Bullock's Liverpool Museum
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I am most affected by this spectacleAnd I must say, I am happy to be in the companyOf one of my own sex.For I am shamed by the pudeur and forbearanceThis poor woman displayedIn the face of the brutish, pornographic,Voyeurism of my countrymen (and women).They pluck and prod this small creature and call her namesAnd verily act like a bunch of baboons.The comedy of manners being exhibitedBy the masters of the worldTowards its colonized slavesIs more like a morality play of oppressionOn one hand, versus a kind of defianceOf all white English morals on the other.It is not an amusement.It is an erasure of time and distanceBetween our civilization and its antithesis,This African VenusThe irony of whose name is not lost on me or the audienceAnd even plays its part in this charade.For the Venus is a parody of English beauty and womanhood,As far from our pretensions of gentilityAs one could possibly imagine.Yet, there, in a cage . . . in the most direPrimordial circumstances, the VenusHas a dignity and a humanness that is totally lackingIn her spectators and puts them to shame.I shed a tear. Mary does too—at her vulnerability.As females we all are burdenedIn the face of a male society.I am revolted. I try as did several other ladiesTo make eye contact with the Venus [End Page 729] To communicate the sympathy I truly feelBut there is no communicationExcept insults and threats,Neither between the public and the HottentotNor between the Hottentot and the white femalesTo be sure she is ugly,She has an enormous, astounding posteriorBut her face is actually pleasantAnd she is very youngShe is now a household word in EnglandAnd a celebrity in London Society and the popular press,Who use her as a plaything and political tool against GrenvilleNot a day goes by that there is notAnother wicked, obscene cartoonOr caricature in the daily press.
The politics of her, the obscenity of herHer servitude is a blot on English Society.But even the worse of scandalsBecome romanticAnd even respectable in two thousand years;Witness Cleopatra . . .The most virtuous read of Cleopatra with sympathyEven in boarding schools and were she, by some miracleErased out of the book of history,The loss would be enormous.The same applies to Helen, Phryne, and other bad lots.In fact, now that one thinks of it,Most of the attractive personages in historyMale or female, especially the latter, were bad lots.And the true Venus?Haven't the most scandalous actsIn history been done in her name?In the name of passionate, unbridled, and uncontrollable fornication?Shouldn't we love anything called Venus?I ask gazing at this strange, humiliated creature . . .If you are a woman?There is nothing that makes our sex more awareOf our own oppressionThan witnessing the horrendous, blatantTorture of the brown races?A brown member of our own sex?I shudder to think I actually paid to see this! [End Page 730] This ink bleeds ontoThe middle finger of my right handAnd no, I am not goingTo denounce her sufferingOr write about herOr recognize herWasn't this why I love freaks?I bless my stars that I have done with Tuesday.But alas! Wednesday arrives.
—Jane Austen [End Page 731]
Barbara Chase-Riboud, a native of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, is a sculptor, poet, and fiction writer who studied visual art at Temple University, Yale University, and the American Academy in Rome, before she moved to Paris, France. Her writing career began in 1974 with the publication of From Memphis & Peking: Poems. She is also author of six other books, including Hottentot Venus: A Novel, Echo of Lions, and Sally Hemings: A Novel, winner of the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize in 1979. Chase-Riboud began her career as a visual artist as early as the 1960s, when she exhibited...
