Agency or Complacency: the Complicated Life of the Venus Hottentot
In Suzan-Lori Parks’ Venus, readers are introduced to a fictionalized version of Saartjie Baartman, a woman who was smuggled into London from South Africa in 1810 to perform in a freak show (Elkins). In both the play and in real life, Saartjie (known as the Hottentot Venus) is subject to both degradation and dehumanization throughout her short life. Some argue that The Venus has agency over her situation when she is prepositioned with different offers; due to The Venus’ circumstances and her status as a black woman during the 19th century, she does not have any control over the different offers she receives during the play.
At the beginning of the play The Venus is either
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working as a domestic servant or is a slave (the text does not make it clear if she is in a condition of slavery). The Brother then comes to The Venus (then referred to as The Girl), and asks her if she’d like to go to England to dance (Parks, 15). The Brother uses The Girl’s lack of knowledge of England to his advantage as he is able to feed her various lies which she accepts without question. It also becomes clear that The Girl is more interested in wealth instead of fame, a characteristic that follows her throughout the play. When The Brother says “Yd be a sensation!”, The Girl replies, “Im a little shy” (15). However, when he mentions gold and wealth, The Girl becomes a little more receptive to his offer, I would have a house. I would hire help. I would be rich. Very rich. Big bags of money! (17). Even then, The Girl is still apprehensive about accepting The Brother’s offer, as she says, “Do I have a choice? Id like to think on it” to which The Brother responds, “Whats there to think on?” (17). The Girl is being almost forced to accept the offer without having the chance to think about the consequences of her actions. This shows that in the eyes of The Brother, she is only an object to capitalize off of as he’s not considerate of the fact that she will have to leave everything she knows behind her. To him, money is more important than her feelings. Eventually, The Girl accepts The Brother’s offer to go to England, as going to England would be better than remaining in South Africa due to the lack of opportunities for a black women there. Because The Girl is a black woman in a patriarchal, eurocentric society, she really did not have the agency to say no to his offer without repercussion. The next time an offer is extended to The Venus is when she has been working for The Mother-Showman for a number of years, and The Baron Docteur arrives and offers to take her to Paris, “Sweetheart, how would you like to go to Paris?” (86). At this moment in her life, The Venus is a very different person. She has lived in England for a while and has grown accustomed to English society. An example of this acclimatation is evident during the courtroom scenes when her certificate of baptism is entered into evidence, showing her acceptance of the English Christian religion (67). Additionally, The Venus is able to use her language in order to sway the opinion of the Chorus of the Court. In Scene 20I, The Venus says, Showing my sinful person as a caution to you all could, in the Lords eyes, be a sort of repentance and I could wash off my dark mark. I came here black. Give me the chance to leave here white (76). Here, she is appealing to The Court by using the racially charged language that they previously used to condemn her on page 75, “Her kind bear Gods back mark and, baptised or not/they blacken-up the honor of our fair country” (75).
Once she makes her appeal towards the Court, they respond positively to her words and end up allowing her to remain in the country. The Venus has learned to manipulate the dominant group in society in order to get what she wants, and she applies this tactic of manipulation to her conversation with The Baron Docteur. Before accepting his offer The Venus asks The Baron Docteur for many things, namely money, food, and clothing, all of which he agrees to (88). Because The Baron Docteur is already infatuated with The Venus, it is easier for her to get what she wants from him, and unlike The Brother, The Baron Docteur is more considerate towards The Venus. This can be seen when The Venus asks The Baron Docteur if she has a choice whether or not to go to Paris, to which The Baron Docteur replies, “Yes. God. Of course” (88). Here, she is more careful in her decision making because her naivety has already been taken advantage of, yet she ultimately accepts his …show more content…
offer. Even though it may appear as if The Venus has more control over her situation as she is able to get certain benefits out of The Baron Docteur, in actuality that is not the case.
Before The Baron Docteur approaches the Venus, he first speaks with The Mother-Showman with the intention of purchasing The Venus. The Mother-Showman is reluctant and tries to dissuade The Baron Docteur from purchasing The Venus by lying on her character but The Baron Docteur resorts to using his wealth in order to get what he desires, which in this case is The Venus (81-83). By the time he first approaches her, The Venus is his property, putting her into a position where it is extremely hard for her to say no. While The Venus does not refuse the offer of The Baron Docteur, because he owns her, it is clear that the only acceptable answer to this offer is a yes. Because of the master-slave dynamic that has been established between them without her knowledge, if she refused his offer, there is a possibility that she would have been forced to go to Paris regardless of what she truly
wanted. In conclusion, though it may appear that The Venus has control over her situation, she really does not. While she has no control over her situation, she does have the ability to work within the system in order to get what she desires. In Understanding Suzan Lori-Parks, Jennifer Larson writes, “she [Suzan-Lori Parks] and her Venus can be working within, as well as against, the forces that oppress them” (Larson, 27). At the beginning of the play, The Venus was easily influenced by others and was completely submissive, but throughout the play The Venus learned to work within the parameters she was confined in in order to advance her own agenda. However, this doesn’t mean that she had any control over her situation. Because The Venus is a black woman in a society dominated by white men, it is hard for her to establish any agency over her circumstances. Due to the hierarchy that existed in England in 1810, The Venus is at the bottom of a society that is dominated by men like The Brother or The Baron Docteur. As a result, she is powerless to her oppressors, stripping her of her agency.
David Ives work of Venus in Fur takes readers through a dramatic audition which explores both reality and the world of theatre. Ives dives into the complexities of relationships, emotions and the way humans interact. Through the use of different relationships, both real and theatrical, readers are able to understand the complexities of gender relations. From the start of the dramatic work of Venus in Fur, David Ives displays a plethora of gender relations by challenging traditional gender roles, relationship and societal norms and presenting power shifts between the genders.
by analyzing the case of Sarah Baartman as the quintessential Black female erotic body. The viewing of black women’s bodies as animalistic explorative and subsequent centuries of colonialism but also connects all hegemonic movements to surveillance and defining/redefining of the black female body.
According to Sherrie A. Inness, “The Captive was hauled by critics as the first play on the American stage to deal openly with what one reviewer called a “repulsive abnormality.” Ten years prior, God of Vengeance was scorned for offending rabbis, Jewish men and women’s religion and abusing the significance of the Torah. Critics and reviews failed to deliver their remarks on the intimate lesbian love, but in The Captive, the lesbian undertones are concealed and carried out in a strategic fashion, yet these moments were censored and triggered. Due to these moments where the acts of lesbianism were not apparent, it was deemed with obscurity, causing the play to fall short overall. Similar to God of Vengeance, The Captive was confronted with “obscenity charges in the United States, and after a run of less than five months, the play was raided and closed down by police” (Inness 304). With this framework in mind, my case study is not diminished by the greater public opinion, rather Edouard Bourdet’s strategic approach to lesbianism and the way in which is portrayed in society juxtaposed the emergence of lesbianism in the United States in the early part of the twentieth
Georgia Douglas Johnson was a playwright of the Harlem Renaissance whose social commentary delved into the hardships of African Americans in the early 20th century. As an African American woman of the time, Johnson often brought to light the difficulties of her race and gender. In Johnson’s play Plumes she invites her audience into an everyday kitchen, with two hardworking early 20th century African American women trying navigate their way through a racially oppressive and patriarchal society. Johnson uses the characters’ desires to provide for those that they love, as an illustration to the adversity of everyday life of the African American in her time, particularly the African American woman. In this paper, I will explore the complications
Over the course of time, the roles of men and women have changed dramatically. As women have increasingly gained more social recognition, they have also earned more significant roles in society. This change is clearly reflected in many works of literature, one of the most representative of which is Plautus's 191 B.C. drama Pseudolus, in which we meet the prostitute Phoenicium. Although the motivation behind nearly every action in the play, she is glimpsed only briefly, never speaks directly, and earns little respect from the male characters surrounding her, a situation that roughly parallels a woman's role in Roman society of that period. Women of the time, in other words, were to be seen and not heard. Their sole purpose was to please or to benefit men. As time passed, though, women earned more responsibility, allowing them to become stronger and hold more influence. The women who inspired Lope de Vega's early seventeenth-century drama Fuente Ovejuna, for instance, rose up against not only the male officials of their tiny village, but the cruel (male) dictator busy oppressing so much of Spain as a whole. The roles women play in literature have evolved correspondingly, and, by comparing The Epic of Gilgamesh, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and The Wife of Bath's Prologue, we can see that fictional women have just as increasingly as their real-word counterparts used gender differences as weapons against men.
As women's studies programs have proliferated throughout American universities, feminist "re-readings" of certain classic authors have provided us with the most nonsensical interpretations of these authors' texts. A case in point is that of Kathleen Margaret Lant's interpretation of Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire in her essay entitled "A Streetcar Named Misogyny." Throughout the essay, she continually misreads Williams' intention, which of course causes her to misunderstand the play itself. Claiming that the play "has proved vexing to audiences, directors, actors, readers, and critics" (Lant 227), she fails to see that it is she herself who finds the play vexing, because it does not fit nicely into the warped feminist structure she would try to impose upon it.
In the 19th Century, women had different roles and treated differently compared to today’s women in American society. In the past, men expected women to carry out the duties of a homemaker, which consisted of cleaning and cooking. In earlier years, men did not allow women to have opinions or carry on a job outside of the household. As today’s societies, women leave the house to carry on jobs that allow them to speak their minds and carry on roles that men carried out in earlier years. In the 19th Century, men stereotyped women to be insignificant, not think with their minds about issues outside of the kitchen or home. In the play Trifles, written by Susan Glaspell, the writer portrays how women in earlier years have no rights and men treat women like dirt. Trifles is based on real life events of a murder that Susan Glaspell covered during her work as a newspaper reporter in Des Moines and the play is based off of Susan Glaspell’s earlier writing, “A Jury of Her Peers”. The play is about a wife of a farmer that appears to be cold and filled with silence. After many years of the husband treating the wife terrible, the farmer’s wife snaps and murders her husband. In addition, the play portrays how men and women may stick together in same sex roles in certain situations. The men in the play are busy looking for evidence of proof to show Mrs. Wright murdered her husband. As for the women in the play, they stick together by hiding evidence to prove Mrs. Wright murdered her husband. Although men felt they were smarter than women in the earlier days, the play describes how women are expected of too much in their roles, which could cause a woman to emotionally snap, but leads to women banding together to prove that women can be...
What art succeeds in doing is transmute the sexual expression into an acceptable form - by turning it into a thing of beauty and approximating it into a haze of sublimity. In the post- modern climate of media, eros as sexuality reels dangerously on the brink of pornography. Yet what is also important is to realize that it is an important lens to view our social, political and cultural identities. At the beginning of the twentieth century, sexuality rode on the tide of social progressivism and became a vehicle for artistic expression in the novel. Also, when eros as sexuality serves as a principal theme in serious or popular literature, it is often used as a means of remarking upon the dynamics in a society. This is the point that is scrutinised and analysed in this paper where the sexuality of women is seen as an important definition and perspective in Toni Morrison’s Sula (1973).The novel explores the lives and friendship of Sula Peace and Nel Wright in the black neighbourhood dubiously named ‘The Bottom’ in the city of Medallion . The novel also investigates lives of its various female characters in this community who add to our understanding of the life of African American women. Morrison is one of the most remarkable African-American authors of the twentieth century and her novels remind readers that the position of African-Americans in the white-dominant society of the United States of
Throughout the plays, the reader can visualize how men dismiss women as trivial and treat them like property, even though the lifestyles they are living in are very much in contrast. The playwrights, each in their own way, are addressing the issues that have negatively impacted the identity of women in society.
Leininger, Lorie Jerrell. "The Miranda Trap: Sexism and Racism in Shakespeare's Tempest." The Tempest: Critical Essays.Ed. Patrick M. Murphy. New York: Routledge, 2001. 223-229.
What is agency and how does it affect women in history? Agency is defined as the ability of a person to act for him/herself and this can be a tool to examine the power of women in history. In Trying Neaira, it tells the story of a prostitute during the period of the years 400 B.C. to 340 B.C., who has limited agency in her life. To explore why Neaira has limited agency the book gives evidence in three key periods of Neaira’s life. These three periods can be labeled as life as a Prostitute, life as a Hetaira, and Protection under Stephanos.
William Shakespeare’s The Tempest provides dialogue that portrays the social expectations and stereotypes imposed upon women in Elizabethan times. Even though the play has only one primary female character, Miranda, the play also includes another women; Sycorax, although she does not play as large a roll. During many scenes, the play illustrates the characteristics that represent the ideal woman within Elizabethan society. These characteristics support the fact that men considered women as a mere object that they had the luxury of owning and were nowhere near equal to them. Feminists can interpret the play as a depiction of the sexist treatment of women and would disagree with many of the characteristics and expectations that make Miranda the ideal woman. From this perspective, The Tempest can be used to objectify the common expectations and treatment of women within the 16th and 17th Centuries and compare and contrast to those of today.
In 1979, Caryl Churchill wrote a feminist play entitled Cloud Nine. It was the result of a workshop for the Joint Stock Theatre Group and was intended to be about sexual politics. Within the writing she included a myriad of different themes ranging from homosexuality and homophobia to female objectification and oppression. “Churchill clearly intended to raise questions of gender, sexual orientation, and race as ideological issues; she accomplished this largely by cross-dressing and role-doubling the actors, thereby alienating them from the characters they play.” (Worthen, 807) The play takes part in two acts; in the first we see Clive, his family, friends, and servants in a Victorian British Colony in Africa; the second act takes place in 1979 London, but only twenty-five years have passed for the family. The choice to contrast the Victorian and Modern era becomes vitally important when analyzing this text from a materialist feminist view; materialist feminism relies heavily on history. Cloud Nine is a materialist feminist play; within it one can find examples that support all the tenets of materialist feminism as outlined in the Feminism handout (Bryant-Bertail, 1).
The Birth of Venus is a beautiful Renaissance canvas masterpiece created by Sandro Botticello. The picture illustrates the birth of Venus in a very mystical way. Venus has emerged from sea on a shell which is being driven to shore by flying wind-gods. She is surrounded by beautiful roses which are painted in a truly remarkable color. As she is about to step to land, one of the Hours hands her a purple cloak. The back drop includes the sea and a forest. The overall effect of this painting are almost overwhelming, color and beauty meet the eye in every angle.
In Aphra Behn’s “The Rover”, between the categories of virgin and whore lies a void rather than a spectrum. The three leading ladies of the play Hellena, Florinda and Angellica most certainly fall into these categories; Hellena and Florinda being virginal ladies of quality and Angellica being a famous courtesan. These three women attempt to challenge these roles throughout the play. Aphra Behn uses the domination of the men over the women, the objectification of the women and the double standards that exist between men and women to illustrate the impossibility of taking one’s sexuality into one’s own hands, and challenging the assigned roles of the patriarchal society for the female characters in the play.