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“Short book about the "Hottentot Venus": a Khoisan woman who appeared as a somwhat humiliating novelty act in early 19th century London and Paris. After her death she was dissected, exhibited and eventually her remains sent back for burial in South Africa.
TheophileEscargot wrote this review Saturday, March 28 2009. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No
Never fluent in English or French, nothing much in Baartman's own words survives. Holmes makes some reasonable assumption about what she thought of it all based on those around her, but wisely doesn't engage in too much speculation. In Europe, she was always something of a pawn: a martyr to anti-slavery activists, a revenue stream to those who profited, a usefully Different specimen to "scientific racists".
There seems to have been a mixture of coercion and bribery used to get her too cooperate, it's hard to know to what degree she was willing to go on show. She performed songs and music, but was obviously resentful at times. Eventually she became a heavy drinker, and seems to have died from some combination of flu and alcoholism.
The book is pretty useful and informative, competently not brilliantly written. Has quite a bit of lightweight sociology about imperialist ideology and so on.
Overall, not bad, but if you've read the Stephen Jay Gould essay about her you'll know the basics already, and there's not a lot that's new here.”
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