You did it! We figured this one out! It is a truth universally acknowledged (by me for certain) that the Bitchery pretty much knows everything, and really, it's true. Scroll down to see the solution for this HaBO - and many thanks!
This request comes from a gentleman whose wife is looking for the first romance she read. This one is a doozy:
“This would have been in the 1983-1987 timeframe. I think it had a purple
cover (but I don’t think Johanna Lindsey wrote it). I remember it being
quite racy for a girl my age…It may or may not have started off with a rich heiress trying to escape a
bad betrothal in the Caribbean to a much older man to pay off her father’s
debts. There was a pirate (with very green eyes) between the Carribbean and
France who took her virtue. Later, she was all the rage in Paris, and
Napolean’s attentions drove Josephine mad with jealousy. She left France
on a ship; other passengers included a Puritan couple from New England who
did not approve of her.The captain of the ship was the pirate. Or maybe the pirate captured her
ship? In either case, she wound up somewhere in Africa, traded as a white
slave into a harem. She was picked to be some sultan’s squeeze (he was
described as a Janissary), but our plucky heroine was with the pirate’s
child at this point. The fabulous Arab had his way (but only anally). She
gave birth, and was told the baby died during childbirth, but it was really
taken away & given to the Puritan couple. They were being held hostage by
the Janissary.Then, she wound up back in New Orleans, was called an octoroon and sold as a
slave. The green-eyed pirate rescued her and she was reunited with her son
(the missing baby). Then wound up in the Oregon territories. Or maybe not.
It’s all verrry fuzzy after all this time. “
Of course I Googled “octoroon” and am so pleased to make the acquaintance of one more piece of racist nomenclature. Good Lord. Anyone remember this book?
But WHY was she labelled an octoroon? The archaic American ‘mulatto / quadroon / octoroon’ terminology is really interesting, because it reveals the pervasive conviction that white and black humans were different species — at least as different as a horse and a donkey (I can’t write ‘ass’ there, because you all use ‘ass’ to mean ‘bum’): hence ‘mulatto’ for the ‘first cross’. Really weird.
I have no idea of identification of the book, but it certainly seems to have packed in a lot of action.
Definitely Rosemary Rogers; a quick glance at Amazon has me thinking its’ Wicked Loving Lies.
Hey! I finally recognize one!
‘Scuse me while I wish I could move that apostrophe.
My suggestion is to check the Angelique series by Sergeann Golon. She went through a lot of very racy adventures in a lot of locations. I think there’s something like twenty books in the series, which is out of print these days. This may actually be a combination of more than one title.
AgTigress: Yes, the term is racist. Historically, a lot of cultures were ethnocentric and racists, and not all of them were caucasian. In this case, octoroon is an important distinction becuase this is someone that could pass for “white” if one didn’t look carefully. However, that small amount of “black” ancestry was enough to make her legally black. Octoroons were highly prized as mistresses. The more “white” they appeared, the higher their value. It’s an accurate historical detail that adds another cliffhanger to the plot as well as another excuse for wild and racy sex.
No, Virginia,definately not good old Sergeanne’s Angelique books – they’re set during the reign of Louis the Sun King.
BUT Juliette Benzoni’s Marianne series are set during Napoleon’s reign – & she has a flingette with him, lands up in Constantinople, has a child with an Arab prince, lands up in a harem, is at the seige of Moscow AND FINALLY … hooks up with her One True …the American privateer .. she’s been longing for since book 1 (or is it 2 ?) …. There’s lot’s more besides that quick overview…..The woman really got around !!!!
I’m pretty sure Rosemary Rogers as well. I have definitely read this book.
I can’t identify the book, but now I really want to read it. My PhD research is on popular fiction in the 19th century and one of the most popular plot elements at that time was when either a white woman was mistaken for an octoroon and sold into slavery, or when a woman with African ancestry was brought up to believe that she was white and then suddenly discovered that she was an octoroon and was sold into slavery. The end result of both was either rescue by the hero or a melodramatic death scene—sometimes both at once! They’re really fascinating stories.
Also, I’m really happy that “octoroon” is marked as misspelled by this spell-checker. Thank god it isn’t a recognized common word anymore.
I must admit I’d never heard the term before this post.
I’m also betting on this being a Rosemary Rogers, but which one, I’m not sure.
As an aside, I’m so glad that terms like octoroon, quadroon, and mulatto have faded from our cultural consciousness—as evidenced by the comments above. But in literature until quite recently the “tragic mulatto” (a mixed-race woman, usually trying to pass for white, but tripped up by her own “passionate” nature) was a recognized trope—see the movies “Carmen Jones,” “Pinky,” or “Imitation of Life” for examples.
In pre-Civil War Louisiana, it was quite common for men from the planter class to have quadroon/octoroon mistresses. New Orleans hosted “quadroon balls,” where rich white men went to find light-skinned ‘black’ women. In fact, the system was so entrenched, it had a name, “Placage,” and the mistresses were referred to as “placees” (I can’t do accent marks or the curlicue tail under the “c,” but these were French terms, so pronounce them accordingly). These tended to be very stable unions, with the man making a financial settlement on the woman and any children they had. After several generations of this, there were blond-haired-blue-eyed people who were classified as ‘black.’ Which only goes to show what a complicated racial history we have in this country.
Technically, one-eighth black, the equivalent of one black great-grandparent; this proportion of African heritage would be unlikely to be visually perceptible even if one looked very carefully indeed! (See DiscoDollyDeb’s post above, mentioning legally ‘black’ fair-skinned individuals). The whole elaborate classification system (and of course the equally complex legal classifications that were in use far more recently under apartheid in South Africa, with the three classes of ‘black’, ‘white’ and ‘coloured’) is extraordinary, based as it is on completely false beliefs and flawed understanding. But alas, you will still find a remarkably similar mind-set amongst some breeders of pedigree animals.
I suspect that my own familiarity with this now mercifully obsolete vocabulary may have been based on reading quite a lot of Victorian pornography in my misspent youth.
@Agtigress, I imagine it depends. I have a theory about my own ancestry that I have no way of following up on; I suspect my paternal Great Grandmother was at least part black; perhaps half, perhaps 1/4. My recordable ancestry is all Scotts-Irish, yet here we have this paternal line that suddenly has very dark hair and dark complexions (not at all like “black irish), dark eyes, sallow skins. My family is from Kentucky which of course was a slave state. My aunt Jane had black, distinctly rippled/fuzzy hair. My Dad’s was straight, mine is very curly and tends to frizz easily. I have sallow skin and I keloid scar, which is very common in African Americans and uncommon to unheard of in Scotts-Irish.
At the very most I would be 1/16th African American. My two sisters and my brother look *nothing* like me and are fair skinned, brown to blond hair with no curl at all, etc.
I’m actually really interested in pursuing this avenue of my heritage, but I don’t know how; obviously this would have been a huge, horrible scandal at the time, and hidden. And all this is to say that I think it depends on how the genes are expressed. For whatever reason, the genes from my Dad’s side of the family expressed more dominantly in me than it did in my siblings.
Wait, this happened in a Rosemary Rogers book, according to those of you who attribute this story to her? I read them all, I thought, at a completely inappropriate age, and feel certain my eyes would have bugged out permanently in the circumstance. Unless the scene was written in such a way to throw not a veil, but a canvas over the whole thing. Really?
There was a lot of anal sex in RR books. It was a recurring theme.
Well, there you go. Clearly I had no idea what I was reading at the time. Mom never covered that in those little talks.
I know I read this book, but I didn’t read much, if any, Rosemary Rogers IIRC. Bertrice Small perhaps?
Spamword hospital46. I know I’d have been in the hospital 46 times if I went through what that heroine did.
Robinjn, of course that is true. Nobody ever said genetics was simple! The possibilities are endless, and there are many cases of an individual looking uncannily similar to a single, fairly distant ancestor. But in general, a person with only one black great-grandparent would be likely to look ‘white’, though there could easily be exceptions.
The complexities of biological inheritance, and the continual mixing of so-called races going back to antiquity makes the very idea of ‘black’ and ‘white’ humans, and the idea of ‘racial purity’ complete nonsense: not just morally offensive, but scientifically ridiculous.
Anne Rice’s work is full of those terms. One dealt with the handsome son they had to send to Paris for higher education which was common practice then . He wouldn’t be allowed in University here. There was a whole subculture, strictly defined, of these wealthy mixed race people, the result of the master-slave interaction. They had their own debutante balls and stuff.
Beatrice Small was the only other author I thought of. I do know, for absolute fact, that I have read this book. I remember the Napoleon, Josephine, Sultan, baby, pirate thing. But I read it when it was new and I’ve slept since then. 🙂
*claps hands* I know this one!! It’s definitely Rosemary Rogers’Wicked Loving Lies. My grandmother adored RR, and when I was 13, I stole this from the box of books she’d given my mother. Usually she read Harlequins or mystery novels, so this was…quite different from what I expected. And it took many more years before I understood more than a little bit of what was going on.
Via Amazon:
Here’s a link to a pic of the original cover.
I vote for Beatrice Small, as well. I KNOW I’ve read this, and I’ve only ever read two Rosemary Rogers, which I don’t think included this one. But I went on some kind of massive Small kick – don’t judge me. I was a teenager.
Now you have challenged me to find it. Will go hunting.
I definitely remember the Napolean, sultan, baby, octoroon bits in one by Rosemary Rogers. Sweet, Savage Love, I think. But I don’t remember the bit about the pirate. Is the memory a possible mash-up between SSL and the later books in the series? I read them also, but don’t remember much about them.
The story about “miscegenation” in the South that I could never get out of my mind was “Desiree’s Baby” by Kate Chopin. Definitely not a romance of any kind, though:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desiree’s_Baby
I have definitely read this book, but it was so long ago…it might actually have been my first introduction to the word octoroon. I remember running across it in a romance novel as a teenager. Along with ton and lave, it’s one of those words I think I’ve only ever seen in romance novels. Both the Rosemary Rogers and the Juliette Benzoni sound familiar, though, which is no help at all I realize. And I want to hear more about the books you’re using for your thesis, Hydecat!
Word’s like octoroon (one eighth black) and quadroon (one quarter black) are racist because they are meant to track “impure” blood through families lines. a white man wouldn’t want to marry a woman with ANY black blood, for fear of tainting his family. so these words reminded people that people of mixed race were not worthy.
http://www.likesbooks.com/pirates.html#pirates
I found this link to a list of Pirate/sheik/viking books. I think the questioner may have mixed a couple of books. But RR included o lot of anal and I think this may be one of hers too. Maybe it’s a mix of Lindsay, RR and Small?
A good mystery series that includes discussion of these various ‘castes’, is Barbara Hambly’s Benjamin January series. The first book is A Free Man of Colour. It’s set in 1840’s New Orleans and is excellent.
Don’t have any clue on the HaBO, sorry. But, this thread makes me want to watch “Band of Angels” with Clark Gable again.
Spamword: modern94. Yep, I might have been modern if I had been born in 1894. Definitely like the Victorian age.
I lived in Alabama for a while as a kid, and some of the older people still used terms like “octoroon”. They would also say someone was “passin’”. Which meant they passed the paper bag test. If you were lighter than a paper bag, you could pass as a white. It amazes me how racism is alive and well still in a lot of the Deep South.
I haven’t read the book – and I wouldn’t if I had it as I prefer to pretend anal sex does not exist. *shudders* However I am surprised a lot of you don’t know these racist terms. When I was in school they were taught as part of history class to show how bad “the good old days” were.
Of course, I think it was mostly stressed by a history teacher who revealed one day his father was a major racist and he always tried to take that as an example on how NOT to be.
Plus of course Anne Rice’s book – I forgot the name, something about Saints, I think. Not Cry To Heaven, that’s about the kid who’s jealous family member has him castrated.
I keep forgetting how young most of you are.
As long as you’re doing the research on the word, one of it’s best uses was by Wynton Marsalis. (I believe the original commission was from the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra, but I can’t sort through my CDs right now.)
@Tiblet said:
Don’t have any clue on the HaBO, sorry. But, this thread makes me want to watch “Band of Angels” with Clark Gable again.
Tiblet—The novel upon which the movie is based is by Robert Penn Warren (most famous for writing ALL THE KING’S MEN). The novel is somewhat rougher than the movie, but a good read.
While octoroon and quadroon have faded, mulatto is still used quite often. During the 2008 presidential election, i heard it all the time by the racists in my neighborhood (as in…that mulatto can’t be elected president). I have also heard it said by actual mixed race individuals to describe themselves. One of my aunts used it to explain why my brother, my cousin, and i were forbidden to date/marry black people…God forbid our children be mixed race…it would be so hard for them (seriously?!).
The Feast of All Saints is the title of Anne Rice’s book about “the Free People of Color” in pre-Civil War Louisiana.
This is ONE book? o_O
Yeah, it’s definitely not the Angelique series, which I had memorized by the time I was 13. Wrong time period.
I always liked the word mulatto. I didn’t realize it was a racist term until well into my 20’s. I’m kinda slow that way. I also like the word silhouette, for much the same reason. They feel mellifluous to me. (I also like the word mellifluous.)
The epilogue of Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers goes into the hierarchy of whiteness and blackness in Jamaica, and is absolutely fascinating.
Kind of related to the subject, Passing by Nella Larsen is an excellent book about mixed race women who can “pass” as white. I’m not sure if she uses octoroon and other terms, but a great book anyway.
Its without a doubt “Wicked Loving Lies” Lots of anal sex/greasing up of assholes in a harem, tons of rape ( so much rape), octoroons, Napoleon. i mean this book had so many different stories. And so much rape. She was raped by this guy, then married him, then had like a sorta happy week, then he may have raped her again, and she got with this other guy, but then her husband posed as a highwayman and raped her, and then this other guy got turned on by that and raped her, and then she somehow got taken away on a ship, and sold to a harem, and anally done, and yeah. It was such a mess hahah At some point she went back home, but someone thought that she was an octoroon, and yeah, somehow she and her husband came back together.
I’m pretty positive it’s “A Love for All Time” by Bertrice Small, which I also read when I was far too young…or at least the plot is really similar!
This is Wicked Loving Lies by RR. There is a Small title with the same anal harem business, but it lacks Napoleon and the heroine’s stint as a slave. I believe this is the RR title in which, near the end, the heroine utters something along the lines of, “I’m tired of being raped!” inviting the reader to say, “Amen.”
erm… that term goes both ways and is still used today. Usually by ‘full-blooded’ african-americans (at least here). I’ve been called a quadroon or mulatto my whole life, it’s never bothered me, and honestly, I’d rather tick it off on paperwork than have to choose the background of one parent over the other.
Sometimes if you check ‘mixed’ on paperwork they want to write out everything in your background in detail and how much of each thing you are. I had to fill out a whole page on my race once for a fast food place, in detail, because they were being questioned and needed it for Affirmative Action. >:P
I think I first came across ‘octoroon’ in Sinclair Lewis’ Kingsblood Royal, where a Minnesota family who thought they were white turn out to have the ‘taint’ of African blood. The couple in the book lose almost everything, but just barely manage to keep from being forced out of their home somehow. Seriously undervalued Sinclair Lewis, outing racism in the Midwest.
I have several adopted siblings, one of whom is bi-racial. Her mom was light-skinned African-American and my sister has auburn hair and freckles. Her kids have dark hair, but look mostly like her husband who is blond. Further confused by her having been raised in our family, which is Germanic.