cultural ties, and perhaps they had no former employment” (Hoefte 259). The fear and uncertainty that Ninon displayed is a perfect example of many real freed slaves of the past. With no direction, possible employment, or place to live, staying on the plantation was, in some cases, the safest option for a lot of individuals.
Death on the Plantation
Death on a plantation was a common occurrence that led many to rush burial processes with limited time to pay respect to the individual who passed. The nature that these individuals were buried did not allow loved ones to process or grieve for a respectable amount of time. This made death on the plantation a confusing and emotionally complicated event for those who were enslaved. One of the biggest challenges that Ninon’s character faced in the novel was the death of her mother. The novel emphasizes, “With her mother, Ninon had buried a part of herself” (Chamoiseau 119). This experience led Ninon down a path of grief and could possibly be the reason that she took drastic steps in her life afterwards. Shortly after her mother’s death, Ninon began to long for more than what she was receiving in life, and she aspired to make something of herself. In a lot of ways, Ninon was not able to properly process, understand, and comprehend the death of her mother, which could be an explanation for her leaving Esternome and wanting to go into the city. The book describes the quick measures of her mother’s burial by expressing, “There was no wake, just music rasping from sticks being rubbed against the partitions of the hut. Very few gathered to remember her” (Chamoiseau 117).
A study was constructed to shed light on the deaths of enslaved people on sugar plantations in the Caribbean. The study focuses on how infectious diseases, activity, stress, and abuse, especially for women, had a major impact on the high mortality rates that occurred on the plantation during the period of slavery (Shuler 77). Enslaved individuals undertook extreme abuse and lack of substantial living conditions, and the process of burial of the enslaved accounted some for the lack of research on this particular topic (Shuler 77), which Texaco touches on with the Ninon’s mother. Ninon’s mother, like many, lived a life of extreme stress and fear for the next day. Processing the life that her mother lived, and the lack of affection from others for the loss of her mother, could explain why Ninon struggled. Unpacking the history behind death on these plantations and how research points to the high mortality rates, quick burial measures, and the lack of sympathy surrounding death on plantations gives insight into the complexities of Ninon’s mother’s death, which furthermore gives information on the numerous deaths that occurred at one point in history.
Works Cited
Chamoiseau, Patrick. Texaco. Trans. Rose-Myrian Réjouis & Val Vinokurov. NY: Vintage, 1997.
Hoefte, Rosemarijn. “Plantations and Labour in the Caribbean in the Long Nineteenth Century.” International Review of Social History, vol. 57, no. 2, 2012, pp. 257–268., https://doi.org/10.1017/s0020859012000181. Accessed 8 February 2023.
Shuler, K. A. “Life and Death on a Barbadian Sugar Plantation: Historic and Bioarchaeological Views of Infection and Mortality at Newton Plantation.” International Journal of Osteoarchaeology, vol. 21, no. 1, 2011, pp. 66–81, https://doi.org/10.1002/oa.1108. Accessed 8 February 2023.
Editorial Collective
Olivia Scott, Jared Christopher, Georgia Litteken
