John Turner Comments on Phillis Wheatley Review

Over at the Anxious Bench blog, John Turner comments on my review of Vincent Carretta's Phillis Wheatley: Biography of a Genius in Bondage in Books & Culture. I told John that I thoroughly enjoyed Phillis Wheatley, and perhaps I did not give Carretta enough credit for the strengths of the book. That being said, I reiterate my desire for Carretta to have provided more analysis on the faith of Phillis and her owners, which seems to me to have been a significant part of the story. Perhaps someone else will write a journal article or monograph on this aspect of Phillis Wheatley.

Review of Phillis Wheatley in Books and Culture

My review of Vincent Carretta's book, Phillis Wheatley: Biography of a Genius in Bondage, has been posted on the Books and Culture website. Take a look.

Olaudah Equiano: African or South Carolinian?

I just finished reading Vincent Carretta's Equiano the African: Biography of a Self-Made Man, a wonderful account of an evangelical who was instrumental in the abolition of the slave trade in Britain. Many students of English literature are familiar with Olaudah Equiano's Interesting Narrative (1789), which chronicles the life of a slave in Africa who is eventually freed, becoming a celebrity in the English-speaking world in the last decade of his life. But unknown to most is that Equiano might have embellished key sections in his autobiography.

According to Equiano, he was born in 1745 in present-day Nigeria, where he claimed to have been abducted at age eleven and sold to English slavers. Forced aboard a ship to the West Indies, he makes his way to the West Indies where he is sold to a Virginia planter who quickly resells Equiano to a British Royal Navy officer named Michael Henry Pascal. His new owner renames Equiano "Gustavus Vassa" before taking his new prize back with him to London, probably in 1754. Between August 1755 and December 1762, most of Equiano's time was spent aboard Royal Navy vessels during the Seven Years' War. Equiano enjoys his time at sea, experiencing a certain equality among his shipmates that would have been unknown had he been a plantation slave. After serving Pascal faithfully for a number of years, Equiano expects to be set free in 1762, but instead is sold to James Doran, captain of a merchant ship headed to Montserrat. In the West Indies, Equiano is sold once more to a Quaker merchant named Robert King.

Through shrewd business ventures of his own, Equiano saves enough money to buy his freedom from King in 1766. The newly freed man makes his living over the next decade as a hairdresser and sailor for hire. Over the course of that time he travels to Italy, modern-day Turkey, and the West Indies. In May 1772 he joins an expedition to the Arctic led by Constantine John Phipps who hopes to find a shorter route to India. Reeling from a near-death experience on the Arctic voyage, Equiano returns to London in late 1773 seeking spiritual guidance. He attends St. James's Anglican parish church several times and explores Quakerism, Roman Catholicism, and Judaism. At one point he considers moving to Turkey, believing that Muslims are more sincere in their beliefs and practices than the Christians he has met.

During his spiritual distress, he meets a couple of silk weavers in Holborn who introduce him to Methodism. He is told that he needs to experience a "new birth" whereby God pardons a person on the basis of the merits of Christ's death on the cross. While aboard a ship headed to Cadiz, Spain, Equiano picks up his Bible and begins reading Acts 4:12, later writing that "the Lord was pleased to break in upon my soul with his bright beams of heavenly light; and in an instant, as it were, removing the veil, and letting light into a dark place... I saw the Lord Jesus Christ in his humiliation, loaded and bearing my reproach, sin, and shame. I then clearly perceived, that by the deed of the law no flesh living could be justified. I was then convinced, that by the first Adam sin came, and by the second Adam (the Lord Jesus Christ) all that are saved must be made alive" (174). He had experienced conversion, the kind of spiritual rebirth that he had been told was necessary for salvation.

In the spring of 1775, Equiano agrees to help a former employer establish a plantation off the Mosquito Coast in Central America. At the time, he suffers no scruples when purchasing slaves to work the fields. Becoming disillusioned with the project, Equiano makes his way back to England at the beginning of 1777. He considers becoming a missionary to Africa, but when his request is denied by the bishop of London, he returns to the sea as a hired sailor once again.

It is not known exactly when Equiano changed his mind about the slave trade--it appears to be a gradual development--but in the mid-1780s he becomes involved in the plans to found Sierra Leone, a colony where free blacks could settle and form their own community. Hired as a commissioner for the project, and later dismissed due to his criticism of the project, Equiano spends the remainder of his life supporting the abolitionist movement. He joins Thomas Clarkson, Granville Sharp, William Wilberforce, and others in trying to convince Britons of the evils of the Atlantic slave trade. Equiano's most significant contribution in this regard is his autobiography, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African, published in 1789. The book went through eleven editions in the eighteenth century, making Equiano wealthy in the process and catapulting him to literary stardom. When he died on March 31, 1797, he was arguably the best known and affluent person of African descent in the Atlantic world.

One of the most interesting aspects of Carretta's biography is his procative thesis that Equiano fabricated part of his narrative in order to bolster the abolitionist movement. Through his research Carretta finds birth and baptismal records describing Equiano as a native of South Carolina, not Africa. Carretta writes, "Equiano certainly knew that to do well financially by doing good for the abolitionist cause he needed to establish and maintain his credibility as an eyewitness to the evils of the transatlantic slave trade and slavery in its various eighteenth-century forms. He also knew what parts of his story could be corroborated by others" (xvi-xvii). In order to oppose slavery, abolitionists needed a credible witness who had experienced the horrors of slavery and the Middle Passage. Carretta believes that Equiano's Interesting Narrative filled this void by providing the kind of proof that abolitionists were keen to exploit.

Carretta's monograph is an excellent biography of the truly interesting life of Olaudah Equiano. But if given the choice, I would first recommend reading his recent book on Phillis Wheatley, which I blogged about earlier. The Phillis Wheatley biography is more concise and cuts down on the number of block quotations that is prevalent throught his book on Equiano. Without diminishing the importance of Carretta's work on Equiano, the new book on Wheatley is the work of a craftsman who has perfected his trade.

Jonathan Yeager

Highs and Lows in the Life and Times of Phillis Wheatley

Vincent Carretta's new biography, Phillis Wheatley: Biography of a Genius in Bondage (University of Georgia Press, 2011) is simply spectacular. Carretta, a professor in the English department at that University of Maryland, has produced an engaging book on America's first black author.

Wheatley was kidnapped from an unknown location in Africa and put aboard a slave ship to America. Arriving at Boston in July 1761, Phillis was sold to the wealthy evangelical merchant John Wheatley and his wife Susanna. Named after the slave ship that brought her to America, Phillis probably could not have ended up in a better home. The Wheatleys and their eighteenth-year-old twins, Nathaniel and Mary, treated Phillis like a family member as opposed to a slave or even a servant. She learned to read and write, and showed an affinity for classical literature and poetry. Furthermore, the Wheatleys gave Phillis unusual freedom to mingle socially with visiting guests. Carretta writes, "The Wheatleys' treatment of Phillis enabled them to publicize their status, piety, and charity. They also used her to display their commitment to evangelical Christianity. They demonstrated that they could afford to spare Phillis the drudgery one would expect to be assigned to someone in her condition. Very few owners granted slaves the 'leisure Moments' that would allow them to write poetry" (23). This freedom proved beneficial to a young precocious girl with a gift for writing.

Carretta does a fairly good job at introducing the ministry of George Whitefield and Methodism in general. He shows Methodism as a despised movement due to its perceived emotionalism and outdoor preaching that infringed on the territory of resident clergyman in America and Britain. Carretta also rightly notes that many people disliked the fact that Methodist itinerants preached to the lower ranks of society, including slaves. Of course the hypocrisy of Whitefield is apparent in the fact that he purchased slaves to support his Georgia orphanage after denouncing the institution. Nevertheless, Wheatley and other slaves of African descent were drawn to the Grand Itinerant, perhaps because of his energetic preaching and message that an oppressed person experiencing the "new birth" would enjoy heavenly bliss in the afterlife. Although there is no record of when Phillis first heard Whitefield, it is possible that she went to his sermon at the Old South Church at Boston on February 27, 1764.

Carretta's expertise in English literature adds to the storyline as he explains the context and significance of Wheatley's poems, both in manuscript and published form. Carretta's research shows that Wheatley's first poem was not the assumed missing piece, "On the Death of the Rev. Dr. Sewell," but rather a four-line poem about the Thachers, a distinguished Boston Congregationalist family. Carretta also analyzes Phillis's published poems, including "On Virtue," which calls on readers to seek God's grace rather than human wisdom alone, "To the King's Most Excellent Majesty," which praises George III for repealing the Stamp Act, and her most notorious work, "On being brought from Africa to America," which seems to condone slavery at first glance. Carretta, however, dispels the notion that Wheatley justifies slavery. Carretta states, "Modern critics have accused Wheatley, or at least the primary voice in her poem, of rejecting her African heritage and engaging in racial self-hatred. But such critics confuse accommodation with appropriation. Like many authors of African descent who follow her, Wheatley repeatedly appropriates the values of Christianity to judge and find wanting hypocritical self-styled Christians of European descent. Theologically, Wheatley perceives her capture in Africa as leading to fortunate fall that allows her formerly 'benighted soul' to rise to embrace Christianity" (61). The poem that set off Wheatley's career is undoubtedly her elegy on Whitfield, written eleven days after his death. "On the Death of the Rev. Mr. George Whitefield" was widely read by Americans and Britons and catapulted Wheatley to stardom.

As Wheatley increased her literary output and mastered her craft, John and Susanna encouraged Phillis to produce a book of her poetry. Wheatley's first attempt at finding subscribers for a book intended to be published in Boston was not successful. However, her fortunes changed for the better in a second attempt, thanks to the support she received from the wealthy evangelical patroness, Selena, Countess of Huntingdon. Archibald Bell of London published Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral in 1773 with a frontispiece of Wheatley that was unprecedented in its depiction of a female author of African descent.

To promote the book, Phillis left Boston for London with Nathaniel Wheatley as her traveling companion. Carretta raises the provocative argument that Phillis might have wanted to go to England in order to seek freedom. Her arrival at London in the summer of 1773 was on the anniversary of a landmark court case in which Lord Chief Justice William Murray, the first earl of Mansfield, ruled that a runaway Virginia slave named James Somerset captured in England could not be forced to return to the colonies as a slave. His judgment opened the door for self-manumission by colonial slaves residing in England. The timing of Wheatley's trip to London is suspicious to Carretta, who sees Phillis weighing her options. Carretta demonstrates that Phillis would have been familiar with Boston newspapers relaying the case (the same newspapers that printed her poems). Even more important is the fact that Wheatley's London tour guide was Granville Sharp, who backed Somerset, and almost assuredly would have talked about manumission with her. Carretta argues that "It is unimaginable that while Wheatley and Sharp were looking at caged African animals, as well as the emblems of British regal glory, Sharp would not have brought up the subject of his judicial triumph the preceding year in extending British liberty to enslaved people of African descent. Sharp considered himself ethically and morally bound to help people in Wheatley's condition" (128). While we don't know Wheatley's intentions, we do know that Nathaniel, who now ran the family's business, gave Phillis his word that she would be freed once she returned to Boston. The implication is that Phillis knew her options and Nathaniel virtually had no choice but to free her.

With her new found freedom, Wheatley was not necessarily better off. She returned to Boston on September 13, 1773 a free woman, but now had to provide for herself. John and Susanna Wheatley, although under no further financial obligation to help Phillis, apparently allowed her to live with them. But with Susanna's death shortly after Phillis's return from London, and John's five years later on March 12, 1778, Phillis, perhaps wanting a better social footing, married the purportedly notorious free black merchant John Peters in 1778. Carretta, however, questions the reliability of the information on Peters, particularly since one of the accounts unjustifiably portrays him as "the villain in a Dickensian narrative of the decline and death of a sentimental heroine" (176). Very little is known about Peters or about Phillis in the years following her marriage until her death in 1784. Within the limited data, Carretta discovers that Peters lost a lawsuit which effectively ruined the couple financially.

Phillis tried to publish a second book, printing proposals in 1779 for a substantial work of three hundred pages and priced between nine and twelve pounds. The poor timing of this book and its extraordinary price doomed it from the start. Her proposed project never saw the light of day. Wheatley continued to publish occasional individuals poems, but never produced a second book. She died on December 5, 1784 and was placed in an unmarked grave.

Coming from someone who normally does not appreciate poetry, I was captivated by Carretta's biography. He does not over-analyze the rhetorical composition of Wheatley's poems, nor does he ignore the context of Wheatley's surroundings. Carretta writes like a historian, asking critical questions on points that others have assumed to be true. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in eighteenth-century evangelicalism and religious history.

Jonathan Yeager