Saarra Baartman Characteristics

Sara Baartman known in Europe as the Hottentot Venus, also as Saartje, Sartjee and Sarah Bartmann was born on the South African frontier in the 1770s. She lived nearly three decades in South Africa and spent five years in Europe before dying in Paris at the end of 1815. She lived and was displayed in Europe during an era of exploration and inquiry: Europe was entombed in science and more prominently in the Western imagining of women, race and sexuality Europeans scientists and Baartman’s captors were obsessed with their own superiority and with proving the extent to which other races were inferior to them. Sara Baartman’s physical features, unusually large buttocks and genitals, were living proof of the theories that Europeans developed and
These European scientists and naturalists had many theories about whether or not the Khoikhoi people were even human to begin with and “the academic interest for her body’s morphology [was] to serve colonial ideologies” (Source G).This is the fundamental notion in the ideology that the Europeans believed in – doubting the humanity of races different to theirs and this is what leads to the iconography of Sara Baartman as they wondered if the “Hottentots belong to the family of monkeys and not humans? The female body [of Sara Baartman] held the secret” (Source
During the early 1800’s in London, displaying acquisitions was considered to be a cultural norm because people obtained a higher social standing from displaying all that they owned as “many materials that were exhibited in the shows [included] humans, animals and objects” (Source C) and so the display of Sara Baartman was viewed as phenomenon because her exhibition “formed the basis for [a] theatrical” (Source C) performance. Sara Baartman simply entertained and satisfied their human curiosities. The members of the public that went to view the “Hottentot Venus” after Sara Baartman’s arrival in London saw how she was treated, how she was displayed “in a travelling circus [and] handled by an animal trainer” (Source B). Posters used to advertise the display of Sara Baartman (Source D) emphasise the notion that her captors and the members of the public that viewed Sara Baartman really did not see her as a human being with a personality and feelings. The choice of diction: “the greatest phenomenon” and the layout of this poster reflect the advertising on an inanimate object. The advertisement is cold and clinical “just arrived from the interior of Africa” - this reflects the view that Sara Baartman was nothing more than a spectacular phenomenon, a freak show that one did not want to