Phyllis Wheatley : 18th Century African-American Poet

" It is clear that Wheatley was responding to the attitudes regarding Africans that were then rife in the United States.

The biblical association of Cain with "darkness" and with curse is linked to Christian teachings of the era. Perhaps more significantly, Wheatley (in Reuben 2) draw outs to her reader that "Twas gentleness brought me from my Pagan land,/Taught my benighted soul to understand/That thither's a God, that there's a Saviour to:/Once I redemption neither sought-after(a) nor knew." In other words, though Wheatley is decrying the fact that she has been enslaved, she is also attributing to her enslavement her salvation because it is through her interaction with Christians that she has come to know God.

iodin would have expected that Belinda, in her "prayer," would also have make reference to the Christian God. Instead, Belinda owed her devotion "to the Great Orissa, who creates all things (in Pitcher, 202)." Belinda's " discredited Deity" received more attention from her in her "Petition" than the Christian and God who is mentioned nowhere except quite athwart and in a negative manner: "the laws had rendered me incapable of receiving quality; and though I was a free, moral agent, accountable for my make actions, yet I was never a moment at my own disposal (in Pitcher 203)." The oblique reference here is to the Christian construction of an individu

matchless analyst, Vincent Carretta (188), suggests that "Belinda's published petition should be called a piece of seminal nonfiction." This writer believes that Belinda's description of an Edenic Africa was commonplace in the then synchronal abolitionist literature.

Carretta (187) takes the position that "the written account of Belinda's petition is almost certainly fictionalized, but that does not render Belinda and her petition fictions."

Belinda's individuality derives instead from her native land and from her history. Her relationship with whites is affected by an early rape and by the unkindness of her masters. These are both very different women whose primary similarity is that they were both enslaved as children and separated from their native land. This similarity aside, it does not seem in particular likely that Wheatley functioned as Belinda's amanuensis. The fact that the two women lived in the kindred area at the same time does not suggest any further relationship.

Watson, Marsha. "A Classic Case." earliest American

Early American Literature, 1997, 32, pp. 187-188.

Reuben, Paul P. "Early American Literature." 2003.

Current Events, February 7, 2003, 102(18), p. 2.

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