The Grandissimes by George Washington Cable

First published: 1880

Type of work: Novel

Type of plot: Regional

Time of plot: 1804

Locale: New Orleans, Louisiana

Principal characters

• Honoré Grandissime, head of the Grandissime family
• The Darker Honoré Grandissime, his quadroon half brother
• Agricola Fusilier, Honoré’s uncle
• Aurora Nancanou, a young widow
• Clotilde Nancanou, her daughter
• Joseph Frowenfeld, a young American
• Dr. Keene, Joseph’s physician and friend
• Palmyre, a freed slave
• Bras Coupé, a rebellious slave

The Story:

Honoré Grandissime and Aurora Nancanou, both members of the Creole aristocracy though they are unaware of one another’s identity, meet at a masked ball and fall in love at first sight. Honoré is a young merchant and the head of the Grandissime family. Aurora, a young widow, is from the De Grapion family. Aurora’s husband accused Honoré’s uncle, Agricola Fusilier, of cheating at cards, which led to a duel in which Agricola killed him. With that, Agricola cleared his honor, and he also collected the gambling debt of Aurora’s husband, his entire estate. Aurora and her daughter Clotilde were left penniless. Agricola gave the estate to Honoré, making him a wealthy man.

Joseph Frowenfeld, a young American immigrant, arrives in New Orleans with his parents and sisters. All are stricken with fever, and only Joseph survives. The lonely young man forms a friendship with his physician, Dr. Keene. Joseph and Honoré meet by chance one day and find a common interest in their concern over the injustice of slavery and the caste system of New Orleans society. Honoré’s life, however, depends upon these institutions. Joseph wishes them to be wiped out at once.

Deciding to earn his living as a druggist, Joseph opens a small shop and soon becomes friendly with his aristocratic landlord. The landlord is Honoré’s half brother, who bears the same name but is not acknowledged as a member of the family because he is a quadroon. He is called the Darker Honoré. Joseph finds another new friend in Agricola, and he is also struck by the charm of Aurora and Clotilde when they call to make purchases. He learns more about Aurora from Dr. Keene. The physician tells him about Palmyre, a freed slave who had once been Aurora’s maid and who hates Agricola in part because of his role in the capture and punishment of her husband, the rebellious slave Bras Coupé. One night, Joseph is awakened by pistol shots nearby. A few minutes later, Dr. Keene and several others enter the shop with Agricola, who has been stabbed; his companions had fired on his assailant.

Several days later, Aurora calls upon her landlord in order to make some arrangements about the rent she cannot pay. She knows her landlord’s name is Honoré Grandissime, but she does not connect this name with the man she loves until learning that they are half brothers.

When Dr. Keene falls sick, he asks Joseph to attend to one of his patients. The patient is Palmyre, who was wounded after stabbing Agricola. Joseph promises Dr. Keene to keep her trouble a secret and goes to dress the wound. When Joseph pays his last visit to Palmyre, now almost recovered, she begs him to help her make the white Honoré love her. Palmyre’s maid, however, misunderstanding the conversation, thinks that Joseph wronged her mistress. She strikes him over the head, and Joseph reels groggily into the street. Some passing pedestrians, seeing him emerge bleeding from Palmyre’s house, draw a natural inference, and soon everyone knows about Joseph’s misfortune. Only Clotilde and Honoré believe him innocent. Public feeling among the Creoles is running high against Americans, and Joseph finds that both his liberal views and his trouble at Palmyre’s house are held against him.

Honoré’s conscience bothers him. He feels that he holds Aurora’s property unjustly, but he also knows if he returns it to her he will ruin his family. He makes his choice, however, and calls upon Aurora and Clotilde to present them with their property and the income from it. Now he cannot declare his love for Aurora, for if he does so, his family will think he returned the property out of love instead of a sense of justice.

On his return from Aurora’s house, Honoré meets the Darker Honoré with Dr. Keene. The physician has risen from his sickbed because he hears of Honoré’s call at Aurora’s house. Dr. Keene, also in love with Aurora, is jealous. His exertion causes a hemorrhage of the lungs, and the two Honorés carry him home and watch over him. While they attend the sick man, the Darker Honoré proposes to his brother that they go into partnership, so that the Darker Honoré’s money can save the family from ruin. His brother accepts the offer. The decision turns Honoré’s family against him, however, and Agricola leads an unsuccessful lynching party to find the Darker Honoré. Not finding him, the mob breaks the windows of Joseph’s shop as a gesture against liberal views in general.

Aurora sets Joseph up in business again on the ground floor of her house and makes Clotilde a partner in the store. Brought together in this manner, the two young people fall in love. At the same time, the Darker Honoré wastes away for love of Palmyre, who is trying to revenge herself upon Agricola by voodoo spells. When Agricola can no longer sleep at night, his family determines to catch Palmyre in her acts of witchcraft. They catch her accomplice, but Palmyre escapes.

When the Darker Honoré goes to Joseph’s store to get medicine for himself, he meets Agricola, who insults him. The Darker Honoré stabs Agricola and escapes. The wounded man is carried upstairs to Aurora’s house to die; there the two families are united at his deathbed. Agricola reveals that he once promised Aurora’s father to promote a marriage between Aurora and Honoré.

The Darker Honoré and Palmyre escape together to France. There he commits suicide because she still would not accept his love. Joseph finally declares his love for Clotilde. Aurora refuses to accept Honoré’s offer of marriage because she thinks he made it out of obligation to Agricola. Then Honoré makes his offer again as a man in love. In a last gesture of family pride, Aurora refuses him, but at the same time, she throws herself into her lover’s arms.

Bibliography

Butcher, Philip. George W. Cable. New York: Twayne, 1962. An excellent beginner’s source for discussions of Cable’s fiction. Analyzes the themes, structure, and characters of The Grandissimes and discusses the novel’s importance in Cable’s development as a writer.

Cleman, John. George Washington Cable Revisited. New York: Twayne, 1996. A reevaluation of Butcher’s earlier introductory overview. Cleman discusses Cable’s major work and the social context that frames it. Includes chapters devoted to Cable’s advocacy of civil rights for African Americans, his political writing, and his later works of “pure fiction.”

Elfenbein, Anna Shannon. Women on the Color Line: Evolving Stereotypes and the Writings of George Washington Cable, Grace King, Kate Chopin. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1989. Compares Cable’s female characters with those of two other turn-of-the-century New Orleans writers. Places special emphasis on Cable’s treatment of women of color.

Foote, Stephanie.“’The Shadow of the Ethiopian’: George Washington Cable’s The Grandissimes.” In Regional Fictions: Culture and Identity in Nineteenth-Century American Literature. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2001. Foote examines Cable’s novel, describing how the book is a work of regional fiction. She argues that Cable’s book and other regional fiction shaped Americans’ ideas about the value of local identity.

Ladd, Barbara. Nationalism and the Color Line in George W. Cable, Mark Twain, and William Faulkner. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1996. Ladd demonstrates how the works of Cable and the other writers was influenced by the cultural legacy that French and Spanish colonialism imbedded upon the Mississippi River Valley and the Deep South.

Richardson, Thomas J., ed.“The Grandissimes”: Centennial Essays. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1981. Collection of essays interpreting The Grandissimes, including discussions of humor, narrative voice, and the French Quarter in the novel. Contains an annotated bibliography.

Rubin, Louis D., Jr. George W. Cable: The Life and Times of a Southern Heretic. New York: Pegasus, 1969. An excellent study of Cable in the context of southern fiction and culture. Calls The Grandissimes “the first ’modern’ Southern novel” and explores Cable’s treatment of race. Compares Cable to later southern writers, such as William Faulkner.

Turner, Arlin. George W. Cable: A Biography. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1956. An excellent biographical study with a detailed chapter on The Grandissimes that analyzes the novel’s place in Cable’s artistic and political development. Examines Cable’s philosophy of fiction and his pioneering use of dialect.

Wilson, Edmund. Patriotic Gore: Studies in the Literature of the American Civil War. New York: Oxford University Press, 1962. Examines the political dimensions of The Grandissimes, including a discussion of the historical setting of the novel in comparison to the historical period in which it was written.