The brothers Georges and Jacques, light-skinned mulattos and main characters of Dumas’s novel "Georges", have very different points of view about the impact race has on their lives. Georges is more idealistic and tries to act against racial prejudice and to defeat it by conquering the love of a white woman and by heading the slaves’ revolt in Saint-Maurice. His brother Jacques is less romantic and more pragmatic, and decides to embark on the pirate ship Calypso first, and then to take part in the slave trade. His passion for the life at sea and for sailing will lead him to die with his ship because he completely identifies with it and cannot even imagine to leave it and save his life. "Georges" has much in common with "Paul and Virginie", a sentimental novel written by Bernardin de Saint Pierre at the end of the 17th Century and equally set in Saint-Maurice: both are divided in three parts (the island, the sea and the French mainland) and both give a great importance to the symbolic value of the journey, although this symbol is quite ambiguous in Dumas.
The negated utopia, the ambiguity of vessels’ roles, the distinction and the opposition between legal and clandestine ships – all this elements demonstrate that the adoption of a ‘roman marin’ is a literary choice made in order to represent the racial confrontation in an alternative way.
