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CLA JOURNAL 363 Performing Race Relations in a French Children’s Drama: Subjugation and Control of the Body in Vanderburch’s Séliko, ou Le Petit Nègre (1824) Barbara T. Cooper Whites and Blacks, we are all brothers. / Traveling but a moment [on the earth], let us at least walk in peace; / Our path is hard enough / Without throwing stones at one another… (Vanderburch 217).1 Émile Vanderburch’s drama Séliko, ou Le Petit Nègre (Séliko or the Little Black Boy) was first performed at the Théâtre de M. Comte in Paris on 19 August 1824 and continued to be staged by that theater’s company of child actors well into 1827.2 The timing of Séliko’s premiere suggests that Vanderburch hoped his work might benefit from the interest generated by Madame de Duras’ widely read novella of 1824, Ourika, and the plays derived from it, especially Mélesville and Carmouche’s Ourika, ou La Petite Négresse (Théâtre des Variétés, 25 March 1824) whose subtitle it echoes.3 That said, Mélesville and Carmouche’s drama was composed for an adult audience familiar with Duras’ narrative and rehearses, in line with theatrical norms, the story of a young Senegalese woman raised in an aristocratic French family but excluded from society once she reaches marriageable age.Vanderburch’s one-act piece,written for children between the ages of seven and nine, portrays relations between blacks and whites in France in a rather different social,economic,and political context and seeks to promote some measure of racial understandingandsympathyinthemindsandheartsof itsaudience.Consequently, while Séliko, like Ourika and its dramatized progeny, highlights the oddity of a black body in white, metropolitan French spaces and signals the reality of slave trading and the negative effects of child“gifting,”4 Vanderburch’s play eliminates all 1  This is the epigraph to Séliko. The first line in the epigraph is borrowed in slightly modified form from Vastey (112); the rest (from “let us” to the end) is taken from Florian’s “Le Bon Homme et le trésor,” Fables (70). All translations in this essay are my own. 2  The text of this play was first published in 1825. A second edition was printed in 1838. The play was published again in 1841. These multiple editions suggest that even after the drama ceased to be performed, it remained popular with the parents and teachers of young readers. I shall be quoting from the 1825 edition. 3  On the Ourika phenomenon, see Chalaye “Printemps” and Les Ourika (vii-xxxv). See, too, Cooper “Staging.” In a brief preface to a translation of Duras’ text, the editors of The London Literary Gazette signal “Ourika-mania” as being rampant in Paris in May 1824 (321). 4  Relatively small numbers of people of color lived in metropolitan France at this time. There was, however, a long tradition in both life and art of young black children living in some aristocratic or affluent French households as status symbols and servants. See Peabody, Boulle, and Schreier “A Toy.” 364 CLA JOURNAL Barbara T. Cooper reference to the socially disruptive and erotic potential of black bodies. In further contrast to Ourika, whose titular character acquires refined intellectual and social skills in her “adoptive” home, in Vanderburch’s piece Séliko is presented as an uneducated child of nature whose innate goodness and generosity are instinctive qualities uncorrupted by civilization. This Rousseauian ideal of natural goodness, underscored by Séliko’s repeated links to birds, butterflies, and trees, is also tied to the physical abilities and courage the boy displays in the play’s final moments. In choosing to represent Séliko as a young boy, Vanderburch brings his character into age alignment with the children who frequented the Théâtre de M. Comte.5 The playwright also modifies the circumstances of Séliko’s life, placing his protagonist in situations his youthful public might recognize from their own experiences.Vanderburch does not, however, seek to erase Séliko’s racial difference, outsider status, commodification, or punishment. Rather, he uses the African-born child’s presence in a wealthy French family in the hope...

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