Captivity, Enslavement, and Autonomy

Captivity, Enslavement, and Autonomy form a connected ethical conflict in Marie-Josèphe’s dealings with Odelette, Haleed, and the Sea Woman. Freedom is not simply a benevolent owner’s gift: it involves the right to decide one’s future, the means to leave, and recognition by others. The episodes distinguish a promise of emancipation from the power to make it effective, while showing how an apparently protective decision can still deny another person a voice.

Ownership and withheld choice

Marie-Josèphe’s relationship with Odelette reveals that refusing to sell someone does not, by itself, end enslavement. The sisters at the convent had persuaded Marie-Josèphe that owning a slave was sinful, yet they wanted her to sell Odelette and give the money to the convent. Marie-Josèphe had refused, partly because she feared that Odelette’s circumstances might become worse elsewhere. But she also acknowledges that the sisters had not let her speak to Odelette, so she did not know what Odelette wanted. Her concern had preserved the existing arrangement without giving the person living within it a choice.

Odelette supplies the knowledge Marie-Josèphe lacked. She describes her work at the convent as dressing the sisters’ hair and says she would have preferred embroidering their linen to washing Yves de la Croix’s stockings. The comparison complicates any simple equation between places: Odelette does not describe the convent as dreadful, and her own assessment differs from Marie-Josèphe’s experience of convent life. The decisive issue is not that one setting is automatically free of constraint, but that Odelette’s preferences had not been sought when others made decisions about her.

When Marie-Josèphe promises to free her, Odelette reveals that the mother superior had predicted she never would, and had said Marie-Josèphe would not give her up. Marie-Josèphe’s earlier refusal to sell had, from Odelette’s perspective, meant continued ownership rather than liberation. Her eventual declaration that Odelette is free and that they shall be sisters marks a change in their relationship, but Odelette’s reply also resists the language of possession: she says she should not be enslaved and defines any future bond as one she chooses, rather than one imposed by ownership.

Freedom on Odelette’s terms

The change does not return Odelette to a subordinate role under a kinder name. She agrees to stay only until the family’s fortunes are repaired or she can return home without shame. She intends to make her own fortune if possible, will no longer serve Marie-Josèphe, and offers help only when asked. Marie-Josèphe accepts those conditions and her help. Their embrace accompanies a practical renegotiation: affection remains, but it no longer authorizes one person to command the other.

This arrangement makes autonomy more specific than a declaration of good will. Odelette sets limits on how long she will stay, identifies an independent economic aim, and distinguishes service from assistance freely offered. Her choice to help Marie-Josèphe does not cancel her refusal to be a servant. The friendship can continue precisely because its terms are no longer presumed to follow from ownership. Her freedom is expressed not as separation alone but as authority over the conditions of continued closeness.

The limits of a promise

The episode with Haleed makes the gap between emancipation and its recognition still more explicit. Marie-Josèphe says she has freed Haleed and adopted her as a sister. Yves objects that Haleed is their only possession of value and insists that Marie-Josèphe must wait until she is of age, five years later, before freeing her. Marie-Josèphe answers that she has given Haleed her word and that Haleed is free. Yves refuses to sign papers confirming that status, while insisting that they cannot live at court without a servant.

The disagreement is not resolved by Marie-Josèphe’s conviction alone. She asserts the moral authority to free someone she considers hers to free, but Yves’s refusal to document the decision leaves a practical and institutional obstacle in place. His appeal to their need for a servant also shows how household dependence can be used to preserve the very relation Marie-Josèphe is trying to end. The text therefore distinguishes a personal promise from the public acknowledgment that might give it force. Haleed is named a sister, but the evidence also records the refusal of formal papers and the continuing demand for domestic service.

Captivity, display, and dignity

The Sea Woman’s captivity presents a more absolute limit. Marie-Josèphe tells her she cannot free her: the sea is too far away, even the river is too distant, she belongs to Louis XIV, and her escape would ruin Yves de la Croix. These are different kinds of constraint gathered into one explanation: distance, royal possession, and the consequences for a family member. The Sea Woman responds angrily and throws herself into the Fountain of Apollo. Marie-Josèphe grieves, but her sympathy cannot alter the conditions she has just described.

That confinement is also made public. Visitors file along the Green Carpet, crowd around the Fountain of Apollo, and applaud the Sea Woman. Marie-Josèphe thinks the captive should not be displayed like an animal in the Menagerie and recognizes her own responsibility: she taught the tricks that visitors now applaud. Yet she has no authority to close the tent. The contrast between the crowd’s entertainment and Marie-Josèphe’s recognition of the Sea Woman’s dignity shows how captivity can turn a person into a spectacle, even when an individual caretaker objects. Across these episodes, autonomy depends on more than affection or moral intent; it is limited by ownership, economic need, formal authority, distance, and the power to control another person’s public treatment.