PHILLIS WHEATLEY RESEARCH PAPER

Lena McCray
Women in History
Biography Research Paper
Professor Phillis

Phillis Wheatley

Phillis Wheatley was the first African American poet published in the United States. Wheatley was born in West Africa around 1753. She was captured as a slave in the area called Senegal. Wheatley was brought to America in one of the slave ships. In 1761 Wheatley was sold when she was about seven years old at a slave auction to a wealthy Boston merchant whose wife is named Susannah Wheatley. Wheatley showed a curiosity and ability for learning that led the Wheatley’s to want to educate her. Wheatley had a little room where she did all her reading and writing. The Wheatley’s wanted to educate her through bible study. Wheatley was taught how to read and write English and studied Classical and Contemporary poetry. Wheatley did so well she also learned how to read French, Latin, and Greek literature.
Wheatley began to write poetry around the age of thirteen. Wheatley published her first poem in 1770. She gained worldwide public recognition in 1770 with her poem “An Elegiac Poem, on the Death of that Jesus Christ, the Reverend and Learned George Whitefield”. Whitefield was a well-known minister and evangelist in American and Britain. Other poems that Wheatley wrote were also published by 1773. When Wheatley sailed to England her first book called Poems on Various Subject, Religion and Moral where published in London. Some copies were also sold in Boston Massachusetts. Wheatley was famous and honored in London, this was the high point of her life. Wheatley was granted freedom shortly after she returned to Boston Massachusetts in the fall of 1773, but continued to live with her former owners.
When Wheatley wrote her poems she also applied biblical representation to teach people about slavery, because of one of her best- known poem titled “Brought from Africa to America she was the first to applaud this nation and she also wrote a letter to George Washington who was the first president of the United States. After Wheatley wrote a letter to the president she was invited to meet him.
Wheatley married a fellow African, John Peters in 1774, and also had three children. He was a business man but he was not making a lot of money. Like many others, they had to scattered throughout the Northeast to avoid the fight during the Revolutionary War. They moved temporarily from Boston to Wilmington Massachusetts with little to no opportunity for employment, the couple fell in hard times shortly after their marriage the economic conditions in the colonies during and after the war were harsh, particularly for freed African American people who were unprepared to compete with the Caucasians in the stringent jobs market. However, with little to no job opportunities for employment, the couple fell on hard times, and Peter was jailed for their debt and she was now living in poverty. Wheatley had to get a job as a domestic in boarding house to support her and her children (all of whom died as toddlers). During the weeks after their return to Boston Phillis and her children stayed with one of Mrs. Wheatley’s nieces in a very nice mansion that was also converted to a day school after the war. Peter than moved them into an apartment in a rundown section of Boston, where Wheatley other relatives found Phillis sick and poor. Two of Phillis children died and one was very sick almost dead. She also was suffering because she was not use to the living environment. Phillis and her child laid there dying. Phillis was a woman who had stood honored and respected in the presence of the wise and the good was numbering her last hours of life in a state of the most abject misery, surrounded by all the emblems of a fetid poverty. She continued to write and publish her poems throughout the years. She also felt that despite the poor economy, her American audience and certainly her friends would support her second volume of poetry.
Between October and December of 1779 she had a little motive of raising money for her family, she ran six advertisements soliciting subscribers for “300 pages in Octavo,” a volume “Dedicated to the Right Hon. Benjamin Franklin , One of the Ambassadors of the United States at the Court of France,” that would include thirty- three poems and thirteen letters. Phillis Wheatley died, uncared for and alone. When she died Peter was incarcerated. Their last surviving child died in the time to be buried with his mother.
While Wheatley was a celebrated poet in her time most contemporary critics agreed that she was not an outstanding one. Yet the magnitude of her literacy achievements, given her circumstances, remains impressive. Recent criticism has caused scholars to look at Wheatley and consider her feminism in a new light. Wheatley could not explicitly write about her experience as black women it was possible that she felt compelled to encode it in her poems. Modern African - American critics have scrutinized Wheatley’s verse for evidence of racial pride or defiance of bondage. Wheatley was a minor poet who followed the literacy fashion of her age. Despite mixed views about her poetry remains a point of departure for the study of black literature in America.
In coall of whom died as toddlers