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24, 25, 26: Meet Cecile and Marie-Grace
Dec. 15th, 2012 05:33 amMy original review of the Cecile & Marie-Grace series involved five hundred words of flailing about the terrible, terrible illustrations in these books. While this was very cathartic for me, I daresay it would be quite tedious to you, so I cut it. Just know: the pictures in these books are an abomination before the gods of illustration.
The quality of the book as a whole is rather uneven. The final four books feel like the story that they really wanted to tell, while the first two are filler: they tell the same (rather ridiculous) story from the point of view of the two heroines, first Marie-Grace, then Cecile.
See, the two girls are going to different Mardi Gras parties - one for one for white people, one for gens de couleur libres (free people of color) - but, because they were wearing matching fairy costumes, halfway through they switch places with each other and attend the others’ party. Here are Cecile and Marie-Grace standing side-by-side. I feel that someone would notice their switcharoo.
Now, it is perfectly possible that Marie-Grace could be white and Cecile black, and the two of them similar-looking enough that this could work. Walter White, a leader of the NAACP, was considered black despite being blond and blue eyed; and the famous white surveyor Clarence King pretended to be a light-skinned Pullman porter so he could marry a black woman.
So Marie-Grace could be dark - maybe with some Spanish or Italian blood; or Cecile could be quite pale indeed. But of course then American Girl would have been left with the problem of selling two dolls who look very similar, so I can see why they didn’t go with that.
And, less cynically, I can see why American Girl wouldn’t want to make a black character who looks like white. But having made that decision, they should not have hung an important story point - an important story point which they hammer home in two separate books! - on the idea that the two main characters might be mistaken for each other when that clearly makes no sense.
Maybe the fairy costumes had a glamour on them...?
***
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asakiyume asked me, back when I first mentioned the Cecile & Marie-Grace series, how plausible it was that a white girl and a black girl could become friends in the 1850s (real friends, not “you will be my slave confidant!” kind of friends), even in New Orleans, which had unusual race relations.
The answer is that it’s more plausible in New Orleans than pretty much anywhere else in the US at the time. New Orleans had a much larger (and wealthier) population of free African-Americans than anywhere else, and they lived in the same neighborhoods as white people rather than being shunted off to their own quarter. (There was still racism in New Orleans. Cecile runs into it in her first book.) And it’s more plausible in 1850 than it would be later, because the nineteenth century is a tale of a long, slow descent into more and more virulent racism.
This does not perhaps make it massively plausible, but if it was going to happen, American Girl picked the right time and place. (And it’s definitely more possible than Felicity’s horse-thieving antics!)
American Girl has two goals which sometimes conflict: they want to teach girls about history, but they also want to shape a certain view of an ethnically inclusive American identity. I am absolutely in favor of this. But because, historically, American identity has been far from inclusive - there was a time it didn’t even stretch to the Irish - sometimes the two goals clash.
***
Next week: the Addy books! I read them already (I’ll be busy this coming week: I’m going to DC!) and they’re so much fun, I can’t wait to post about them!
The quality of the book as a whole is rather uneven. The final four books feel like the story that they really wanted to tell, while the first two are filler: they tell the same (rather ridiculous) story from the point of view of the two heroines, first Marie-Grace, then Cecile.
See, the two girls are going to different Mardi Gras parties - one for one for white people, one for gens de couleur libres (free people of color) - but, because they were wearing matching fairy costumes, halfway through they switch places with each other and attend the others’ party. Here are Cecile and Marie-Grace standing side-by-side. I feel that someone would notice their switcharoo.
Now, it is perfectly possible that Marie-Grace could be white and Cecile black, and the two of them similar-looking enough that this could work. Walter White, a leader of the NAACP, was considered black despite being blond and blue eyed; and the famous white surveyor Clarence King pretended to be a light-skinned Pullman porter so he could marry a black woman.
So Marie-Grace could be dark - maybe with some Spanish or Italian blood; or Cecile could be quite pale indeed. But of course then American Girl would have been left with the problem of selling two dolls who look very similar, so I can see why they didn’t go with that.
And, less cynically, I can see why American Girl wouldn’t want to make a black character who looks like white. But having made that decision, they should not have hung an important story point - an important story point which they hammer home in two separate books! - on the idea that the two main characters might be mistaken for each other when that clearly makes no sense.
Maybe the fairy costumes had a glamour on them...?
***
asakiyume asked me, back when I first mentioned the Cecile & Marie-Grace series, how plausible it was that a white girl and a black girl could become friends in the 1850s (real friends, not “you will be my slave confidant!” kind of friends), even in New Orleans, which had unusual race relations. The answer is that it’s more plausible in New Orleans than pretty much anywhere else in the US at the time. New Orleans had a much larger (and wealthier) population of free African-Americans than anywhere else, and they lived in the same neighborhoods as white people rather than being shunted off to their own quarter. (There was still racism in New Orleans. Cecile runs into it in her first book.) And it’s more plausible in 1850 than it would be later, because the nineteenth century is a tale of a long, slow descent into more and more virulent racism.
This does not perhaps make it massively plausible, but if it was going to happen, American Girl picked the right time and place. (And it’s definitely more possible than Felicity’s horse-thieving antics!)
American Girl has two goals which sometimes conflict: they want to teach girls about history, but they also want to shape a certain view of an ethnically inclusive American identity. I am absolutely in favor of this. But because, historically, American identity has been far from inclusive - there was a time it didn’t even stretch to the Irish - sometimes the two goals clash.
***
Next week: the Addy books! I read them already (I’ll be busy this coming week: I’m going to DC!) and they’re so much fun, I can’t wait to post about them!
