Creoles in Catherine Carmier

Over the past couple of posts, I have written about the changing land in Catherine Carmier, Jackson's relationship to the community upon his return, and the "idle white rich." In this post, I will discuss the Carmiers's place within the social structure of the Louisiana community that can be found in the novel. As a Creole, Raoul, the family's patriarch, maintains a place in between both the black and white communities. When Robert Carmier, Raoul's father, moved the family into the house that he acquired from Mack Grover, it didn't take the people in the quarters long to see "that the Carmiers had little use for dark-skin people" (12). Upon moving in, the bridge that led to the yard collapsed as the wagon carrying the family's possessions tried to cross it. Robert told the family they would have to carry the furniture to the house themselves, and when people in the quarters offered to help, he refused. The bridge collapsing becomes symbolic of the way that Robert, and later Raoul,  view themselves in relation to the society around them. The collapsed bridge separates Robert and his family from the rest of the community, both black and white.

Even though Mack Grover sold the house to Robert and allowed him to farm the land, Mack did not view Robert as anything other than a "nigger": "But that ain't enough for a nigger, no matter how white he is" (11) Even though Robert has fair skin, and his granddaughter Catherine could pass for "an Indian," Mack still views him in relation to the other African Americans in the community. Because of this, Robert set his family apart, hiring only other Creoles to help with the farming, never blacks.  As a Creole, Robert and his descendants occupy a "liminal" space in between the white and black communities. Lillian,after telling Catherine that she "hate[s] black worse than the whites hate it," voices this  position:

I haven't opened my heart out to that white world either. But I'm going there because I must go somewhere. I can't stand in the middle of the road any longer. Neither can you, and neither can you let Nelson. Daddy and his sisters can't understand this. They want us to be Creoles. Creoles. What a joke. Today you're one way or the other; you're white or you're black. There is no in-between. (48) 

Talking about Lillian and her decision to get off of the fence with Marcia Gaudet and Carl Wooton, Gaines says that Lillian gets fed up with not living either in the black or white world. She says, "I cannot live in this middle-of-the-road kind of situation. . . . I'm white enough to go over there, and I'm going to make this choice" (229).Lillian doesn't want to hide behind her racial identity as mixed. She wants to decide which way to go, the white world or the black. Many, according to Gaines, "hide behind [the term Creole] until it becomes necessary, in politics or whatever, in order to get what [they] need to accomplish" (230). Raoul doesn't do this. Throughout  the novel, he does not side with whites or blacks. He hires Creoles instead of blacks to help with the farming, and he will not let Catherine date blacks, including Jackson. With whites, he wants to prove that he is just as capable of producing crops as they are. Talking about Raoul, Madame Bayonne tells Jackson that he is the last remaining farmer on Bud Grover's land other than the Cajuns. The whites, however, just toy with him like a fish, dragging him along.

All of this causes Raoul to stick to himself, and other Creoles. Mary Ellen Doyle argues that Raoul's position brings about the three racial conflicts in the novel: "Creole versus landowning white (Robert Carmier versus Mack Grover), Creoles versus blacks (the Carmiers versus their neighbors in the quarters), and Creoles versus Cajuns (the race to the derrick)" (82). The Creole communities insulation and tensions with both black and white communities can be seen in the discussion of Creole Place  in The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman,  the mention of a Creole school teacher who must be buried in the black cemetery because her people do not want her back in A Gathering of Old Men, and in the Free LaCove community in A Lesson before Dying.

There is much more that can be said here, and that has been said by other scholars. However, before leaving, I would like to point out that Creole in Gaines' text means something different than it originally did. The original definition refers to native born Louisianans of French or Spanish descent during the Colonial Period. For examples of this use of the term, see Charles Chesnutt's Paul Marchand F.M.C. and works by George Washington Cable. In Gaines' work, however, Creole refers to mixed-race individual who have a close community and ancestral tie that keeps them together as a community in between the white and black communities. For more on this, see Thadious M. Davis' "Headlands and Quarters: Louisiana in Catherine Carmier" or her book Southscapes.

Doyle, Mary Ellen. Voices from the Quarters: The Fiction or Ernest J. Gaines. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2003. Print.
Gaines, Ernest J. Catherine Carmier. New York: Vintage Books, 1993. Print.
Gaudet, Marcia and Carl Wooton. "Talking with Ernest Gaines." Conversations with Ernest Gaines. Ed. John Lowe. Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 1995. 221-240. Print.