Though renowned and celebrated for being the first Black woman to publish a book in the English language in 1773. Phillis Wheatley’s achievement was of much more significance, impact, debate, and high scrutiny than the record’s suggestion.
At a time where Thomas Jefferson took part in the racist tradition in which philosophers of the Renaissance and of the Enlightenment such as Francis Bacon, David Hume, and Immanuel Kant misrepresented Blacks as people who “possessed no arts, sciences, or feeling”. Jefferson who also associated blacks with “apes” became displeased at the high appraisal the work of a teenage African girl was attracting.
Gambia-born Phillis Wheatley was originally taken from Africa sold to the Wheatley family in Boston, Massachusetts at 7 years old. Her first name Phillis was derived from the ship that brought her to America, “The Phillis.”
The Wheatley family educated her and within sixteen months of her arrival in America, she could read the Bible, Greek and Latin classics, and British literature. At age fourteen, Wheatley began to write poetry, publishing her first poem in 1767, and in 1773 she traveled to London with her master’s son to publish her first collection of poems, The first English book written by a black woman in America and the first to make a living from such.
Henry Louis Gates describes in a letter that Jefferson received from a colleague commending Wheatley for having published “a number of poems in which there is imagination, poetry, and zeal.” Jefferson became angered and quickly replied with opposition to Wheatley’s work beginning his many contradictions towards blacks.
“Misery is often the parent of the most affecting touches in poetry. Among the blacks is misery enough… Religion, indeed, has produced a Phillis Wheatley [sic]; but it could not produce a poet.”
THOMAS JEFFERSON
Jefferson’s soon apparent dualism towards blacks also stemmed from the fear, he was deeply convinced that “the human beings he had enslaved would by virtue of their natural rights seek vengeance when the opportunity arose.”
Besides the strong impact on literature Wheatley’s writing had, it also had an impact on American culture. Enslavers and abolitionists both read her work; the former to convince the enslaved population to convert, the latter as proof that people of color were equally capable, creative, intelligent human beings. This in part helped the cause of the abolition movement.
“Essentially, she [Wheatley] was auditioning for the humanity of the entire African people”
Henry Louis Gates, Jr
She was emancipated by the Wheatley’s shortly after publishing her book. However, after the American Revolution Wheatley died in December 1784, due to complications from childbirth.
One poem in which Wheatley divulges thoughts on her enslavement is in “To The Right Honorable William, Earl of Dartmouth,” in which she describes her capture:
I, young in life, by seeming cruel fate
was snatched from Afric’s fancied happy seat:
What pants excruciating must molest
What sorrows labor in my parent’s breast!
Steeled was that soul, and by no misery moved,
That from a father seized his babe beloved:
Such, such my case. And can I then but pray
Others may never feel tyrannic sway?
Phillis Wheatley
Sources:
https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/phillis-wheatley
