Gallery
By Yazdan Mahmoudi
General Context
Gallery or “Galilee,” comes from the front porches on 13th century Palestinian churches encountered by the Crusaders. It also refers to 18th century French colonial architecture of the West Indies and Louisiana: an open porch or veranda running the length of the facade of a building. It was roughly similar to the être of eastern French farmhouses typical of Bresse, but of separate derivation (Edwards and Verton 2004: 105-106). The first known citation to a Creole-style gallery in Louisiana is August 31, 1704, by Nicolas de la Salle in reference to the full-length porch of a military building constructed at Mobile: “A house sixty-eight pieds long by sixteen wide of one story of dressed timber laid pièce-surpièce with a roof of framework covered with shingles and a galerie from one end to the other on the side of the river” (Rowland et al. 1984:18–9)
Connection to Novel
In Of Love and Dust, there are two kinds of galleries; the dilapidated porch on workers' cabins, like Marcus’s, and the more impressive gallery on Marshall Hebert’s big house, serve to underscore the radical social and power split in the Southern plantation configuration. The cabin gallery is limited in space and function, serving as a communal area where laborers rest or converse as in Chapter Nine: “When I came home I saw Marcus laying on the gallery” (37). The cabin symbolizes, through its very scant dimensions, the marginal status and lack of agency of their occupants. It offers no privacy, no freedom from the watchful eye of plantation authorities. In contrast, the big house gallery is much larger, ornate, and a symbol of power and privilege. This is a space that is used for exclusivity and leisure as in Chapter Fifteen: Bishop “went out on the front gallery and looked out for Marshall like Bonbon told him to do” (56). Both represent the very rigid social hierarchy, whereby the cabin gallery symbolizes oppression and poverty, while the big house gallery reinforces dominance and a more luxurious life.