356 Student’s Encyclopedia of Great American Writers
and supported by a muse. Her conversion to Christianity, afforded by her transplantation from Africa to America, provides her with the opportunity to explore ethereal spaces in her verse and with additional authority by which to offer advice to the Harvard students. Her fi nal stanza is written in the tone of a Christian woman offering the sage advice of an elder to the young. She commends them to perform good acts, to rebuke sin, and to remain on their guard against temptations and possible moral fall. When Wheatley writes, “Suppress the deadly serpent in its egg,” she acknowledges that humans have sin or evil within them that needs to be suppressed; this theory of man’s fallen state equalizes all the figures who appear in the poem, most especially those from Africa’s “land of errors” and those with the “privileges” of a Harvard education.
For Discussion or Writing 1. Wheatley equates Christianity with academic endeavors. How does her notion of a moral education relate to COTTON M ATHER’s defi nitions of education expressed in The Christian Philosopher and Bonifacius? 2. Compare Wheatley’s concept of an education with that of H ANNAH FOSTER WEBSTER in The Boarding School. What impact does gender have in each writer’s defi nition of a commendable education?
“A Farewell to America” (1773) Wheatley’s poem is occasioned by both her personal retreat to England for health reasons and the more politically charged reason why a journey to England might allow her to escape from the bonds of slavery. The poem begins with the dissonance between the new life of spring in America and Wheatley’s own lack of health. America is fi lled with “smiling meads” and “flow’ry plain,” whose charms appear in vain for Wheatley. Although she records these signs of new life in New England, they remain in contrast to the poet’s own feelings and physi-
cal disposition, which are never fully expressed in the poem. Instead, Wheatley connects her hope for renewed health to classical Greek notions of dawn, referring to health itself as a “Celestial maid of rosy hue” (9). The “rosy hue” describes the ruddy complexion often reflected on the face of a healthy and natural figure. Wheatley opines that she may “feel thy reign” (10). The language of being ruled by a monarch or a goddess, someone who can “reign,” is particularly telling as the despotic rule of either is usually the cause for Americans to cry out for their freedom. In the context of Wheatley’s journey from America to Britain, the return to a monarch’s reign, in this case, that of George III, seems counterintuitive, a movement not toward liberty but to the very chains that imprisoned America. Because Lord Mansfield had recently provided asylum for all Africans forced to leave England, Wheatley’s phrase “feel thy reign” might easily apply to her desire to enjoy the privileges of freedom afforded under England’s recent law. Mansfield was involved in passing such a proposal only months prior to Wheatley’s journey. The next two stanzas are dedicated to the emotional turmoil created by Wheatley’s departure from her mistress, Susanna Wheatley, who purchased her in Boston when she was roughly seven years old and released her from the bonds of slavery upon her return from England in late 1773. Wheatley does not dwell lightly on the feelings of mourning that pervade her mistress’s frame on her departure. It is in these two stanzas, in which she not only remarks upon her mistress’s grief and mourning at her departure from New England but also expresses hope that Susanna Wheatley “let no sight, nor groan for me / Steal from her pensive breast,” that Wheatley’s confl icted emotional response to her journey rests and her references in the fi nal two stanzas to temptation make sense (19–20). London itself constitutes a temptation for Wheatley for the reason that her time there might afford her rights and privileges denied her in America. And yet one would imagine the prospect of freedom to be less a temptation than a promise, a reward for years of toil and loyal service to the