Benito Cerreno Stereotypes

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Prompt 1: Deconstruction of Gender and Racial Stereotypes in Benito Cereno
In Herman Melville’s Benito Cereno, Amasa Delano is inspired by the sight of the black women and their children on board the San Dominick, and as a result projects his own fantasies and own romantic notions upon them. Delano confines the women to the role of the stereotypical gentle and loving maternal figure. In Delano’s delusions, the black female body becomes a symbol of natural beauty that has a nurturing yet exotic nature. By describing them like animals, he dehumanizes them and casts them out from society. The women, however, are able to escape from Delano’s projections and stereotypes through deception and by their active involvement in the revolt. Babo prevents …show more content…

Though initially it appears as though Delano has power over the women because of how he constructs and shapes their identities through his racist ideologies, they are the ones who hold power over him. Like a puppet they control Delano and allow him to see them only as they wish to be seen. With their acting the women hide their true nature under a veil that cannot be pierced by Delano’s gaze, and as such are able to escape from his romantic projections. Delano remarks, “There’s naked nature, now; pure tenderness and love…” (198) when he observes how the black women treat their children, with the words “naked nature” (198) revealing Delano’s misconception that the truth is always visible and laid out in the open. Delano finds the women to be just as primitive as he had expected. He confines the women to the stereotypical role of motherhood and projects an image of them as being uncivilized and savage through his description that likens them to animals as shown when, “His attention had been drawn to a slumbering negress, […] lying, with youthful limbs carelessly disposed, under the lee of the bulwarks, like a doe in the shade of a woodland rock” (198). The word “doe” gives animalistic qualities to the woman, but by association it also shows that Delano believes the woman to be driven purely by …show more content…

The deconstruction of gender roles is shown when the women are working and singing alongside the men. In an attempt to explain their empowerment Delano says that “These must be some of those Ashantee negresses that make such capital soldiers” (224). To explain why the women are able to perform the same tasks as the men, Delano labels them as being of the “Ashantee” tribe because according to his preconceptions, only the women of that tribe can do manual labor. Towards the end of the story it is revealed that the women were the driving force behind the slave revolt, showing that they held unthinkable power and influence. A moment of empowerment for the women is shown when during “…the various acts of murder, they sang songs and danced-not gaily, but solemnly; and […] they sang melancholy songs to the negroes, and that this melancholy tone was more inflaming than a different one would have been…” (252). In singing melancholy songs rather than lively tunes, they are able to inspire the black men to continue fighting and also are able to defy the romantic notion that slaves sing cheerful tunes as a sign of acceptance towards their enslaved life. When interrogated they admitted that “…had the negroes not restrained them, they would have tortured to death, instead

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