This Critical Edition of the “Memoir of Zulma Marache” consists of three parts.

1. The Critical Introduction positions the text in its literary, legal, and journalistic contexts and attempts to answer questions about its genre, authorship, origins and authenticity.

Critical Introduction

The “Memoir” as True and Verifiable

Authorship, Origins, and Authenticity of the “Memoir”

The “Memoir” as Hybrid Text

The “Memoir” in the New York Herald

Works Cited

The “Memoir of Zulma Marache” appeared in the New York Herald on March 27, 1844. The Herald’s readers would have known that Zulma Marache was the young French woman who had, one week before, testified against three parties accused of procuring her February 14, 1843 abortion. Marache’s story was not unique. Throughout the early 1840s, the Herald routinely covered similar stories of seduction, forced abortion, and abandonment. What was unique, however, was the promise of hearing a victim’s story “in her own words…from her own manuscript” (“Sunday”).

The Herald’s editors, in short, were aware of the promise and power of the “I,” of first-person, eyewitness narratives. Take, for example, the title: the “Memoir of Zulma Marache.” It indicates for readers that they can expect certain generic conventions and that Marache told her story for her own purposes, pen lingering over the paper as she recounted her experiences. The term “memoir” implies a certain deliberateness and agency. Based on the title readers might believe that the “Memoir” was original and autonomous and accept the Herald’s claims. I was, initially one such reader. I eagerly clung to the “Memoir of Zulma Marache” as a first and only—the first and only direct account of a woman’s seduction and abortion among a number of similar stories that had been mediated and shaped by lawyers, journalists, and doctors to serve their own political and professional ends.1

Yet, the promise of the “I” was and remains perilous, as a long history of fictionalized or semi-true memoirs including John Cleland’s The Memoirs of Fanny Hill (1748) and James Frey’s controversial A Million Pieces (2003) illustrate. There’s little evidence regarding how readers in 1844 responded to the “Memoir,” but today’s twenty-first century readers might understandably greet the Herald’s claims regarding the “Memoir” with skepticism. They might note, as I eventually did, that the Herald’s announcement that the “Memoir” was “written by herself” conflicted with its occasional slips from the first-person “I” to a third-person “she.” They might observe, along with historian Brooke Lansing Mai, that it is unlikely that an impoverished immigrant woman would be “allowed to pen her own narrative while detained in the city prison” or question, as does historian Nicholas L. Syrett, Marache’s motives and truthfulness in writing and publishing the “Memoir” at all (Mai 315; Syrett, 90-91).

Such questions are understandable, and familiar to literary scholars who engage in the work of literary recovery. The term literary recovery means making more widely available texts that have been neglected, unknown, or understudied. Recovery work has been crucial for broadening understandings of American literature and history, and particularly for more accurately representing the lives and cultural contributions of marginalized and oppressed populations (Fielder 18). But such work is also fraught with questions, as scholars who have struggled to justify the investment in time and resources of unknown authors and texts can attest.

I am thinking, for instance, of first-person slave narratives and criminal confession narratives, both popular antebellum genres showcasing the stories of people who were usually disempowered, illiterate, and poor. They feature compelling, spectacular tales. Sometimes, such stories are eagerly accepted, but more often their authenticity and origins are greeted skeptically. Questions abound. Is an eyewitness account really the alleged author’s alone? Is it co-authored? Fabricated entirely? Can a purportedly first-person narrative’s origins be proved? Is a document claiming to be a memoir really a “memoir”?

I am thinking, in other words, of the “Memoir of Zulma Marache.” As I’ve developed this critical introduction to the “Memoir” I’ve chosen to follow thephilosophical lead of scholars who stress the dangers of assumptions and presumptions; who caution against overdetermining authorship and genre over what literary scholar Rafia Zafar refers to as the “author-ity” of a text (620); and who seek to untangle the core truths from the swirls of (re)mediation that threaten to erase and further devalue voices that scholarly paradigms and elite historical archives have muted or deemed unworthy.2 In sum, in what follows, I aim to demonstrate:

The “Memoir" as True and Verifiable

The “Memoir of Zulma Marache” appeared in the March 27, 1844 issue of the New York Herald, in French and in English translation. It followed the Herald’s coverage of an abortion trial in which Marache testified against her former fiancé, Napoleon Loreaux; neighbor Catharine Guetal; and abortionist Madame Costello, and provided a dramatic end point to its coverage of trial proceedings. The “Memoir” covers the 10 months between July 1842, when Loreaux began courting Marache, and May 1843, when Marache tells her mother about the abortion. Its depiction of intimate partner violence, nosy neighbors, suspicious mothers and—especially—specific details of Marache’s interactions with the “female physician” Madame Costello and the abortion procedure itself—make for engaging reading. But is it true?

District Attorney James R. Whiting claimed it was when he referred to the “truth of this history” in his closing arguments against Loreaux, Guetal, and Costello. In his summation of the case, he pointed to the prosecution’s powerful use of evidence to depict Marache as a victim and the defendants as her wrongdoers. A similar accumulation of evidence—including police watch records, District Attorney indictments, and accounts from several newspapers—makes it possible to verify and contextualize the broad outline of events recounted in the “Memoir.” The array of available sources paint a more expansive picture than the “Memoir,” offering context and revealing a story of Marache navigating domestic pressures and a complicated legal landscape. Marache’s testimony on the first day of the abortion trial reveals that after Loreaux refused to marry her—and even denied paternity of the child she claimed he forced her to abort—Marache sought justice through a civil suit for breach of contract of marriage in 1843 (“General,” March 21 ). Guetal, whom Marache evidently named in her civil suit, sued Marache for slander. Marache was unable to pay bail and landed in Eldridge Street Jail (“General,” March 21 ). From jail, Marache sent for a lawyer, and gave a statement of her case to Assistant District Attorney Jonas B. Phillips on September 12, 1843. She was released shortly thereafter. The New York City Police Office Watch Returns reveal that on December 1, 1843, Marache went to the police with her mother Constance to report her February 1843 abortion. Her complaint specifically identified Loreaux, Guetal, and Costello as the offenders (Complaint).

On December 1, 1843 Zulma Marache re-swore the statement that she’d given on September 12, 1843 (Complaint). On December 3, 1843, the Herald reported that all three parties had been arrested and freed on bail (“City”). The Franco-American newspaper, the Courrier des Ètats-Unis, reported a similar story two days later (“Chronique”). The Herald’s December 12, 1843 issue offers further documentation of the facts of the events. It printed Napoleon Loreaux’s affidavit protesting his innocence. It also printed a similar statement by Dr. John Abeille, who had been implicated in the case as having sold Loreaux medicines intended to induce miscarriage (“To the Public”). The District Attorney’s office filed charges against Loreaux, Guetal, and Costello on December 18, 1843 (People). In sum, there is plenty of evidence from numerous sources regarding the broad outlines of Zulma Marache’s story.

Authorship, Origins, and Authenticity of the “Memoir”

While the “truth” of the events Marache recounts in the “Memoir” can be verified, its authorship, origins, and authenticity are knottier threads to untangle. This is for two reasons. The first is that there are missing sources or knowledge gaps that I’ve been unable to fill. The second has to do with critical frameworks and assumptions that can bias or limit a person’s approach to the sources at hand.

The Herald’s promotion of the “Memoir” offers one example that illustrates both challenges. On March 23, 1844, the Herald promised a “singular and extraordinary memoir, written by [Zulma Marache] herself in French, which she gave to the District Attorney, as a statement of her case” (“Sunday”). It claimed, in other words, that the “Memoir” originated from a statement that Marache authored from prison. Its coverage of the People v. Catharine Costello, alias Maxwell et al., verifies that Marache did author such a statement. She testified on the first day of the trial that after being jailed at Eldridge Street she “wrote out a statement of the facts of this affair” (“General,” March 21). On the final day of the trial, Whiting reminded jurors that Marache had sent for a public officer before that officer sent for Whiting. According to Whiting, she then told him “the story of her wrongs, which she had written out” (“General,” March 24).

Each of above parties—Marache, Whiting, and the Herald as publisher of the “Memoir”—seems to imply a simple manuscript transmission: from Marache’s pen to the page, from the page to Whiting, and then, somehow, to the Herald as the “Memoir.” However, I have not been able to locate such a statement in either French or English. It is possible that it exists and has been lost to history, or that the scholarly serendipity that leads to archival discoveries simply has not occurred.

Another explanation for the missing manuscript has more to do with the questions scholars ask and their stance toward their subjects than the texts themselves. Perhaps I have not found—and never will find— a manuscript because it does not exist as I expect to find it. As Frances Smith Foster observes in an essay about African-American print culture, the “definitions and assumptions with which one begins have a significant influence upon the story one finds” (“Narrative” 735). Readers often approach authors and texts through a highly Westernized view that prioritizes written texts over oral texts and prizes individual authorship, intent, and originality as evidence of literary value.

A salient example of how questions and expectations inform an understanding of a text is the question of what Marache means when she claims that she had “written out” a “statement” from jail, and come from my own experience grappling with the origins of the “Memoir.” At first glance, her recollection positions her as a subject who performed the act of writing prior to meeting with Whiting. In that reading, the “had” is in the past tense, and such an understanding directs readers to look for a manuscript in her handwriting. Yet, her statement is ambiguous. It contains another possibility: that she relayed her statement to someone who, upon her request, wrote it for her. In this instance, the “had” is the past perfect tense, and it brings another person into the picture. This interpretation points to the existence of a mediated manuscript, one that recounts Marache’s story as told to someone else. If the latter, then the statement given on September 12 and re-sworn on December 1 is a contender for the manuscript the three parties reference.

Remaining open to the possibility that the statement is the text to which Marache, Whiting, and the Herald refer answers the question of the missing manuscript: it’s not missing! It also offers evidence of some (but only some) of the Herald’s claims regarding the origins of the “Memoir.” It is true that it is “in her own words” as a transcription of the oral statement she gave on September 12, 1843 (“General,” March 24). The statement is Marache’s story, but shaped according to questions Phillips would have asked and further guided by generic conventions that translated the “I” into a more objective third-person statement of events.

However, accepting the statement as the source to which the three parties refer does not address the alleged existence of the French manuscript that the Herald promoted and that it claimed as the origins of the “Memoir.” Nor does it account for the obvious differences between the statement, a manuscript and the multiple columns of newsprint that compose the “Memoir.” A 12-point Times New Roman double-spaced transcription of the statement’s 3 ½ handwritten pages (excluding signatures and witness information) comes in at just over 3 pages. By contrast, a 12-point Times New Roman double-spaced transcription of the “Memoir” as it appeared in the Herald comes in at eight pages. In other words, a brief comparison of the very materiality of these two texts show they cannot be the same.

The discrepancy between the statement and the “Memoir” point to more substantial differences in content and style. For example, the statement is direct but relatively barebones. It begins simply with the claim that Marache was “seduced on the sixth day of November 1842.” The “Memoir,” by contrast, begins with information about Marache and Napoleon Loreaux’s courtship, engagement, “connection,” and pregnancy, all of which occurred in the summer and fall of 1842.

The statement, further, is general regarding dates. The phrase “on or about” appears frequently. It also pays only general attention to individuals who were not directly involved in the case. By comparison, the “Memoir” names specific dates and times and a veritable cast of minor characters, including Napoleon Loreaux’s brother, Remy, and Marache’s neighbors Elizabeth Montelila and Henrietta Ponsot, both of whom testified in the People v. Costello.

Most of these differences are more of degree than in kind insofar as they tell the same general verifiable story. Nonetheless, the stylistic contrast raises the most questions regarding the authorship and origins of the “Memoir.” Unlike the statement’s dry and relatively simple narrative, the “Memoir” often reads like a gothic melodrama. At times, it is so self-referential and campy that it is hard to take it seriously. For example, in the “Memoir,” Marache describes her reluctance to take the abortion drugs Loreaux purchased. She reports on a confrontation that they had on December 3, 1842, saying that she said she was “no more disposed” to take them than she had been in a previous conversation. He replies, “Very well, I also will keep my word; I will poison you as sure as I am called Napoleon.” There is a similar moment later, in which dialogue builds narrative tension as Loreaux tries to make Marache drink the medicines. A neighbor emerges on the stairs above them and threatens them in an intimate and dangerous moment:

Scenes like this make it hard to take the “Memoir” seriously as a “true story,” indeed.

The “Memoir" as Hybrid Text

What is one to do with a memoir with such a complicated and confusing genealogy? How does one account for the origins of the “Memoir”?

I argue, at this juncture, that the “Memoir” is a hybrid text, originating from multiple sources and shaped by several voices and hands. In other words, I believe that it is formed from at least two source texts, Marache’s statement and trial testimony that the Herald covered in late March 1844.

The statement and the trial testimony are quite different in terms of their audience, genre, and purpose and how each position Marache as the speaker/subject. The statement, as noted above, is a relatively dry account of the “facts,” translated from first-person to third-person in adherence to the conventions of legal texts. By contrast, Marache’s testimony is in first-person but is not a straightforward account of events. Rather, it was given in person, relayed in court in response to questions that Whiting and defense attorneys asked. It was a kind of performance for those in court, but few witnessed it directly. Most people encountered the testimony second-hand, through the Herald’s “General Sessions” trial columns and through other paper’s coverage of the trial. These columns did not directly transcribe the court’s proceedings but instead were selective. Its reporters and editors condensed and shaped information. They had to consider audience, column space, and taste when determining which details to include and which to omit. The disparity between the Herald’s treatment of the two sides’ closing arguments offers a striking example. The Herald dedicated over three of its six front page columns to Whiting’s closing arguments; by contrast, in its previous issue it covered the defense’s argument in one sentence: “James T. Brady summed up for the defense in a most able and masterly argument, and closed at about 10 o’clock at night” (“General,” March 23).

Despite the differences in rhetorical situation, the statement and trial testimony contain several similar phrases that appear in the “Memoir.” For instance, the statement records that when Marache told Loreaux she was pregnant, he said he would “repair his fault by marrying her” (People). The Herald’s “General Sessions” column reports that in court Marache said, “he was willing to repair it by marrying me” (March 21). The “Memoir” offers another variation: “He said ‘it was nothing, he would make reparation for his fault.’”

Another example that more fully illuminates the shaping hands of others appears in Marache’s explanation of why Loreaux wanted her to terminate her pregnancy and why he was reluctant to marry her before May 1843, the date they’d agreed on before she became pregnant. The statement’s use of third-person calls attention to the generic requirements of the legal document and the presence of a transcriber: Loreaux said “he was determined to kill both her and the child because his position would not permit him to marry” and “if she went her full time he would be obliged to marry before the time he had fixed” (emphasis mine). The Herald reports that after Marache described her opposition to taking medicine to terminate the pregnancy, she claimed “he [Loreaux] said if I would not he would make me or kill me and the child; he said what people would say if we should have a baby before we were married, as he could not marry until May; I said other folks had done so before…” (“General,” March 21, emphasis mine).

The “Memoir” records the same general information, but adds narrative interest by packaging it as a dialogue. For example, in the “Memoir,” Marache claims Loreaux said

Reading the “Memoir” as a hybrid text—originating from multiple sources and shaped by several voices and hands—also accounts for a significant difference between its content and scope and that of the statement. Marache’s statement focuses only on the period between Marache’s alleged November 6, 1842 seduction and Loreaux’s claim to her that he had “disposed of” the fetus the day after Marache miscarried it. It does not mention Marache’s receipt of threatening letters beginning on February 11, 1843 and continuing to May 1843. Nor does it record her confrontations with Costello, Geutal, and Napoleon’s brother, Remy Loreaux, over those letters, or Loreaux’s breaking off the engagement.3

Yet, the prosecution and defense emphasized these elements during the trial, and they are important plotlines in the “Memoir.” There are, as well, details regarding the abortion procedure and Marache’s miscarriage that do not appear in the affidavit or in the Herald’s “General Sessions” column. It is possible that these details were shared during courtroom testimony and omitted. At several points the Herald asserted that it had condensed or edited information for reasons of delicacy.

If we accept that the “Memoir” is a hybrid text, with multiple points of origins and multiple authorial and editorial hands, then two more questions arise: what was Marache’s role in its authorship and publication? And is it really a memoir?

It is unlikely that we will ever be able to determine Marache’s role in writing or producing a memoir that so clearly is her story based on her words but whose own presence in its production is unclear. The historical record at this point is frustratingly hazy, seeming to elide her authorial position and intent entirely. In the essay in which I first presented my research into Zulma Marache and the “Memoir,” I posited that it was “unlikely that Marache considered herself the author of a ‘memoir,’ or even a writer” (Livengood, “‘Her Voice,’” 31). I explored several possible scenarios that envisioned her relationship to the text. Not yet having seen the statement or the legal and police records associated with the case, I accepted the Herald’s claim that the “Memoir” was a reproduction of the statement given from jail. Further, I suggested that it may have “appropriated her legal statement to republish as the ‘Memoir’” (“Her Voice,” 42). But I also suggested that—in the literary tradition of the 18th-century appeal memoir in which “fallen” women defended themselves and exposed their legal and economic disenfranchisement—Marache may have “sought or agreed to” the publication of the “Memoir” as a way of controlling how others viewed her and her story. Nicholas L. Syrett has also suggested (“‘Her Voice,’” 42; Syrett 91).

The inability to determine Marache’s role in writing or authorizing the “Memoir” leads to the question of definitions and whether the “Memoir” can be called a memoir at all. My view regarding whether this “counts” as a memoir has evolved over the years, as I’ve deepened my understanding of memoir and other forms autobiographical forms, as well as learned more about Marache and her life. For those who feel it is imperative to be able to position texts in clear generic categories, I am comfortable with the label of “memoir.” The “Memoir” focuses on true and verifiable events within a certain time frame, and the “I”—although likely interpolated—is not manufactured of out of thin air. Finally, the narrative, language, and the “I” are overall consistent across the three texts, offering a plumbline that runs through the September 12/December 1 1843 statement to the Herald’s trial reporting to the “Memoir” itself.

While I am comfortable classifying the “Memoir” as a memoir, I also agree with scholars Rafia Zafar and G. Thomas Couser who, from different disciplinary perspectives, caution that generic paradigms and categories can be as limiting as they are generative (Zafar 620; Couser 62-64). In other words, thinking too much about what the “Memoir” is, what it “counts” as, threatens to overlook the why and for whom the “Memoir” exists in the first place. The other question that needs to be asked, then, is not about genre or author, but about the source of its publication: the Herald itself.

The “Memoir” in the New York Herald

Works Cited