Review of Old Creole Days by George W. Cable

By Kristina Oliver

A southern person, an immigrant lost in the deep south among Americans and others that share a similar background, clustered together in the city of New Orleans. The city becomes a melting pot of different cultures and colors during the late nineteenth century. Some lived in the city as English speaking Americans but most found comfort with the French tongue. They had French newspapers and a distinct culture that no where else in America could boast as being the same.

George Washington Cable captures the history of this strange and diverse city in his collection of short stories entitled Old Creole Days. The stories are of adventures and misfortunes of the people in New Orleans during the late 1800’s. The stories are mainly of the French population in the area during that time. He wrote a great deal of these about black French women and their heroic deeds. Making these stories the type which parents tell their children before bed. Innocence pervaded each one of the tales in this collection making the book romantic with only touches of realism thrown in to make the stories believable and the reader sympathetic to the plots.

This book is a good collection of romantic stories with thick and hard to follow dialogue making it somewhat realistic as well. At the end, a sense of warmth fills the room because of the thoughts that still linger about the people in these stories. The feeling is similar to a favorite romantic story that everyone wishes to be true in their own lives. However, this feeling can only overtake the reader if they can get past a few obstacles. These minor bumps can be hurdles to an inpatient reader and force the book upon the shelf to never be picked up again.

The most obvious difficulty when reading the collection was the dialect. The French and southern tongues most of the characters had, made it hard to understand the conflicts in the story. Reading the dialogue over and over would be common in many of these stories. Many times reading out load is necessary to understand the meaning of the conversations and a fake accent will help as well. For example, the first story, Madame Delphine, has the thickest dialect of all and one instance of this is, "…iv dad is troo, I tell you w’ad is sure-sure! Ursin Lemaitre din kyare nut’n fo’ do creed; he fall in love!" With constant dialogue like this the reader can become weary and frustrated. The dialogue can also enrich the text and make the reader more sympathetic to the characters.

The reader can understand some of issues the characters can have in society because their dialect doesn’t allow them to blend into the crowd. These Creoles can become trapped in America with an immigrant status that holds them back as skin color does to many during this time. Therefore the dialect can be vital to the character development if the reader can understand enough of it without giving up.

Once the reader gets past the dialect the next path to cross is the genre confusion. Is the book one of realism or one of romanticism? Cable writes these plots that fit into the romantic category. Characters over come major odds and luck looks down upon them and seems to bless them in an almost supernatural way. These are aspects that realism stays away from. However, the stories concentrate on the individuals not the sequence of events. For instance, in the last story in the collection, Madame Delicieuse, Cable tells of the relationship between a father and son. The father is disappointed in the son for never following his footsteps as a solider yet the son becomes an accomplished doctor. This is a common realistic theme and Cable concentrates on developing the father and son as characters. He goes into detail about their life accomplishments, what they have offered to the world, and what they could offer to each other. However, when the plot is so far fet! ched and ridiculous the reader can easily loose sight of the realness the characters have. This flows into most of the stories in this collection.

It is very easy for the reader to come to the last page of the story and finally realize what the conflict was and how it was resolved, and have been oblivious until the last page. This could be because of the dialect confusion or concentrating solely on the character development and not the occurrences in the story. This also means every ending is complete and leaves the reader satisfied.

Overall, Old Creole Days can at least teach the reader something of history. If the reader has a more through background in American history during the middle to late nineteenth century the book will be much easier to follow and enrich previous knowledge. This collection of stories is fascinating to those who have an interest in some of the struggles black Americans had during the time of segregation and strict laws. Also, those individuals who are interested in the struggles of women would find these stories inspiring. They present women as figures of strength and whit. Those who do not fit into any of these categories might find the dialect frustrating and the plots a bit too fantastic to fit the characters involved in them.

This book is definitely worth a try for everyone. Sense it is a collection of short stories the reader can feel completion with out ever finishing the entire compilation. Those who enjoy a story may continue on to discover more about the Creole life and have a better feel for a little piece of American history.