Secret History; Or, the Horrors of Women Abuse in St. Domingo Leonora Sansay’s Secret History; or the Horrors of St. Domingo is a novel about race during the Haitian Revolution between 1791 and 1804. Sansay introduces one of the central characters named Clara, a flirtatious American woman whose friendship with a metropolitan French general caused her wealthy planter husband to unleash his anger and jealousy. Through Clara’s grief and violence the author shows how women suffered during the revolution, and the white Creole society’s domination by the French Colonials. In this essay, I will explore Sansay’s portrayals of a society dominated by slavery, racial prejudice, power struggles, and chaos, where violence against women did not discriminate.
