ground to self-empower their similar development
of religious and cultural refinement. That there was
an audience for her work is beyond question; the
white response to her poetry was mixed (Robinson
39–46), and certain black responses were dramatic
(Huddleston; Jamison). In appealing to these two
audiences, Wheatley’s persona assumes a dog-
matic ministerial voice.
This voice is an important feature of her
poem. In alluding to the two passages from
Isaiah, she intimates certain racial implications
that are hardly conventional interpretations of
these passages. The liberty she takes here exceeds
her additions to the biblical narrative para-
phrased in her verse ‘‘Isaiah LXIII. 1–8.’’ In
‘‘On Being Brought from Africa to America’’
Wheatley alludes twice to Isaiah to refute stereo-
typical readings of skin color; she interprets
these passages to refer to the mutual spiritual
benightedness of both races, as equal diaboli-
cally-dyed descendants of Cain. In thusly allud-
ing to Isaiah, Wheatley initially seems to defer to
scriptural authority, then transforms this legiti-
mation into a form of artistic self-empowerment,
and finally appropriates this biblical authority
through an interpreting ministerial voice.
When we consider how Wheatley manages
these biblical allusions, particularly how she
interprets them, we witness the extent to which
she has become self-authorized as a result of her
trainingandrefinement.Perhaps her sense of self
in this instance demonstrates the degree to which
she took to heart Enlightenment theories con-
cerning personal liberty as an innate human
right; these theories were especially linked to
the abolitionist arguments advanced by the
New England clergy with whom she had contact
(Levernier, ‘‘Phillis’’). Nevertheless, that an eight-
eenth-century woman (who was not a Quaker)
should take on this traditionally male role is
one surprise of Wheatley’s poem. That this self-
validating woman was a black slave makes this
confiscation of ministerial role even more singular.
Either of these implications would have profoundly
disturbed the members of the Old South Congrega-
tional Church in Boston, which Wheatley joined in
1771, had they detected her ‘‘ministerial’’ appropri-
ation of the authority of scripture. Accordingly,
Wheatley’s persona in ‘‘On Being Brought from
Africa to America’’ qualifies the critical complaints
that her poetry is imitative, inadequate, and unmi-
litant (e.g., Collins; Richmond 54–66); her persona
resists the conclusion that her poetry shows a resort
to scripture in lieu of imagination (Ogude); and her
persona suggests that her religious poetry may be
compatible with her political writings (e.g., Akers;
Burroughs). In this regard, one might pertinently
note that Wheatley’s voicein this poem anticipates
the ministerial role unwittingly assumed by an Afri-
can-American woman in the twenty-third chapter
of Harriet Beecher Stowe’sThe Minister’s Wooing
(1859), in which Candace’s hortatory words
intrinsically reveal what male ministers have failed
to teach about life and love.
In these ways, then, the biblical and aesthetic
subtleties of Wheatley’s poem make her case
about refinement. She demonstrates in the course
of her art that she is no barbarian from a ‘‘Pagan
land’’ who raises Cain (in the double sense of
transgressing God and humanity). Her biblically
authorized claim that the offspring of Cain ‘‘may
be refin’d’’ to ‘‘join th’ angelic train’’ transmutes
into her self-authorized artistry, in which her
desire to raise Cain about the prejudices against
her race is refined into the ministerial ‘‘angelic
train’’ (the biblical and artistic train of thought)
of her poem. This poetic demonstration of refine-
ment, of ‘‘blooming graces’’ in both a spiritual
and a cultural sense, is the ‘‘triumph in [her] song’’
entitled ‘‘On Being Brought from Africa to
America.’’
Source:William J. Scheick, ‘‘Phillis Wheatley’s Appro-
priation of Isaiah,’’ inEarly American Literature, Vol. 27,
1992, pp. 135–40.Sources
Carretta, Vincent, and Philip Gould, Introduction, in
Genius in Bondage: Literature of the Early Black Atlantic,
edited by Vincent Carretta and Philip Gould, University
Press of Kentucky, 2001, pp. 1–13.
Davis, Arthur P., ‘‘The Personal Elements in the Poetry
of Phillis Wheatley,’’ inCritical Essays on Phillis Wheat-
ley, edited by William H. Robinson, G. K. Hall, 1982,
p. 95.
Erkkila, Betsy, ‘‘Phillis Wheatley and the Black American
Revolution,’’ inA Mixed Race: Ethnicity in Early America,
edited by Frank Shuffelton, Oxford University Press, 1993,
pp. 233, 237.
Gates, Henry Louis, Jr.,The Trials of Phillis Wheatley:
America’s First Black Poet and Her Encounters with the
Founding Fathers, Basic Civitas Books, 2003, pp. 18, 33,
71, 82, 89–90.
Levernier, James, ‘‘Style as Process in the Poetry of Phillis
Wheatley,’’ inStyle, Vol. 27, No. 2, Summer 1993,
pp. 172–93.On Being Brought from Africa to America