61 pages • 2 hours read
Suzan-Lori ParksVenus
Fiction | Play | Adult | Published in 1996A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
Chocolates
Content Warning: This section contains descriptions of racism, enslavement, sexual coercion and assault, as well as racist language and outdated terminology for race and gender.
The Venus’s favorite food in the text is chocolate, and, near the end of the play, she presents the history of chocolate. The history of chocolate is a seemingly irrelevant or tangential scene in the play, but it highlights the symbolic importance of chocolate in understanding Parks’s view of Baartman’s life. Chocolate is a symbol of the desire of imperial societies to claim and bring back specimens from their colonies, and the Venus’s explanation of the history of chocolate shows how chocolate was discovered by the Aztec people, brought back to Europe by the Spanish, made popular across Europe, celebrated for health benefits, then dismissed as sinful, decadent, and unhealthy. This same pattern is enacted in the play through the Venus’s life, as she is initially prized sexually, then shared across England and France, and then accused of being decadent or sinful.
The fact that chocolate is the Venus’s favorite food shows the connection between the Venus’s story and that of chocolate, with chocolate serving as a comfort to the Venus, and a representation of her own agency in the play. The “diva” personality of the Venus, especially shown in her fantasy of commanding servants, is fed by chocolate, which establishes her as a kind of imperialist. Though she is a member of the colonized peoples in England and France, her possession and consumption of chocolate act as a ward against racism and imperialism, flipping her narrative understanding of herself from oppressed to oppressor. Critically, chocolates are always a gift in the text, not the distinct purchases of the Venus but something given over to her by people like the Baron Docteur, who hold actual power over the Venus.
The Feather Amulet
The feather amulets are charms the Venus gives out to fans, intended as good luck charms. The most notable feather amulet is the one the Venus gives to the Baron Docteur, which he wears consistently in the latter half of the play. The feather amulet is a complex symbol representing both the hopes and fears of the European audience at the Venus’s exhibition. Much like chocolate, the feather amulet represents something taken from the colonies and brought back to the imperial center, but the feather amulet is much more ambiguous in meaning. For the Baron Docteur, the feather amulet represents his love of the Venus, largely sexual, which leads the Grade-School Chum to encourage the Baron Docteur to take off the amulet, representing the apprehensions of a society that is fundamentally threatened by colonized peoples’ cultures and potential resistance.
The widow in court presents the story of her husband receiving a feather from the Venus, which he managed to bring home despite a riot. However, her husband died two days later, showing the same duality that the Baron Docteur and Grade-School Chum enact over the Baron Docteur’s amulet. The amulet is both a symbol of the beauty of non-European cultures, and the threat manifested within those cultures against the European view of civility and society. Just as the widow’s husband dies from merely shock at seeing the Venus, and the Baron Docteur risks his career and marriage for the Venus, Europeans felt a distinct discomfort with their own attraction to foreign cultures and peoples.
Comparisons to Animals
The two primary instances of comparisons to animals in the text are the Mother-Showman kicking the Venus like a dog and the Baron Docteur’s observations comparing the Venus’s features and body to that of an ape. These comparisons form a motif in the play that emphasizes the latent racism and racist ideologies of 19th-century Europe, which often relied on comparing foreign peoples to animals to debase them as less than human. In the example of the Mother-Showman, who kicks the Venus more than once, the reality of that situation is that the Mother-Showman is kicking a person, the Venus, not an animal, but, by kicking the Venus as though she was a dog, the Mother-Showman is emphasizing the racist comparison that the Venus is less than human and therefore deserving of being kicked.
For the Baron Docteur, this comparison takes on a more insidious intention, as scientific racism was founded on trying to prove the closer connection between different races and apes, again to show how people of color were less developed and less truly human. The most important of the Baron Docteur’s notes on this front are those that note how the Venus did not deviate from the expected norm by any significant margin, which refutes the science of these comparisons, leaving only the figurative language that enforces the racist backing of this perspective. The text does not explicitly reference scientific racism or name this ideology, but the motif of comparing the Venus to an animal enforces both the common and academic beliefs in this ideology for the audience.
Related Titles
By Suzan-Lori Parks
