Entry #3: Wheatley
“‘Twas mercy brought me from my Pagan land, / Taught my benighted foul to understand / That there’s a God, that there’s a Saviour too: / Once I redemption neither fought nor knew. / Some view our sable race with scornful eye, / ‘Their colour is a diabolic dye.’ / Remember, Christians, Negros, black as Cain, / May be refin’d, and join th’ angelic train” (Wheatley, “On being brought from AFRICA to AMERICA”).
As we discussed in class, Wheatley’s “On being brought from AFRICA to AMERICA” opposes some of the revolutionary rhetoric we have observed in her other work. Indeed, Wheatley deploys some of the same dichotomies that Milton uses in Paradise Lost, the most notable of these oppositions including Pagan versus Christian and Light versus Dark. Just as Milton associates Pagan beliefs and gods with Hell, Wheatley positions her “Pagan land” as something from which she is rescued from by “mercy.” She also refers to herself as “benighted,” a word that troublingly associates darkness with ignorance; Milton, too, is prone to villainize darkness in the rhetoric of Paradise Lost. However, in the latter half of the poem, Wheatley begins to indict the racism of enslavers, attempting to upset the dichotomy of light versus dark that she employs at the beginning of the poem. Nonetheless, when she tells (white) Christians that black people may “be refin’d,” she gives the impression that until one is a Christian, one is not worthy. I wonder whether there is an opening to read this poem as a satirical indictment of racist binaries that are weaponized to perpetuate enslavement. Depending on the interpretation of her comma usage, this poem may constitute a message to Christian enslavers, which explains its positionality -- and the power dynamics under which she operated. What are the stakes in reading this poem against the grain instead? I am reminded of our varied readings of Paradise Lost, and the potential for empowerment in oppositional interpretation.