Application #5 Part 1

Alfred Romero

11/8/2022

Professor Frank

Introduction to Literary Theory & Criticism 

Applications #5

For this applications assignment, the central focus will revolve around the work of British writer Robin Mitchell through an excerpt from her book titled Venus Noire: Black Women and Colonial Fantasies in Nineteenth-Century France. The content that will serve as the basis of discussion will stem from chapter 2, specifically pages fifty-one through fifty-seven, seventy-one through seventy-four, and seventy-eight through seventy-nine. The main problem that Mitchell identifies here ties into the concept of commodity. In this case of The Hottentot Venus, Sarah Baartmann herself became a commodity for the people of France despite thinking that she was going to earn commodities. Questions could arise then, on why and how she became a commodity. These questions are what Mitchell answers in her writing. Mitchell concludes that Baartmann was used the way she was by the French “to reverse what was seen as the degeneration of white French male virility and increasingly inappropriate behavior of white Frenchwomen and to help white Frenchmen regain a sense of control” (Mitchell 78). This was achieved through exaggerating Baartmann’s supposed abnormalities “to articulate all that was excessive in French society” (Mitchell 79). Essentially, Baartmann was used by the French as a teaching example through her presentation of being a societal normality regulator. As the empire was falling, unification was recreated through degrading Baartmann into becoming a spectacle to boost French cultural capital. 

Mitchell approaches this topic through a thorough comparison and analysis of art containing Baartmann with that of the historical context that takes place behind her. Just the description of how Baartmann was portrayed emphasizes her characterization of being a prostitute, which became of valued cultural use for when there were issues involving colonial failure (Mitchell 54). Mitchell traces France’s societal conflict within itself back to Napoleon Bonaparte’s defeat. From this, the era was marked by political and social uncertainty, “with royalists, Bonapartists, and republicans failing to reconcile their disparate ideologies (Mitchell 55). When Baartmann came to France, she “provided a convenient distraction from political upheaval and social change” (Mitchell 56). The oversexualization of her body “regulated normative French behaviors at home” (Mitchell 57) by providing an example of how men and women were supposed to act. Mitchell then proceeds to directly analyze Baartmann’s influence on French society through visual representation of Baartmann. Baartmann was depicted as “towering over” (Mitchell 71) the French (perhaps to signify foreign control over natural citizens?). The deliberate exaggeration of her bodily features served to highlight “what the introduction of ‘foreign elements’ can do to a ‘civilized society’ (Mitchell 72). With Frenchmen hurling insults and yelling phrases of amusement towards Baartmann, and with Frenchwomen becoming curious and contrasting themselves with Baartmann, her influence tied both societal groups towards what it meant to be their role in that society. Mitchell’s analysis of Baartmann’s exploitation highlights how commodities in society can be abused for the goal of regulating how a society is supposed to act. This matters for the audience as these commodities can be in the form of living beings. Who could potentially be exploited in contemporary society to show others what normality is? The audience could have relations with specific social groups that may fit into this criterion. This insight shows an audience that there may be a deeper layer with how advertisement and propaganda exploit specific social groups without them even realizing the contribution that exploitation may make towards regulating normality. The absence of the knowledge of this relationship between exploitation and regulation limits the human mind, creating this phenomenon where the person just mindlessly uses another as an example of how or how not to act, without even knowing why in the first place.