New Orleans Coffee in The Awakening : The Legacy of Rose Nicaud
2022; University of Illinois Press; Volume: 55; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
10.5406/19405103.55.1.04
ISSN1940-5103
Autores Tópico(s)Race, History, and American Society
ResumoNear the conclusion of Kate Chopin's novel The Awakening (1899), Edna Pontellier dines contentedly at a New Orleans café: There was a garden out in the suburbs; a small, leafy corner, with a few green tables under the orange trees. An old cat slept all day on the stone step in the sun, and an old mulatresse slept her idle hours away in her chair at the open window, till someone happened to knock on one of the green tables. She had milk and cream cheese to sell, and bread and butter. There was no one who could make such excellent coffee or fry a chicken so golden brown as she.1Edna is absent from this brief scene that appears at an important juncture in the novel. Instead, Chopin focuses on Catiche, the proprietor and cook at a particular New Orleans café. Catiche is described impressionistically: her gender, race, and age are referenced in few words. Instead, words like “leafy,” “green,” “orange trees,” and “garden” give an idyllic sense to the café. The term “mulatresse,” furthermore, is placed in italics, emphasizing the fact that this is not a normal descriptor—Catiche is not a typical businesswoman. She is a woman of color who runs a small but successful café. Color is used again in describing Catiche's fried chicken, which is “golden brown.” Finally the “excellent” coffee is described as well, adding to the significance of Catiche's café. This is a space for quality food and coffee, consumed leisurely. Edna is described as visiting Catiche's “often,” “sometimes taking a book with her” or “stroking the cat” (989). Chopin shows a late-nineteenth century iteration of New Orleans’ famed café culture in this scene, one that I will argue is figured as a subversive site, not just in the city, but in Chopin's novel as well.Here and elsewhere in the The Awakening, certain food and beverages—coffee in particular—are presented in ways that seem to question the understood power dynamics between gender, race, and class. Over the course of the novel, Edna goes through a series of awakenings, as a wife, lover, mother, artist, and woman, but this scene in a New Orleans café depicts one of her happiest moments—where she seems to have become the true “solitary soul” of Chopin's original title.2 Chopin spends most of her time in The Awakening describing Edna's development from a traditional member of her class and social standing to a modern woman. At the same time, though, the “great unexamined story” of The Awakening, as Elizabeth Ammons argues, is that of the women of color seen working throughout the novel, largely in the background. These women allow Edna to seek her enlightenment, yet their own stories remain largely unexplored. However, these seemingly unnoticed characters who play the “white wom[a]n's guides and mentors” are also independent, competent actors apart from Edna.3 I examine the roles of these women of color who prepare Edna's coffee—that great awakener—to show their importance to the history of coffee culture in New Orleans and in The Awakening. New Orleans is famous for its cuisine, and coffee is a major element of that. Importantly, the women of color who prepare coffee are described in terms of their professions and as representations of a major part of New Orleans culinary culture. Chopin provides glimpses of characters like Catiche, Celestine, the Grand Isle cook, and even the Acadian Madame Antoine as they prepare Edna's coffee. Chopin, intentionally or not, shows their valuable contributions to New Orleans culinary culture throughout The Awakening.The history of New Orleans’ café culture, and the association of the Crescent City with coffee, therefore adds nuance to this late scene in The Awakening. Catiche can be read as an example of Les Vendeuses, businesswomen of color who established and maintained New Orleans coffee stands and casual eateries throughout the nineteenth century, following the example of Rose Nicaud. (Figure 1.) Though little is known historically about her, Nicaud fits Ammons’ description of a woman who has discovered independence through her work. In the early-nineteenth century, Nicaud, realizing that people going to the market or church in the morning would appreciate a beverage that was a stimulant, such as coffee, rather than a depressant like alcohol, established a coffee cart next to the St. Louis Cathedral and the French Quarter market.4 As her business grew, Nicaud was able to obtain a permanent, rather than portable, coffee establishment, and she could thus offer seating to customers—making her coffee stand into a café.5 Nicaud modeled a successful enterprise for other antebellum women of color, who set up similar coffee establishments around New Orleans. Soon Les Vendeuses were selling cheap meals with their coffee—including breakfasts of doughnuts and French bread for ten cents or larger meals including meat and vegetables for fifteen cents. Nicaud appears in early histories of New Orleans cuisine as well. For example, Catherine Cole's The Story of the Old French Market, a pamphlet published by the New Orleans Coffee Company in 1916, discusses “Old Rose” or Rose Nicaud, who “kept the most famous coffee stall of the old French Market.”6 In New Orleans Cuisine (2009), Sharon Stallworth Nossiter writes, “A monument to Rose Nicaud exists today only in the form of a coffeehouse in the Faubourg Marigny that bears her name.”7 Perhaps a more lasting tribute to her legacy, the iconic Café du Monde, was established in 1862, roughly half a century after Nicaud is believed to have first set up her coffee stand, and it continues to dominate from its central location at the French Market—across Jackson Square from St. Louis Cathedral—in the shadow of Nicaud's original coffee cart.Coffee is linked to Chopin's theme of awakening and independence through its rich associations with egalitarianism, community, and revolution, moreover. Historically, the coffee whose beans famously originated among Kaldi's feisty goats in modern-day Ethiopia and whose rich beverage entered the world via Yemen, led to the revolutionary politics of Europe and North America. Coffee, indeed, fueled the Enlightenment period, giving Europeans a stimulating beverage that helped encourage discussion of philosophy and politics, rather than the alcoholic beverages that had been the previous norm.8 In this way coffee was an impetus in bringing about the American and French Revolutions. While French revolutionaries met at the Café de Procope, coffee's effects were felt in what would become the United States, as well; Daniel Webster called Boston's Green Dragon coffee shop and tavern “the headquarters of the Revolution.”9 Coffee's French, as opposed to British, influence was a noticeable legacy of the Boston Tea Party, and its influence on U.S. culture lasted following the Revolutionary War. By the end of the nineteenth century, the era in which The Awakening is set and written, the United States accounted for almost half of the world's total coffee consumption.10The irony of the egalitarianism of the coffee drinking community during the European Enlightenment period is that it coincided with the kidnapping and enslavement of vast numbers of Africans, who were brought to the Americas—mostly the U.S. South and the Caribbean—to labor on coffee plantations. Mark Pendergrast notes, “The coffee, therefore, that fueled . . . [the Enlightenment] was produced by the most inhuman form of coerced labor.”11 An African diaspora has been a major element in the global coffee trade since at least 1723, when French naval officer Gabriel Mathieu de Clieu transported a coffee plant to the Caribbean island of Martinique, beginning the empire of coffee.12 The Haitian Revolution of 1791 joined the late eighteenth-century national revolutions—though this one was also a successful slave rebellion. It was also connected to coffee, though in a different way than the American or French Revolutions. The Haitian Revolution greatly reduced the production of San Domingo coffee—which by 1788 had been producing half of the total quantity of coffee beans in the world.13 As a consequence, the French under Napoleon turned to chicory-augmented coffee—chicory being an endive that grew naturally in France, an example of scarcity in economics as well as cuisine. The French developed a taste for this variety of the beverage, and soon the culinary trend spread to the Creole French of New Orleans, where chicory coffee became a regional specialty by the early 1800s. This culinary outcome of the Haitian Revolution has remained a prominent element of New Orleans coffee culture. In The Awakening, this connection between an African diaspora and the history of coffee in the Americas in general and New Orleans in particular is seen in the women of color who Edna encounters as servants and servers who seem at first merely to support her awakening process, but who also subvert her white privilege in the book, showing other forms of independence.14 The character of Catiche shows this paradox most clearly; she is a powerful example of a businesswoman of color who impacts the racial, cultural, and economic dynamics of New Orleans, an impact that continues to be felt into the twenty-first century.15While Catiche is her most powerful example of an independent café owner, Chopin's New Orleans and Grand Isle-based novel contains numerous examples of women of color who prepare coffee for the novel's main characters. Anna Shannon Elfenbein notes Edna's narcissism regarding the women of color in the story; however, Chopin's perhaps unintentional allusion to Les Vendeuses demonstrates her (and by extension Edna's) acknowledgment of their importance to New Orleans culture.16 Indeed, Edna's entire relationship with Robert Lebrun—her beloved, though not her husband—takes place over cups of coffee. The two, for example, are seen having breakfast together on the day of their visit to the Chênière Caminada: “They went together back to the kitchen to drink coffee. There was no time to wait for any nicety of service. They stood outside the window and the cook passed them their coffee and a roll, which they drank and ate from the window-sill. Edna said it tasted good” (914). The unnamed woman who serves Edna and Robert their coffee and roll is a domestic worker at the Grand Isle establishment where Edna spends the summer with her family. This woman's placement complicates the casual scene, with elements of gender (this becomes a sign of Edna's departure from gender stereotypes), race (the cook is presumably a woman of color), and class (eating in the kitchen without “nicety of service”), making the dynamic more complex than merely a point on the trajectory of the lovers’ relationship. Instead, following Michelle Birnbaum's reading of the “colonization of race” involved in Edna's awakening, the cook introduces another kind of character into the novel, as much a foil for Edna as the young lovers or the lady in black, a skilled artisan who contributes tangibly to the community in a way that Edna—because of her class and race—is removed from.17In another early part of the novel, at the moment of not only a literal but symbolic awakening, Edna has an idyllic picnic with Robert. He has been waiting for her while she napped, and has taken care to keep the food he has prepared for her fresh, “dripping the coffee anew and sharing it with her.” They eat and drink together at the end of what has become for Edna one of her perfect moments. Having been told that she has slept a hundred years, the stimulation of coffee is more symbolic than ever. Edna is no longer sipping, but rather “draining her glass” of coffee just as she had her wine (919). At this point, Madame Antoine, an Acadian and the original preparer of the food and drink in this scene, comes to sit beside them and tell stories, “And what stories she told them!” (920). Madame Antoine engages in a kind of gift economy with her guests through her preparation of food and drink—her payment becomes their companionship for the evening. In this scene, Madame Antoine seems more liberated than Edna—representing the independence, peace, and fulfillment that Edna comes to recognize she lacks. Madame Antoine is marked as Acadian, of a different class and ethnicity to Edna's adopted Creole culture, and as such she becomes part of Chopin's narrative of the women, “othered” racially or ethnically, who prepare Edna's coffee for various forms of reimbursement. The cook was a domestic laborer; Madame Antoine participates in a gift-based exchange, bartering food, wine, and coffee, in return for an opportunity to share her stories. These “othered” women in the novel, in fact, grow increasingly independent in their own economic status as Edna's character experiences her awakening.18This theme of coffee preparation occurs in one other scene before the climactic moment at Catiche's café. Shortly after moving to the pigeon house, Edna invites Robert—newly returned from Mexico—to dinner. This visit is not a success and the two are unable to return to the familiarity of their time together on Grand Isle the previous summer. Edna shows her nervous animation at the prospect of finally being reunited with her beloved as she tells Celestine, her African American maid, to “set an extra place. She even sent her off in search of some added delicacy which she had not thought of for herself. And she recommended great care in dripping the coffee and having the omelet done to a proper turn” (983). In this case, the woman who prepares the coffee is a domestic servant rather than a public businesswoman, comparable to the cook in the earlier scene. Though she does not represent the independence seen with Catiche, Celestine's presence is felt meaningfully as well. Her responsibility for the preparation of coffee puts her in a key place in the plot. Though Edna leaves Robert only for a moment, and entirely in his interest, this is long enough to allow him to find a picture of Edna's lover Alcée Arobin lying on a table. Robert conjectures from the picture that Edna has been seeing the other man, and he grows jealous. This discomfort continues following dinner, after Robert leaves to buy cigarette papers. By that point, “Celestine had [already] served the black coffee in the parlor” (984). In the language of coffee, this is poor timing. By the time both Edna and Robert are ready for their after-dinner beverage, the coffee would already have been cold. In terms of their relationship, cold coffee is cold comfort. Following this slip and his earlier feelings of jealousy, Robert then makes Edna jealous in turn. He pulls out an elaborately decorated tobacco pouch to roll his cigarette, and the two have a fraught discussion of the woman in Vera Cruz who made him that pouch.19 This failed evening is made complete by the appearance of Arobin himself, and Robert leaves shortly thereafter, any attempt at returning to their previous relationship having been made impossible. Unlike the scene at Chênière Caminada, and both the unnamed cook and Madame Antoine who gave them coffee at the beginning and conclusion of their day together, the coffee preparation here is not right: the timing is off, the coffee is not warm, and an opportunity to develop their relationship is lost. While making quality coffee is expected as part of Celestine's work in general, it is not her expertise. This becomes clear when her coffee is not of the quality of the cook's earlier or Catiche's, women who are more directly connected to the preparation of coffee in particular. Race and gender hierarchies remain pronounced in this scene. Even though Edna has tried to escape her social routine and oppressive marriage by moving into the pigeon house, she has recreated the gendered and racialized hierarchies of the domestic space, and they are discordant with her awakening values. Celestine's subservient role in this failed attempt at reconciliation, then, makes an interesting contrast to the last coffee-coded scene at Catiche's café a few days later.Catiche's café is the site of Edna and Robert's final rendezvous, though neither is aware of it at the time. Catiche, a businesswoman of color, prepares the best coffee in the novel—excellent enough to sustain a thriving business that creates a public, neutral ground on which Edna and Robert can meet. First, Edna notices Robert approaching and welcomes him, commenting, “I almost live here” (989). He replies, “I used to drop in very often for a cup of Catiche's good coffee. This is the first time since I came back.” Edna grows ebullient in the combination of seeing Robert and drinking excellent coffee—a symbolic return to their original day together: “Isn't this a delightful place?” she asks. She then presents one of her most profound declarations about women during this scene. “It's so out of the way; and a good walk from the car. However, I don't mind walking. I always feel so sorry for women who don't like to walk; they miss so much—so many rare little glimpses of life; and we women learn so little of life on the whole” (990). The egalitarian element of café culture in New Orleans has provided Edna with the opportunity to see her beloved; it also allows her a chance to develop her thoughts about her own independence more deeply, hearkening back perhaps to the French cafes of the era leading up to the French Revolution. Edna continues, “Catiche's coffee is always hot. I don't know how she manages it, here in the open air. Celestine's coffee gets cold bringing it from the kitchen to the dining-room” (990–91). While their conversation is coded in descriptions of coffee, as opposed to their true feelings or intentions, it is worth noting that independent, successful Catiche, who defies social conventions, is acknowledged as superior to the more conventional Celestine. In this scene, Edna purchases the coffee and the meal directly, an exchange that is to some extent more equal than her employment of Celestine's domestic services. Furthermore, Edna compliments Catiche more than any other figure who serves her coffee in the novel—even the “good” coffee of the early scene on Grand Isle. When she notes that Catiche's coffee is always “hot” and the place “delightful,” Chopin shows that Edna values Catiche's work.Coffee consumption, and New Orleans café culture, are part of the importance of food and drink in The Awakening. Diane McGee notes, for example, that the novel is “structured by a series of meals” that frame the issue of feminism around the turn of the twentieth century.20 Characters turn to specific consumables to establish their status in a sophisticated power dynamic based on gender, race, and class. Susan Gilbert calls food and drink among the “major leitmotifs of the work,” along with houses, clothing, and jewelry.21 The role that food studies plays in literature, moreover, has been richly discussed in theory. Food is “a system of communication, a body of images, a protocol of usages, situations, and behavior” for Roland Barthes, who adds that literature is “a veritable grammar of foods.”22 Carolyn Korsmeyer notes that “gustatory semantics” are as well represented in the narrative arts—if not more so—as they are in other fields, such as the visual arts.23 Narrative forms are particularly suited to representing scenes of dining, as both are drawn-out events.In addition, Chopin follows established traditions encoded in the U.S. South and in U.S. literature more broadly as she conflates raced bodies with the preparation of food and drink throughout The Awakening. As Kyla Wazana Tompkins argues, “eating is central to the performative production of raced and gendered bodies in the nineteenth century,” and I would add producing coffee to this consideration.24 Erica Fretwell discusses the use of “Lost Cause myths” in the preparation of specific kinds of foods and beverages by African American women, noting what would become known as the Aunt Jemima Code, a white cultural belief in the “gastronomic value of black culinary artlessness.”25 In my analysis of Catiche, I would argue rather that Chopin shows a woman artful in her skills, creating her own business. Leslie Petty adds that “African American women were often the sole breadwinners—predominantly as domestic laborers and in other service professions” due to the racism that prevented African American men from finding work.26 This aligns with the roles of the women of color throughout The Awakening. My argument, though, allows Catiche to remain a useful example of a, perhaps modified, successful businesswoman of color. Using food studies allows the reader to see that those who serve Edna's coffee are playing multiple significant parts in Chopin's novel. A beverage—especially one as historically rich as coffee—engages in the production of gender, race, and class, and this is particularly noticeable in a novel where these themes are foregrounded.That Catiche could be based on a real person, who could then be connected to a legacy of New Orleans businesswomen of color, aligns with Chopin's form of literary regionalism. In 1874, Chopin moved with her husband Oscar to the Garden District of New Orleans on the 1400 block of Louisiana Avenue. She traced in life the path that would later be occupied by her character, Edna. Per Seyersted writes, “Like Whitman, she loved to ride on streetcars and observe people. . . . She must have gathered a wealth of impressions as her intense curiosity about life spurred her to roam through the picturesque and cosmopolitan city.”27 Chopin provides a superb regional example of the flavor of New Orleans through Catiche's coffee, following the standard set by her lived experiences and impressions as well as historical figures like Rose Nicaud. In fact, Catiche is French for “holt,” an archaic English word meaning “wood or grove” and potentially representative of the garden in which Catiche's café is set.28 Catiche's name therefore alludes to “Rose” Nicaud and the connection of the two figures is strengthened by their very names. These women of color prepared excellent coffee and food for generations of New Orleans residents, and Chopin—intentionally or not—underscores this history in her novel of awakening. Through the consumption of coffee, Edna and the other characters tell a gendered, raced, and classed narrative of the Crescent City. George Lipsitz observes, “New Orleans is a special place. People all over the world revere it as a significant center of the African diaspora,” whose influence on the Crescent City can be seen through music, food, religion, and, I would add, business styles through examples like Rose Nicaud.29 Indeed, it might be argued that while Edna seeks—and ultimately fails to find—true independence, Catiche has succeeded as part of the iconic New Orleans café culture. What might be said, then, about other figures in The Awakening, the women of color who care for Edna's children and do her shopping and cleaning, and how do their stories add to the richness of New Orleans’ history? These stories of “becoming” continue Toni Morrison's 1992 challenge that canonical U.S. literature not continue to ignore the presence of U.S. Americans of color, a useful reminder as we continue to study The Awakening and other stories of New Orleans in the twenty-first century.30
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