"A ‘Different’ Reading of Phillis Wheatley’s 'On Being Brought from Africa to America'"

Savannah Price

Published in Dalton State College's Exemplar Fall 2022 and can be accessed here.

Despite the fact that Phillis Wheatley’s 1773 poem “On Being Brought from Africa to America” is often anthologized as showing a female slave content, even satisfied, with her position in life, professor and scholar Mary Catherine Loving illustrates a “different” interpretation in her article “Uncovering Subversion in Phillis Wheatley’s Signature Poem: ‘On Being Brought from Africa to America’” (68). In Loving’s article, she expresses that she has “disagreed with interpretations of [Wheatley’s] signature work” (68) and aims to portray “Wheatley’s rejection of Christianity, her acknowledgement of life before slavery, and her efforts to align her own body with those of other enslaved Africans” (67). Therefore, Loving breaks down Wheatley’s eight-line poem by going beyond the surface of the words and exploring Wheatley’s implications, which she could not have stated openly due to her all-white audience. By diving into the form, rhetoric, and grammar, Loving asserts that Wheatley is “wear[ing] a mask,” as, beyond the surface, Wheatley is “chastis[ing] Christian slaveholders,” their principles, and their assumptions (69). Throughout her argument, Loving provides valuable textual evidence for these claims and aided by her textual proof, she succeeds in illustrating Wheatley as a sly, tactful writer with intentions of condemning slavery, Christianity, and the stereotypes associated with her race, not condoning them.

Loving’s article is divided into three unmarked sections: form, rhetoric, and grammar. As for form, Loving asserts that Wheatley is intentional in her language and the meter it takes. For example, when looking at the iambic pentameter form of the poem, Loving alleges that this choice “is critical” to Wheatley’s subject matter (69). When dealing with a such a controversial topic as a member of the controversy, Wheatley had to “prove herself” to an audience that was “not invested in her intelligence” (Loving 70). In order to do this, Wheatley has to mimic the forms of language that challenge the stereotypes placed on her. Therefore, by using iambic pentameter, Wheatley is able to establish herself as an intelligent writer of poetry who pays attention to form and meter, and she challenges previous beliefs that slaves could not be educated or civilized (Loving 69).

According to Loving, Wheatley’s ability to subscribe to a meter usually reserved for serious intellectual topics allows her to call out the inconsistencies in Christianity and slavery in a clever way, careful not to upset or alienate herself from her white readers (Loving 70). For example, aided by her academic meter, Wheatley is asserting a seemingly non-subversive claim that “mercy brought [her] from [her] pagan land,” but upon closer analysis, this claim is sarcastic (Wheatley 1). This alleged “mercy” has not only delivered Wheatley from her “pagan land” (1), but it has also “taught” (2) her, or attempted to teach her, that her land is “pagan” (1) and that her soul is “benighted” (2). Before this supposed mercy stripped her of her home, Wheatley had not held either of these ideas, but, because of her white audience, Wheatley cannot outright say that she never “sought” or wanted this mercy or “redemption” (4). Instead, according to Loving, Wheatley uses the appropriate form and meter to make it seem like she is grateful for this mercy that has seemingly given her the ability to be both intellectual and religious. In reality, Wheatley is hiding behind her “mask” so that, “beneath the surface,” she can “chastis[e] Christian slaveholders” who pride themselves on giving this undesired mercy (Loving 69).

In addition to form, Loving also details the rhetoric Wheatley employs in order to make her subversive implications. Loving asserts that Wheatley relies on her rhetoric similar to the way she relies on form; she uses it to “prove herself” to her white audience while also distracting them from her chastisement of their ideas and allegedly Christian principles (70, 73). For example, Wheatley calls her readers to “Remember, Christians, Negroes, black as Cain, / May be refined, and join the angelic train” (7-8). Directing this line directly to her audience with “Christians” (Wheatley 7), Wheatley is calling out the “inconsistencies between Christian principle and Christian practice” (Loving 73). After all, who decided Africans needed to be “refined” (Wheatley 8)? Just as the Africans did not ask for “mercy” (1) or “understand[ing] (2), they did not ask to be “refined” or civilized into the ideal “angelic train” the whites wanted them to conform to readily and with gratefulness (8). Wheatley refuses to do this. Instead, she uses her rhetoric to convince her naïve white audience that she believes exactly what they want her to. For instance, she asserts that her homeland is “pagan” (1), her soul is “benighted” (2), her race is “sable” (5), and her race “[m]ay be refined” (8). In reality, she uses each of these statements as a rhetorical strategy to both appease and “ridicule” her white audience: they are too prideful to notice her scorn towards them (Loving 73).

Like both meter and form, Loving portrays Wheatley’s use of grammar as supporting her seditious opinions on slavery and establishing her ability as a poet. Once again, by adhering to her time’s grammatical practices, Wheatley is showing her education and ability to create valuable poetry all while using “grammar to conceal her criticism of Christian slave ownership” (Loving 68). In one instance, Wheatley is careful to use specific punctuation that moves away from her as the sole speaker of the poem. She does this in order to clarify that the nonsubversive ideas in the poem are not her own. For example, Wheatley writes that “Some view our sable race [Africans] with scornful eye” (5). By using the pronoun some, Wheatley is proving she is not a part of this group. Therefore, she does not think that her “sable race” needs any refining (5). In addition, the use of sable, especially as describing Africans, suggests not only black but also “nobility and natural dignity—a marked contrast to the Christian perception linked with the color black” (Loving 72-3). Therefore, according to Loving, Wheatley is rejecting the stereotypes associated with Africans in her time through the grammatical use of wordplay (73). Following this line regarding her “sable race” (5), Wheatley employs quotations to suggest a shift to a second speaker: “‘Their color is a diabolic dye’” (6). Instead of saying “our… race” (5), Wheatley shifts to “Their color” (6), showing that it is someone outside of the African race holding this opinion. Additionally, by introducing this line in quotations, Wheatley is suggesting that she has heard this statement, likely repeatedly, from those who look at her and her race with “scornful eye” solely because of their skin color, and she is therefore reaffirming Loving’s opinion that Wheatley did not truly believe it was “mercy [that] brought [her] from [her] pagan land” (1).

By discussing the implications suggested by Wheatley’s meter, form, and grammar, Loving is able to provide ample evidence for her claim that “Wheatley inscribes subversive intent” beneath the surface of her work (70). Going through the poem line-by-line, Loving breaks down the “mask” (69) Wheatley has been forced to put up in order to convince her readers that she believes what they want her to believe (70). Thus, Loving convincingly observes the ways Wheatley achieves this “masking [of] her subversion” by analyzing the form, rhetoric, and grammar of Wheatley’s poem, and she, therefore, illustrates a persuasive “different” interpretation of Wheatley’s “most often anthologized poem” (67). Instead of accepting that “Phillis Wheatley [w]as content with her lot” in life, Loving successfully works to show a different understanding of Wheatley’s eight-line poem (74). Therefore, every past, present, and future reader of Phillis Wheatley’s “On Being Brought from Africa to America” can benefit from Loving’s interpretation of the text as it strives to show the reality of an African slave writing for an all-white audience.

With every piece of literature, there are a boundless number of interpretations—none of which hold more merit than others as long as they each are based in evidence within the text. While Loving may reach through the text and into the historical implications of Phillis Wheatley’s poem, her argument is based in the form, rhetoric, and grammar that can be observed in the text. Just because Loving’s interpretation is useful, the other, more common interpretations of “On Being Brought from Africa to America” are not wrong but “different” (Loving 68). By reading articles like Loving’s, readers of poetry can broaden their understanding of texts and become exposed to different ways of analyzing them. Whether readers agree with Loving or not, her interpretation is valuable and offers a satisfaction to readers, like Loving, who were not appeased with the interpretations that depicted a “content” Phillis Wheatley (74).

Works Cited

Loving, Mary Catherine. “Uncovering Subversion in Phillis Wheatley’s Signature Poem: ‘On Being Brought from Africa to America.’” Journal of African American Studies, vol. 20, no. 1, Mar. 2016, pp. 67–74. EBSCOhost, https://doi.org/10.1007/s12111-015-9319-8.

Wheatley, Phillis. “On Being Brought from Africa to America.” The Norton Anthology of American Literature, edited by Robert S. Levin, 9th edition, Volume A, W.W. Norton & Company, 2017, p. 789.