The Connection Between Wheatley and Belinda
Phillis Wheatley was an eighteenth century African-American poet who was also a slave. She wrote a number of poems that have been preserved and which illustrate her strength as a creative voice in a society that refused to recognize her talent and accomplishments (Bennett 64). ôPetition of an African Slave,ö written or at least narrated by the salve woman named Belinda, was published at the same time that WheatleyÆs work was reaching the public.
Some have suggested that Wheatley may have been BelindaÆs amanuensis. The purpose of this brief report is to examine work by both women to determine if internal evidence garnered from the work (i.e., diction, tone, imagery, and theme) support this association. It will be argued that while some similarities can be identified with respect to BelindaÆs ôPetitionö and selected poems by Wheatley, it is not likely that Wheatley was the ôunidentified transcriberö who ôtranslated this African womanÆs oral narrative into conventional eighteenth-century discourse that romanticizes the autobiographical elements of BelindaÆs early life and invokes the language of the law that has perpetrated the system of slavery (Pitcher 200).ö
WheatleyÆs poems, particularly ôTo Maecenas,ö and ôOn Being Brought to from Africa to America,ö employ the linguistic conventions of the era. In ôOn Being Brought from Africa to America,ö Wheatley used such images as ômy benighted soul,ö which references the color of her skin, described in the poem as ôour sable race,ö ôa diabolic dieö that is ôblack as Cain (Wheatley, in Reuben 2).ö It is clear that Wheatley was responding to the attitudes regarding Africans that were then prevalent in the United States.
The biblical association of Cain with ôdarknessö and with evil is linked to Christian teachings of the era. Perhaps more significantly, Wheatley (in Reuben 2) suggests to her reader ...