To S.M., a Young African Painter, on Seeing His Works

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1773

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Summary

Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Background

Critical Response

The critical response to Wheatley’s poetry has been complicated and complex.

In her time, Wheatley’s work was wildly popular in American and in England. Both countries paraded her in front of political leadership and the upper class. Wheatley became a household name for literate colonists. Her achievements catalyzed the emerging abolitionist movement, who saw her poetry as proof of enslaved people’s intelligence and humanity. However, enslavers also found her writing valuable, using it to convince enslaved Africans to convert to Christianity.

Wheatley’s poetry was not primarily treated as art on its own merits, but became a tool of white people. During the Civil War and Reconstruction eras, the abolitionist movement drew on Wheatley’s poetry to support their movement. Margaretta Matilda Odell, for example, wrote a sentimentalized biography of Wheatley to support her abolitionist and proto-feminist goals—an example of exploitative appropriation.

Wheatley’s reputation became more complicated during the early 20th century, as scholars dismissed Wheatley’s poetry as unconcerned with slavery and lacking a strong sense of her identity as an enslaved Black woman. Scholars argued that she thus ignored what they perceived as the defining element of her life by not using her position to draw attention to the injustice of slavery and to explicitly advocate for change.

20th-century Black scholars positioned the appreciation of her work during her time as a barrier for other Black writers. They argued that Wheatley’s passivity and her artistic and, to a degree, social acceptance into mainstream white culture embodied Uncle Tom syndrome—a capitulation to and acceptance of enslavement akin to that of a character from Harriet Beecher Stowe’s abolitionist novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Attributing this to Wheatley’s upbringing, which shaped her to be timid and submissive while keeping her somewhat blind to the wider reality of slavery, these scholars argued that she had an unrealistic understanding of the relationship between white enslavers and Black enslaved people.

Recently, scholars have been working to recover Wheatley from the margins of history. Current scholarship explores the duality and complexity of Wheatley’s life and poetry by positioning her work in its historical context while engaging more deeply with her religious imagery. Wheatley revivalists urge her acceptance to the canon for her classical mastery and her poetic innovations.

Literary Context

Neoclassicism is an artistic movement that arose during the Age of Enlightenment in the 18th century. The movement hearkened back to Ancient Greek and Roman styles of art, architecture, music, and theater, and considered its aesthetic ideals to be symmetry, relative simplicity (especially when compared to Rococo, the artistic trend that preceded it). Wheatley uses many Neoclassical poetic techniques, favoring highly structured poetic forms like the epyllion (a short narrative poem) and the elegy (a lyric poem that is typically a lament for the dead). She fills her poetry with allusions to classical antiquity, making references to Ovid, Horace, and other Classical poets to demonstrate both her education and her skill. Her work reveals a deeply familiarity with Latin, illustrating how she was in conversation with not only her Neoclassical predecessors like Alexander Pope, but also classical works. Some scholars argue that this polished veneer allowed her to express subversive messages about slavery to her white, upper-class audience.

Another literary tradition that Wheatley borrows from is biblical symbolism. Wheatley often uses her interpretation of the Bible’s ideas of freedom to comment on slavery. Her use of this biblical tradition was designed to move members of the church to act. For example, in a letter to Reverend Samson Occom, she compared American slavery to the Egyptian enslavement of the Hebrews. Likewise, in her poem “On Being Brought from Africa to America,” she criticizes her white American audience for not working to improve Africans by comparing Africans to Cain. Meanwhile, “S.M., a Young African Painter, on Seeing His Works” connects physical, artistic, and spiritual freedom, most explicitly in the reference to heaven on earth, or “Salem” (Line 18)—an ideal city where all 12 Jewish tribes from the Old Testament have been reunited. In this way, the city functions as a symbol of equality and integration.