The Sad, Strange Life of Sarah Baartman
This African woman was named Sarah Baartman.
Image Source: Kentake Page
Born in South Africa’s Eastern Cape in 1789 in a cattle-herding Gonaquasub group of the Khoikhoi, she was introduced quite early to misery and loneliness. When she was two, she lost her mother, while her father passed away when she reached 13. She would later go on to marry a Khoikhoi man and have a child with him.
Unfortunately, it appears that family affection was never in her fate. Her child died shortly after birth, and when she was 16 years old, her village witnessed an attack by Dutch colonists,which claimed the life of her husband. Sarah was enslaved soon after.
After being enslaved, she was taken to Cape Town as a domestic servant. There, she caught the attention of an English surgeon named William Dunlop, because of her unusually large bottom:
Dunlop saw an opportunity to make money off the young Khoi woman’s figure, and came up with a contract which stated that she would be taken to England to work as a domestic servant and to be “exhibited” for entertainment purposes. She was also promised a portion of earnings’ from her exhibitions and be allowed to return to South Africa after five years. She ended up signing it, which appears quite dubious as she was illiterate.
However, when she arrived in England, nothing was like how it was promised to her. In her exhibitions, she wore a skin-tight, flesh-coloured clothing, as well as beads and feathers, and smoked a pipe.
Image Source: bbc.co.uk
She was also forced to show off her buttocks in a cage that was about a metre and half high. Wealthy customers could pay for private demonstrations in their homes, with their guests allowed to touch her.
Overnight, she became quite well-known throughout London and people from all over would come to get a glimpse of her. Soon after, print media was inundated with her cartoons, posters etc, such as the one below:
Image Source: jtrforums.com
Not all people who learned about her were in awe with her figure though. She had also caught the eye of some English abolitionists who sought to free her from this absolutely demeaning treatment by taking Dunlop to the court on the grounds that she was being forced to perform in the circus against her will. However, the contract she had allegedly signed with him was produced in front of the jury, which made them reject the abolitionists’ appeal.
After the case, the popularity of her shows began to fade away, which compelled Dunlop to take Sarah to Paris where he sold her to S. Reaux, an animal trainer. This is where things got even worse.
Reaux would display her around Paris in a cage, alongside a baby rhinoceros, and make her sit and stand in a way how circus animals are ordered to. At times, she would wear nothing more than a tan lion cloth, and that too in order to cover what was considered sacred in her culture. Her life had finally been reduced to that of an animal, and she later took to drinking and smoking in order to cope up with the spirit-breaking treatment she was receiving.
Now, prominent French naturalist, Georges Cuvier, would request Reaux to let him study Bartmaan for ‘scientific purposes’, to which the latter agreed. For days, she was the subject of some so-called ‘scientific paintings’, which in reality were a major factor in the foundation of scientific racism, a pseudo-scientific belief that justified racism.
In his ‘observations’ he is noted to have compared her movements with those of a monkey. He also wanted to study her genitals, to confirm the presence of an elongated Labia, to support this theory that “the more primitive the mammal, the more pronounced are the sexual organs”. However, she would never pose fully naked as she considered it beneath her dignity. Neither had she ever done so in any of her exhibitions.
Finally in 1815, at the age of 26, Sarah Baartman took her last breath, finally marking an end to her sufferings. But was it also the end of her humilitaion?
No.
After her death, Cuvier obtained Baartman’s body, and performed a highly invasive and a highly sexual examination on her corpse. Her bones were boiled, and her brain and genitals were removed. Cuvier finally had the evidence of an elongated Labia as well, an observation he used to spin the narrative of scientific racism which contributed in the enslavement and exploitation of a whole continent.
This isn’t the only posthumous cruelty he inflicted upon her though. Before her dissection, he had a plaster cast of her body made, which he later put on display alongside her skeleton, brain and genitals at the Museum of Man, Paris.
Image Source: Pinterest
What’s surprising is that it remained there till the year 1974, and was only removed after several feminist groups pressured the French government to have it removed. Even then, the attempts to have her remains returned to her homeland weren’t successful until Nelson Mandela himself made formal demands to have her repatriated.
It was finally in 2002, on the occasion of South Africa’s women’s day that her remains were finally laid to rest in Hankey in the Gamtoos River Valley, her birthplace:
Image Source: Google News
She was promised to return to South Africa after 5 years of her departure. She returned, but 200 years late. Remained disrespected in both, her life and death, Sarah Baartman was, at last, at peace.
While several 1000s of people suffered inexplicably under the evil of colonisation, Sarah’s story serves as an example of the exploitation and dehumanisation of women, especially of those coming from the oppressed sections.
Gosh, humans are such monsters!
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