Filles à la cassette

I'm reading George Washington Cable's The Grandissimes for the first time and am just a few chapters into it.  Already, I've been surprised by a few things that are more unfamiliar to me than I expected, like the term "fille à la cassette," since it is used in the book as if it was a well-known and widely used term in 19th century Louisiana.  I've never heard of it before now!

A "fille à la cassette" is a woman who was brought to Louisiana from France strictly for the purpose of marriage because there were many creole and cajun men who were running after women of color even though interracial marriage was illegal.  Apparently, these "filles à la cassette" were originally taken from off of the streets of Paris, brothels, etc...and although history is certainly vague on the point (as it so often is), I suspect that these women were not so much invited to Louisiana as they were forced to go.  At any rate, it seems that many young women were also taken from Catholic convents as well.  Aha, Bingo!  Trés interessante!  

What makes this a fascinating point to me is that I never did quite understand the enormous Ursuline presence in New Orleans.  Now it is all coming together.  A few weeks ago in the French course while we were talking about Moliére's play, Les Précieuses ridicules, the professor was explaining that in the late 16th century a widespread phenomenon of conspicuous consumption was beginning to be a problem (and lasted for a long time) among the French nobility, which led to an increase in significant indebtedness.  Exacerbating the issue of diminishing wealth was the fact that families with female heirs of marrying age were at risk of causing the family to fall further into debt because of the large amount of money and pieces of property required for their dowries.  What was a wealthy nobleman to do?!  

Enter the Catholic order of the Ursulines, whose convents were no longer just safe havens for orphaned and poor girls.  These convents also became safe havens for indebted nobility to preserve their fortunes as families of the nobility started sending their adolescent daughters into Ursuline convents--ultimately forcing them to take religious vows and preventing them from getting married--so that the family could maintain their property and manage their debts.  The amount that one paid to the convent was significantly less than one would pay in a dowry.

This form of forced imprisonment led to all sorts of mayhem in the convents as women were confined there (who most certainly did not have a vocational calling or will to become a religious), including rampant supposed episodes of demon possession.  Focusing back on Louisiana, this trend of circulating young women in and out of the marriage market at the will of men in power was something that extended to the colonies, and the Ursuline order was at the center of it.  They were one of the biggest sources of "filles à la cassette" in Louisiana and a much more efficient pipeline than plucking women from the streets of Paris.  It's a fascinating history of women's history that I definitely did not learn about in 8th grade Louisiana history.  

So, now I must decide whether this is a topic that I might introduce in my discussion section or if this is a bit too tangential and far outside of the scope of the discussion?  Maybe I will keep it as my "get out of silence" card if discussion on The Grandissimes isn't happening as readily as it should.