Solitude

Who is Solitude?

La Mulâtresse Solitude was a Guadeloupean woman who became one of the most celebrated symbols of resistance against slavery in the French Caribbean. Born around 1772 on a Guadeloupean plantation, she was the child of an enslaved African woman and a French sailor, and her light skin led her to be given domestic labor rather than field work. While still young she escaped bondage together with her mother and joined a Maroon community hiding in the island's hills, living free among other escaped men and women. When Napoleon Bonaparte moved in 1802 to reverse the abolition of slavery and sent troops under General Antoine Richepance to reconquer Guadeloupe, Solitude joined the armed insurgency alongside Louis Delgrès and his followers, fighting in the resistance that culminated at the Battle of Matouba on 8 May 1802. Though pregnant, she took up arms and was wounded and captured. French authorities delayed her execution until the day after she gave birth, on 29 November 1802, so that her child would become the property of a slaveholder. Her defiant last words made her an enduring emblem of women's resistance, and a statue honoring her was erected in Les Abymes, Guadeloupe, in 1999.

Sources: Wikipedia, "La Mulâtresse Solitude" · BlackPast.org, "La Mulatresse Solitude (ca 1772-1802)" · Slavery and Remembrance, "Solitude"