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Black Bodies, White Bodies: Toward an

Iconography of Female Sexuality in
Late Nineteenth-Century Art, Medicine, and
Literature

Sander L. Gilman

How do we organize our perceptions of the world? Recent discussio1

of this age-old question have centered around the function of visu
conventions as the primary means by which we perceive and transrr
our understanding of the world about us. 1 Nowhere are these conventioi
more evident than in artistic representations, which consist more or le
exclusively of icons. Rather than presenting the world, icons represei
it. Even with a rnodest nod to supposedly mimetic portrayals it is appare1
that, when individuals are shown \vithin a work of art (no matter ho
broadly defined), the ideologically charged iconographic nature of tl
representation dominates. And it dominates in a very specific manne
for the representation of individuals implies the creation of some greati
class or classes to 'vhich the individual is seen to belong. ~rhese class1
in turn are characterized by the use of a model which synthesizes 01
perception of the uniformity of the groups into a convincingly horn<
geneous image. The resulting stereotypes may be overt, as in the cat
of caricatures, or covert, as in eighteenth~century portraiture. But the
serve to focus the viewer's attention on the relationship between tb
portrayed individual and the general qualities ascribed to the class.
Specific individual realities are thus given mythic extension throug
association with the qualities of a class. These realities manifest as icor
representing perceived attributes of the class into which the individu;
has been placed. "fhe myths associated \Vith the class, the myth of differenc
from the rest of hu1nanity, is thus, to an extent, composed of fragmen1
of the real world, perceived through the ideological bias of the observe

224

t':i'ander L. Gilman

~fhese

myths are often so po\verful, and the associations of their conventions

so overpowering, that they are able to move from class to class without
substantial alteration. In linking otherwise marginally or totally unrelated
classes of individuals, the use of these conventions reveals perceptual
patterns which thernselves illuminate the inherent ideology at work.
While the discussion of the function of conventions has helped reveal
the essential iconographic nature of all visual representation, it has mainly
been limited to a specific sphere--aesthetics. And although the definition
of the aesthetic has expanded greatly in the past decade to include everything from decoration to advertising, it continues to dominate discussions
of visual conventions. Patterns of conventions are established within the
world of art or between that world and parallel ones, such as the world
of literature, but they go no farther. We maintain a special sanctity about
the aesthetic object which \Ve deny to the conventions of representation
in other areas.
This essay is an attempt to plumb the conventions (and thus the
ideologies) which exist at a specific historical mo1nent in both the aesthetic
and scientific spheres. I will assun1e the existence of a \veb of conventions
within the world of the aesthetic--conventions v-.rhich have else\vhere
been admirably illustrated-but will depart from the norm by examining
the synchronic existence of another series of conventions, those of medicine.
I do not mean in any way to accord special status to rnedical conventions.
Indeed, the world is full of overlapping and intertwined systems of conventions, of which the medical and the aesthetic are but two. Medicine
offers an especially interesting source of conventions since we do tend
to give 1nedical conventions special "scientific" status as opposed to the
"suq_jective" status of the aesthetic conventions. But medical icons are no
n1ore "real" than "aesthetic" ones. Like aesthetic icons, medical icons may
(or may not) be rooted in sorne observed reality. Like thern, they are
iconographic in that they represent these realities in a manner detennined
by the historical position of the observers, their relationship to their own
ti1ne, and to the history of the conventions which they employ. Medicine
uses its categories to structure an image of the diversity of n1ankind; it
is as n1uch at the n1ercy of the needs of any age to comprehend this
infinite diversity as any other system which organizes our percept.ion of
the \VOrld. rfhe power of medicine, at Jeas( in the nineteenth century,

Sander L. Gilman is professor of flu1nane Studies in the Departments of Ger1nan Literature and Near Eastern Studies and professor of
Psychiatry (History) in the Cornell Medical College, Cornell University.
He is the author or editor of numerous studies of European cultural
history with a focus on the history of stereotypes. In addition, he has
coedited Degeneration (1985) \Vith J. E. C:ha1nberlin. His most recent
publication is Jewish Self-Hatred.

Black Bodies, White Bodies

225

lies in the rise of the status of science. 'fhe conventions of medicine

infiltrate other seemingly closed iconographic systems precisely because
of this status. In exarnining the conventions of medicine employed in
other areas, 've must not forget this power.
One excellent example of the conventions of human diversity captured
in the iconography of the nineteenth century is the linkage of two seen1ingly
unrelated female images-the icon of the Hottentot female and the icon
of the prostitute. In the course of the nineteenth century, the fe1nale
Hottentot comes to represent the black female in nuce, and the prostitute
to represent the sexualized woman. Both of these categories represent
the creation of classes which correspondingly represent very specific
qualities. \Vhile the number of terms describing the various categories
of the prostitute expanded substantially during the nineteenth century,
all were used to label the sexualized woman. Likewise, while n1any groups
of African blacks were known to Europeans in the nineteenth century,
the Hottentot remained representative of the essence of the black, especially
the black female. Both concepts fulfilled an iconographic function in the
perception and the representation of the world. How these two concepts
were associated provides a case study for the investigation of patterns of
conventions, without any limitation on the "value" of one pattern over
another.
Let us begin with one of the classic works of nineteenth-century art,
a work which records the idea of both the sexualized woman and the
black woman. Edouard Manet's Olympia, painted in 1862~63 and first
exhibited in the Salon of 1865, asSumes a key position in documenting
the merger of these two images (fig. I). The conventional wisdom concerning Manet's painting states that the model, Victorine Meurend, is
"obviously naked rather than conventionally nude," 2 and that her pose
is heavily indebted to classical models such as Titian's Venus of Urbino
(1538), Francisco Goya's Naked Maja (1800), and Eugene Delacroix's
Odalisque (1847), as well as other works by Manet's contemporaries, such
as Gustave Courbet.'.'. George Needham has shown quite convincingly
that Manet was also using a convention of early erotic photography in
having the central figure directly confront the observer.'1 1~he black female
attendant, based on a black model called Laura, has been seen as a reflex
of both the classic black servant figure present in the visual arts of the
eighteenth century as well as a representation of Baudelaire's Vtfnusnoire. 5
Let us juxtapose the Olympia, with all its aesthetic and artistic analogies
and parallels, to a work by Manet which (;.eorges Bataille, arr1ong others,
has seen as a modern "genre scene"-the Nana of 1877 (fig. 2). 6 Unlike
Oly1npia, Nana is modern, a creature of present-day Paris, according to
a contemporary. 7 But like Olympia, Nana was perceived as a sexualized
ferr1ale and is so represented. Yet in moving from a work with an evident
aesthetic provenance, as understood by Manet's conte1nporaries, to one
which was influenced by the former and yet was seen by its conten1poraries

FIG.

2.~Manet,

Nana, 1877. Kunsthalle, Hamburg. Pho!. 1-fuseuin.

228

Sander L. Gilman

as modern, certain major shifts in the iconography of the sexualized

'iVOtnan take place, not the least of which is the appatent disappearance
of the black female.
lbe figure of the black servant in European art is ubitjuitous. Richard
Strauss knew this when he had IIugo von IIofmannsthal conclude their
conscious evocation of the eighteenth century, Der Rosenkavalier (1911),
with the mute return of the little black servant to reclaim the Marschallin's
forgotten gloves. 8 But Hofrnannsthal was also aware that one of the black
servant's central functions in the visual arts of the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries was to sexualize the society in which he or she is found. The
forgotten gloves, for instance, mark the end of the relationship between
()ctavian, the Knight of the Rose, and the Marschallin: the illicit nature
of their sexual relationship, which opens the opera, is thereby linked to
the appearance of the figure of the black servant, which closes the opera.
When one turns to the narrative art of the eighteenth century-for
' example, to William Hogarth's two great cycles, A Rake's Progress (173334) and A Harlot's Progress (1731}-it is not very surprising that, as in
the Strauss opera some two centuries later, the figures of the black servants
inark the presence of illicit sexual activity. Furthermore, as in Hoftnannsthal's libretto, they appear in the opposite sex to the central figure.
In the second plate of A Harlot's Progress, we see Moll Hackabout as the
mistress of a Jewish merchant, the first stage of her decline as a sexualized
female; also present is a young, black n1ale servant (fig. 3). In the third
stage of ~fom Rakewell's collapse, we find hin1 in a notorious brothel,
the Rose Tavern in Covent Garden. 9 "fhe entire picture is full of references
to illicit sexual activity, all portrayed negatively; present as well is the
figure of a young fernale black servant.
The association of the black with concupiscence reaches back into
the Middle Ages. The twelfth-century Jewish traveler Be!:!jamin of Tudela
wrote that
at Seba on the river Pishon ... is a people ... who, like anirr1als,
eat of the herbs that grow on the banks of the Nile and in the fields.
"fhey go about naked and have not the intelligence of ordinary
men. rfhey cohabit 'ivith their sisters and anyone they can find ...
And these are the Black slaves, the sons of I-lam. 10
By the eighteenth century, the sexuality of the black, both n1ale and
female, becon1es an icon for deviant sexuality in general; as we have
seen, the black figure appears almost always paired with a white figure
of the opposite sex. By the nineteenth century, as in the Oly1npia, or more
crudely in one of a series of Viennese erotic prints entitled "The Servant"
(fig. 4), the central fen1ale figure is associated with a black female in such
a way as to imply their sexual sin1ilarity. The association of figures of
the same sex stresses the special status of female sexuality. In "The Servant"

FIG.

4.~Franz

von Bayros, "The

Servant,~

ca. 1890.

Black Bodies, White Bodies

231

the overt sexuality of the black child indicates the covert sexuality of the
white woman, a sexuality quite manifest in the other plates in the series.
The relationship between the sexuality of the black woman and that of
the sexualized white woman enters a new dimension when contemporary
scientific discourse concerning the nature of black female sexuality is
examined.
Buffon commented on the lascivious, apelike sexual appetite of the
black, introducing a commonplace of early travel literature into a "scientific"
context. 11 Ile stated that this animallike sexual appetite went so far as to
lead black women to copulate with apes. The black female thus comes
to serve as an icon for black sexuality in general. Buffon's view was based
on a confusion of two applications of the great chain of being to the
nature of the black. Such a scale was employed to indicate the innate
difference between the races: in this view of mankind, the black occupied
the antithetical position to the white on the scale of hu1nanity. This
polygenetic view was applied to all aspects of 1nankind, including sexuality
and beauty. The antithesis of European sexual mores and beauty is en1bodied in the black, and the essential black, the lowest rung on the great
chain of being, is the Iiottentot. The physical appearance of the Hottentot
is, indeed, the central nineteenth-century icon for sexual difference between
the European and the black-a perceived difference in sexual physiology
which puzzled even early monogenetic theoreticians such as Johann
Friedrich Blurnenbach.
Such labeling of the black female as more pri1nitive, and therefore
more sexually intensive, by writers like the Abbe Raynal would have been
dismissed as unscientific by the radical empiricists of late eighteenth- and
early nineteenth-century Europe. 12 To meet their scientific standards, a
paradign1 was needed which would technically place both the sexuality
and the beauty of the black in an antithetical position to that of the white.
This paradigm would have to be rooted in some type of unique and
observable physical difference; they found that difference in the distinction
they drew between the pathological and the normal in the 1nedical n1odel.
William Bynum has contended that nineteenth-century biology constantly
needed to deal with the polygenetic argument. We see the validity of his
contention demonstrated here, for the medical model assun1es the polygenetic difference between the races. 13
It was in the work of J. J. Virey that this alteration of the 1node of
discourse-though not of the underlying ideology concerning the black
female-took place. He was the author of the study of race standard in
the early nineteenth century and also contributed a n1ajor essay (the only
one on a specific racial group) to the widely cited Dictionnaire des sciences
medicates [Dictionary of medical sciences] (1819). 14 In this essay, Virey summarized his (and his contemporaries') views on the sexual nature of black
fen1ales in terms of acceptable medical discourse. According to hiin, their
"voluptuousness" is "developed to a degree of lascivity unknown in our

232

Sander L. Gilman

climate, for their sexual organs are much 1nore developed than those of
whites." Elsewhere, Virey cites the Hottentot wornan as the epiton1e of
this sexual lasciviousness and stresses the relationship between her physiology and her physiognomy (her uhideous form" and her uhonibly flattened
nose"). His central proof is a discussion of the unique structure of the
Flott:entot female's sexual parts, the description of which he takes from
the anatomical studies published by his contemporary, Georges Cuvier. 1r'
According to Cuvier, the black female looks different. Her physiognomy,
her skin color, the form of her genitalia label her as inherently different.
In the nineteenth century, the black fernale was widely perceived as
possessing not only a "pri1nitive" sexual appetite but also the external
signs of this ten1perarnent~"primitive" genitalia. Eighteenth-century
travelers to southern Africa, such as Franc;ois Le Vaillant and John
Barrow, had described the so-called Hottentot apron, a hypertrophy of
the labia and nymphae caused by the manipulation of the genitalia and
serving as a sign of beauty among certain tribes, including the Hottentots
and Bushmen as well as tribes in Basutoland and Dahomey. 16
The exhibition in 1810 of Saartjie Baartman, also called Sarah Bartmann or Saat-Jee and known as the "Hottentot Venus," caused a public
scandal in a London inflamed by the issue of the abolition of slavery,
since she '\'as exhibited "to the public in a manner offensive to decency.
She ... does exhibit all the shape and frame of her body as if naked"
(fig. 5). The state's o~jection was as much to her lewdness as to her status
as an indentured black. Jn France her presentation was similar. Sarah
Bartmann was not the only African to be so displayed: in 1829 a nude
Hottentot woman, also called "the flottentot Venus," was the prize attraction at a ball given by the Duchess Du Barry in Paris. A contemporary
print emphasized her physical difference from the observers portrayed
(hg. 6). 17 After more than five years of exhibition in Europe, Sarah
Bartrnann died in Paris in 1815 at the age of twenty-five. An autopsy
was performed on her which was first written up by Henri de Blainville
in 1816 and then, in its rr1ost famous version, by Cuvier in 1817. 18 Reprinted
at least twice during the next decade, Cuvier's description reflected de
Blainville's two intentions: the comparison of a fernale of the "lov. est:"
hun1an species v.rith the highest ape (the orangutan) and the description
of the anomalies of the Hottentot's "organ of generation." It is important
to note that Sarah Bartmann 'vas exhibited not to show her genitalia but
rather to present another anomaly which the European audience (and
pathologists such as de Blainville and Cuvier) found riveting. T'his 1vas
the steatopygia, or protruding buttocks, the other physical characteristic
of the 1-Iottentot fen1ale which captured the eye of early European travelers.
Thus the figure of Sarah Bart1nann was reduced Lo her sexual parts. '1~he
audience which had paid to see her buttocks and had fantasized about
the uniqueness of her genitalia when she was alive could, after her death
and dissection, examine both, for Cuvier presented to "the Academy the
1

FIG. 5.--"The Hottentot Venus." Georges Cuvier, "Extraits d'observations

faites sur le cadavre d'une femme connue a Paris et a Londres sous le nom de
Venus Hottentote," 1817.

Black Bodies, YVhite Bodies

235

genital organs of this woman prepared in a way so as to allow one to see

the nature of the labia." 19
Sarah Barttnann's sexual parts, her genitalia and her buttocks, serve
as the central image for the black female throughout the nineteenth
century. And the rnodel of de Blainville's and Cuvier's descriptions, which
center on the detailed presentation of the sexual parts of the black,
dominates all rnedical description of the black during the nineteenth
century. To an extent, this reflects the general nineteenth-century understanding of female sexuality as pathological: the fen1ale genitalia were
of interest partly as exan1ples of the various pathologies which could
befall them but also because the female genitalia came to define the
female for the nineteenth century. When a specimen was to be preserved
for an anatomical museun1, more often than not the specimen \Vas seen
as a pathological summary of the entire individual. 'I'hus, the skeleton
of a giant or a d\varf represented "giantism" or "dwarfism"; the head of
a criminal represented the act of execution which labeled him "criminal." 20
Sarah Bartmann's genitalia and buttocks sumn1arized her essence for the
nineteenth-century observer, or, indeed, for the twentieth-century one,
as they are still on display at the Musee de l'homme in Paris. Thus when
one turns to the autopsies of Hottentot females in the nineteenth century,
their description centers about the sexual parts. l)e Blainville (1816) and
Cuvier (1817) set the tone, which is followed by A. W. Otto in 1824,
Johannes Miiller in 1834, William H. Flower and James Murie in 1867,
and Luschka, Koch, and G6rtz in 1869 (fig. 7). 21 cfhese presentations of
tlottentot or Bushman \Votnen all focus on the presentation of the genitalia
and buttocks. Flo\ver, the editor of thejourna1 ef Anatomy and Physiology,
included his dissection study in the opening volu1ne of that famed journal.
His ideological intent was dear. tie wished to provide data "relating to
the unity or plurality of mankind." His description begins with a detailed
presentation of the form and size of the buttocks and concludes with his
portrayal of the "remarkable development of the labia 1ninoria, or nymphae,
which is so general a characteristic of the Hottentot and Bushman race."
1'hese \Vere "sufficiently well marked to distinguish these parts at once
from those of any of the ordinary varieties of the human species." 'rhe
polygenetic argument is the ideological basis for all the dissections of
these won1en. If their sexual parts could be shown to be inherently
different, this would be a sufficient sign that the blacks were a separate
(and, needless to say, lower) race, as different from the European as the
proverbial orangutan. Sin1ilar arguments had been made about the nature
of all blacks' (and not just Hottentots') genitalia, but almost always concerning the fe1nale. Edw-ard 1'urnipseed of South Carolina argued in
1868 that the hymen in black wo1nen "is not at the entrance to the vagina,
as in the white woman, but fron1 one-and-a-half to two inches from its
entrance in the interior.'.' From this he concluded that "this may be one
of the anaton1ical marks of the non-unity of the races." 22 His views were

FIG. 7.~The "I-fottentot Apron." Johannes Miiller, "Ueber die ii.usscren Gcschlechtstheile
der Buschmanninnen," figs. I and 2, 1834.

Black Bodies, White Bodies

237

seconded in 1877 by C.H. Fort, who presented anothef six cases of this
seetning anomaly. 23 In co1nparison, when one turns to the description
of the autopsies of black males from approximately the same period, the
absence of any discussion of the male genitalia whatsoever is striking.
For exan1ple, William Turner, in his three dissections of male blacks in
1878, 1879, and 1896, makes no mention at all of the genitalia. 24 The
uniqueness of the genitalia and buttocks of the black is thus associated
primarily with the female and is taken to be a sign solely of an anotnalous
female sexuality.
By mid-century the image of the genitalia of the Hottentot had
assumed a certain set of implications. ~fhe central view is that these
anomalies are inherent, biological variations rather than adaptions. In
rfheodor Billroth's standard handbook of gynecology, a detailed presentation of the "Hottentot apron" is part of the discussion of errors in
development of the female genitalia (Entwicklungsfehler). By 1877 it was
a cotnmonplace that the Hottentot's anomalous sexual form was sirnilar
to other errors in the develop1nent of the labia. The author of this section
Jinks this 1nalfor1nation \Vith the overdevelopment of the clitoris, which
he sees as leading to those "excesses" which "are called 'lesbian love.'"
The concupiscence of the black is thus associated also with the sexuality
of the lesbian. 25 In addition, the idea of a congenital error incorporates
the disease model applied to the deformation of the labia in the I-Iottentot,
for the model of degeneracy presumes some acquired pathology in one
generation which is the direct cause of the stigmata of degeneracy in the
next. Surely the best example for this is the concept of congenital syphilis
as captured in the popular consciousness by Henrik Ibsen's drama of
biological decay, Ghosts. 'I'hus Billroth's "congenital failure" is presupposed
to have some direct and explicable etiology as well as a specific manifestation.
While this text is silent as to the etiology, '"e can see the link established
between the ill, the bestial, and the freak (pathology, biology, and n1edicine)
in this view of the Hottentot's genitalia.
At this point, an aside might help explain both the association of
the genitalia, a primary sexual characteristic, and the buttocks, a secondary
sexual characteristic, in their role as the semantic signs of "primitive"
sexual appetite and activity. Havelock Ellis, in volume 4 of his Studies in
the Psychology of Sex (1905), provided a detailed example of the great
chain of being as applied to the perception of the sexualized Other. Ellis
believed that there is an absolute scale of beauty which is totally oQjective
and which ranges from the European to the black. Thus men of the
lower races, according to Ellis, admire European women more than their
own, and women of lower races atte1npt to whiten thernselves with face
powder. Ellis then proceeded to list the secondary sexual characteristics
which con1prise this ideal of beauty, rejecting the "naked sexual organ[s]"
as not "aesthetically beautiful" since it is "fundamentally necessary" that
they "retain their primitive characteristics." Only people "in a low state

238

Sander L. Gilman

of culture" perceive the "naked sexual organs as objects of attraction." 26

1'he list of secondary sexual characteristics which Ellis then gives as the
signs of a cultured (that is, not primitive) perception of th~ body-the
vocabulary of aesthetically pleasing signs-begins with the buttocks. ''fhis
is, of course, a nineteenth~century fascination vith the buttocks as a
displacement for the genitalia. Ellis gives it the quality of a higher regard
for the beautiful. His discussions of the buttocks ranks the races by size
of the female pelvis, a view which began with Willem Vrolik's claim in
1826 that a narrow pelvis is a sign of racial superiority and is echoed by
R. Verneau's study in 1875 of the form of the pelvis among the various
races. 27 Verneau uses the pelvis of Sarah Hartmann to argue the primitive
nature of the Hottentot's anatomical structure. Ellis accepts this ranking,
seeing the steatopygia as "a simulation of the large pelvis of the higher
races," having a compensatory function like face powder in emulating
white skin. ~fhis view places the pelvis in an intertnediary role as both a
secondary as well as a primary sexual sign. Danvin himself, who held
sin1ilar views as to the o~jective nature of human beauty, saw the pelvis
as a "primary [rather] than as a secondary ... character" and the buttocks
of the Hottentot as a somewhat comic sign of the primitive, grotesque
nature of the black female. 28
When the Victorians saw the female black, they saw her in terms
of her buttocks and sa\v represented by the buttocks all the anomalies
of her genitalia. In a mid-century erotic caricature of the Hottentot
Venus, a white, male observer views her through a telescope, unable to
see anything but her buttocks (fig.. 8). 29 This fascination with the uniqueness
of the sexual parts of the black focuses on the buttocks over and over
again. In a British pornographic novel, published in 1899 but set in a
tnythic, antebellum Southern United States, the n1ale author indulges
his fantasy of flagellation on the buttocks of a nun1ber of white women.
When he describes the one black, a runaway slave, being shipped, the
power of the image of the flottentot's buttocks captures him:
She would have had a good figure, only that her bottom was out
of all proportion. It was too big, but nevertheless it was fairly well
shaped, with well-rounded cheeks meeting each other closely, her
thighs were large, and she had a sturdy pair of legs, her skin was
smooth and of a clear yellow tint. 30
l"he presence of exaggerated buttocks points to the other, hidden sexual
signs, both physical and temperamental, of the black female. This assocjation is a powerful one. Indeed Freud, in Three Essays on Sexuality
(1905), echoes the view that female genitalia are 1nore primitive than
those of the male, for fernale sexuality is more anal than that of the
male. 21 Female sexuality is linked to the image of the buttocks, and the
quintessential buttocks are those of the Hottentot.

~--------.---------------------,.-~

FIG.

8.~"The

Hottentot Venus, popular engraving, ca. 1850.

240

Sander L. Gilman

We can see in Edv.:in Long's painting of 1882, The Babylonian Marriage

Market, the centrality of this vocabulary in perceiving the sexualized
woman (fig. 9). This painting was the most expensive work of contemporary
art sold in nineteenth-century London. It also has a special place in
docu1nenting the perception of the sexualized fenlale in terms of the
great chain of aesthetic perception presented by Ellis. Long's painting
is based on a specific text from Herodotus, who described the marriage
auction in Babylon in which maidens were sold in order of comeliness.
In the painting they are arranged in order of their attractiveness. Their
physiognomies are clearly portrayed. Their features run from the most
European and white (a fact ernphasized by the light reflected from the
tnirror onto the figure at the far left) to the Negroid features (thick lips,
broad nose, dark but not black skin) of the figure furthest to the observer's
right. The latter figure fulfills all ofVirey's categories for the appearance
of the black. rfhis is, ho\vever, the Victorian scale of sexualized women
acceptable within marriage, portrayed from the most ro the least attractive,
according to contemporary British standards. 'J'he only black feinale
present is the servant-slave shown on the auction block, positioned so as
to present her buttocks to the viewer. While there are black males in the
audience and thus among the bidders, the only black female is associated
with sexualized white wornen as a signifier of their sexual availability.
Her position is her sign and her presence in the painting
is thus analogous to the figure of the black servant, Laura, in Manet's
Olympia. liere, the linkage between two female figures, one black and
one white, represents not the perversities of human sexuality in a corrupt
society, such as the black servants signify in Hogarth; rather, it represents
the internalization of this perversity in one specific aspect of human
society, the sexualized fen1ale, in the perception of late nineteenth-century
Europe.
In the nineteenth century, the prostitute is perceived as the essential
sexualized fen1ale. She is perceived as the embodiment of sexuality and
of all that is associated with sexuality-disease as well as passion. 32 Within
the large and detailed literature concerning prostitution \Vritten during
the nineteenth century (rnost of which docun1ents the need for legal
controls and draws on the n1e<lical rnodel as perceived by public health
officials), t.he physiogno1ny and physiology of the prosr.itute are analyzed
in detail. We can begin with the rnost widely read early nineteenthcentury work on prostitution, that of A. J. B. Parent-Duchatelet, who
provides a documentation of the anthropology of the prostitute in his
study of prostitution in Paris (1836). 33 A.lain Corbin has shown how
Parent~Duchatelet's use of the public health inodel reduces the prostitute
to yet another source of pollution, similar to the sewers of Paris. Likewise
in Parent-Duchatelet's discussion of the physiognomy of the prostitute,
he believes hirnself to be providing a descriptive presentation of the
appearance of the prostitute. He presents his readers with a statistical

242

Sander L. Gihnan

description of the physical types of the prostitutes, the nature of. their
voices, the color of their hair and eyes, their physical anorr1alies, and
their sexual profile in relation to childbearing and disease. ParentDuchatelet.'s descriptions range frorn the detailed to the anecdotal. His
discussion of the embonpoint of the prostitute begins his litany of external
signs. Prostitutes have a "peculiar plumpness" which is attributed to "the
great nurnber of hot baths which the major part of these women take"or perhaps to their lassitude, since they rise at ten or eleven in the
morning, "leading an animal life." l'hey are fat as prisoners are fat, fro1n
simple confinement. As an English commentator noted, "the grossest
and stoutest of these women are to be found amongst the lowest and
most disgusting classes of prostitutes." 34 'fhese are the Hottentots on the
scale of the sexualized female.
When Parent-Duchatelet considers the sexual parts of the prostitutes,
he provides t\VO sets of information which n1erge to beco1ne part of the
myth of the physical anthropology of the prostitute. ''fhe prostitute's
sexual parts are in no way directly affected by her profession. He contradicts
the "general opinion ... that the genital parts in prostitutes must alter,
and assume a particular disposition, as the inevitable consequence of
their avocation" (P, p. 42). He cites one case of a won1an of fifty-one
"who had prostituted herself thirty-six years, but in who1n, not\vithstanding,
the genital parts might have been mistaken for those of a virgin just
arrived at puberty" (P, p. 43). Parent-Duchatelet thus rc;jects any Lan1arckian
adaptation as well as any indication that the prostitute is inherently marked
as a prostit~te. This, of course, follo\vs from his view that prostitution is
an illness of a society rather than of an individual or group of individuals.
While he does not see the genitalia of the prostitute altering, he does
observe that prostitutes were su~ject to specific pathologies of their genitalia.
rhey are especially prone to tumors "of the great labia ... which comtnence
with a little pus and tumefy at each menstrual period" (P, p. 49). He
identifies the central pathology of the prostitute in the following manner:
"Nothing is more frequent in prostitutes than com1non abscesses in the
thickness of the labia rnajora" (P, p. 50). Parent-Duchatelet's two viewsfirst, that there is no adaption of the sexual organ and, second, that the
sexual organ is especially prone to labial tumors and abscesses-merge
in the image of the prostitute as developing, through illness, an altered
appearance of the genitalia.
From Parent-Duchatelet's description of the physical appearance of
the prostitute (a catalog which reappears in rnosr nineteenth-century
studies of prostitutes, such as Josef Schrank's study of the prostitutes of
Vienna), it is but a small step to the use of such catalogs of stigmata as
a n1eans of categorizing those wo1nen who have, as Freud states, "an
aptitude for prostitution" (SE, 7:191). 35 'rhe major work of nineteenthcentury physical anthropology, public health, and pathology to undertake
this was written by Pauline 1'arnowsky. 'farnowsky, one of a number of

Black Bodies, {i\lhite Bodies

243

Saint Petersburg female physicians in the late nineteenth century, wrote

in the tradition of her eponymous colleague, V. M. 'rarnowsky, the
author of the slandard work on Russian prostitution. His study appeared
in both Russian and German and assumed a central role in the late
nineteenth-century discussions of the nature of the prostitute:% She followed his more general :i.tudy with a detailed investigation of the physiognon1y of the prostitute. 37 Her categories remain those of Parentl)uchatelet. She describes the excessive weight of prostitutes, their hair
and eye color; she provides anthropometric measurements of skull size,
a catalog of their family background (as with Parent-Duchatelet, most
are the children of alcoholics), and their level of fecundity (extren1ely
low) as well as the sig"Hs of their degeneration. ~rhese signs deal \Vith the
abnormalities of the face: asyrr1n1etry of features, misshapen noses, overdevelop1nent of the parietal region of the skull, and the appearance
of the so-called Dar\vin's ear (fig. 10). All of these signs are the signs of
the lower end of the scale of beauty, the end do1ninated by the liottentot.
All of these signs point to the "pri1nitive" nature of the prostitute's phys~
iognomy, for stigmata such as Darwin's ear (the simplification of the
convolutes of the ear shell and the absence of a lobe) are a sign of the
atavistic fen1ale.
In a later paper, Tarnowsky provided a scale of appearance of the
prostitute, in an analysis of the "physiognomy of the Russian prostitute."
At the upper end of the scale is the "Russian I-Ielen" (fig. 1.1). I-Iere,
classical aesthetics are introduced as the measure of the appearance of
the sexualized female. A bit further on is one who is "very handsorne in
spite of her hard expression." Indeed, the first fifteen prostitutes on her

f!G.

10.-~The

J:""'ace and Ear ofrhe Prostitute." Pauline Tarnowsky, Elude antJ1ropmnitrique

sur les prostitutes et les voleuses, pl. 5, 1889.

FIG. 11.-~The Russian Helen." Tarnowsky, "Fisionomie di

prostitute russe," pl. 25, ~893.

FIG. 12.~~The ~ladwomanJProstitute." Tarnowsky,

omie di prostitute russe," pl. 17, 1893.

~Fision

Black Bodies, White Bodies

245

scale "might pass on the street for beauties." But hidden even within
these seeming beauties are the stigmata of criminal degeneration: black,
thick hair; a strong jaw; a hard, spent glance. Some show the "wild eyes
and perturbed countenance along with facial asyn1metry" of the insane
(fig. 12). 38 ()nly the scientific observer can see the hidden faults, and thus
identify the true prostitute, for prostitutes use superficial beauty as the
bait for their clients. But when they age, their
strong jaws and cheek-bones, and their masculine aspect ... [once)
hidden by adipose tissue, emerge, salient angles stand out, and the
face grows virile, uglier than a n1an's; wrinkles deepen into the
likeness of scars, and the countenance, once attractive, exhibits the
full degenerate type \vhich early grace had concealed.39
Change over time affects the physiogno1ny of the prostitute just as it
does her genitalia, which become more and more diseased as she ages.
For Tarnowsky, the appearance of the prostitute and her sexual identity
are preestablished by heredity. What is most striking is that as the prostitute
ages, she begins to appear more and 1nore mannish. 1'he link between
the physical anomalies of the fIottentot and those of the lesbian appear
in Billroth's l!andbuch der Frauenkrankheiten [llandbook of gynecological diseases]; here, the link is benveen two further models of sexual deviancy,
the prostitute and the lesbian. Both are seen as possessing the physical
signs which set them apart from the normal.
The paper in which 1'arnowsky undertook her documentation of
the appearance of the prostitute is repeated \\'Ord for word in the major
late nineteenth-century study of prostitution. 'rhis study of the crirninal
woman, subtitled The Prostitute and the Normal Woman, written by Cesare
Lombroso and his son-in-law, Guillaume Ferrero, was published in 1893.~ 0
Lombroso accepts rfarno\/sky's entire manner of seeing the prostitute
and articulates one further subtext of central in1portance in the perception
of the sexualized \\'Oman in the nineteenth century. This subtext becomes
apparent only by examining the plates in his study. 'T'wo of the plates
deal with the image of the fiottentot female and illustrate the "I,fottentot
apron" and the steatopygia (figs. 13 and 14). Lombroso accepts Paren!'Duchatelet's image of the fat prostitute and sees her as sirnilar to women
living in asylums and to the 1-Iottentot female. He regards the anomalies
of the prostitute's labia as atavistic throv.,backs to the fiottentot., if not
the chimpanzee. Lornbroso deems the prostitute to be an atavistic subclass
of wornan, and he applies the power of the polygenetic argument to the
image of the Hottentot to support his views. Lombroso's text, in its
offhanded use of the analogy between the Hottentot and the prostitute,
sin1ply articulates in images a view which had been present throughout
the late nineteenth century. Adrien Charpy's essay of 1870, published
in the 1nost distinguished French journal of dern1atology and syphilology,

F1G. 13.~The ~Hottentot Apron" (figs. a and b/ and other genital anomalies.
Cesare Lombroso and Guillaume Ferrero, La donrw. deliquente: La prostituta e la
donna normale, pl. 1, 1893.

FJG. 14.-The Hottentot buttocks (figs.band c) and an Ethiopian prostitute

(fig. a). Lombroso and Ferrero, Ladonna deliquente, pl. 2, 1893.

248

Sander L. Gilman

presented an analysis of the external form of the genitalia of 800 prostitutes

exarrlined at Lyons. 11 Charpy merged Parent~Duchatelet's two contradictory
categories by describing all of the alterations as either pathological or
adaptive. The initial category of anomalies is that of the labia; he begins
by commenting on the elongation of the labia ma_jora in prostitutes,
comparing this with the apron of the "disgusting" Hottentots. 'fhe i1nage
comes as a natural one to Charpy, as it did to Lo1nbroso two decades
later. The prostitute is an atavistic forn1 of humanity whose "primitive"
nature can be observed in the forrn of her genitalia. What Tarno\vsky
and Lombroso add to the equation is the paraUel they draw between the
seemingly beautiful physiognomy and this atavistic nature. Other signs
were quickly found. Ellis saw, as one of the secondary sexual characteristics
which determine the beautiful, the presence in a woman of a long second
toe and a short fifth toe (see SPS, p. 164). 'The French physician L.Jullien
presented clinical material concerning the antithetical case, the foot of
the prostitute, which Lombroso in commenting on the paper i1nmediately
labeled as prehcnsile. 12 The ultimate of the thro\vbacks was, of course,
the throwback to the level of the Houentot or the Bushman-to the
level of the lasciviousness of the prostitute. Ferrero, Lombroso's coauthor,
described prostitution as the rule in primitive societies and placed the
Bushman at the nadir of the scale of primitive lasciviousness: adultery
has no meaning for them, he asserted, nor does virginity; the poverty
of their mental universe can be seen in the fact that they have but one
word for "girl, woman, or wife." 13 "fhe primitive is the black, and the
qualities of blackness, or at least of the black female, are those of the
prostitute. l~he work of a student of Lombroso's, Ahele de Blasio, n1akes
this grotesquely evident: he published a series of case studies on steatopygia
in prostitutes in which he perceives the prostitute as being, quite literally.
the Hottentot (fig. 15). 44
The perception of the prostitute in the late nineteenth century thus
merged with the perception of the black. Both categories are those of
outsiders, but what does this amalgamation imply in terrns of the perception
of both groups? It is a cotnmonplace that the primitive was associated
with unbridled sexuality. 'This was either conden1ned, as in ''fhomas Jefferson's discussions of the nature of the black in Virginia, or praised, as
in the fictional supplernent v.rritten by Denis Diderot to Bougainville's
voyages. It is exactly this type of uncontrolled sexuality, ho\vever, \Vhich
is postulated by historians such as J. J. Bachofen as the sign of the
"swanlp," the earliest stage of human history. Blacks, if both (;. W. F.
I-legel and Arthur Schopenhauer are to be believed, ren1ained at this
most prirnitive stage, and their presence in the conte1nporary world
served as an indicator of how far mankind had come in establishing
control over his world and himself. The loss of control was rnarked by
a regression into this dark past---a degeneracy into the primitive expression

Frc. 15.-An Italian Prostitute. Abele de Blasio, "Staetopigia

in prostitute," pl. l, 1905.

25 0

Sander L. Gilman

of emotions in the form of either 1nadness or unrestrained sexuality.

Such a loss of control was, of course, viewed as pathological and thus
fell into the domain of the medical model. For the medical model, especially
as articulated in the public health reforms of the mid- and late nineteenth
century, had as its central preoccupation the elimination of sexually
transmitted disease through the institt1tion of social controls; this ivas
the pr~ject which n1otivated writers such as Parent-Duchatelet and 'farnowsky. 1''he social controls which they wished to institute had existed
in the nineteenth century but in quite a different context. The laws
applying to the control of slaves (such as the 1685 French code noir and
its American analogues) had placed .great emphasis on the control of the
slave as sexual o~ject, both in terms of perrnitted and forbidden sexual
contacts as well as by requiring documentation as to the legal status of
the offspring of slaves. Sexual control was thus \vell known to the late
eighteenth and early nineteenth century.
1'he linkage which the late nineteenth century established between
this earlier rnodel of control and the later model of sexual control advocated
by the public health authorities carne about through the association of
t\VO bits of medical mythology. The pri1nary marker of the black is his
or her skin color. Medical tradition has a long history of perceiving this
skin color as the result of so1ne pathology. The favorite theory, which
reappears with some frequency in the early nineteenth century, is that
the skin color and attendant physiognomy of the black are the result of
congenital leprosy. 45 It is not very surprising, therefore, to read in the
late nineteenth century-after social conventions surrounding the abolition
of slavery in Great Britian and France, as well as the traun1a of the
American Civil "\Var, forbade the public association of at least skin color
\Vith illness-that syphilis was not introduced into Europe by Christopher
Columbus' sailors but rather that it was a fortn of leprosy which had
long been present in Africa and had spread into Europe in the Middle
Ages. 46 The association of the black, especially the black fe1nale, with the
syphilophobia of the late nineteenth century was thus made manifest.
Black fen1ales do not n1erely represent the sexualized fe1nale, they also
represent the fen1ale as the source of corruption and disease. It is the
black female as the emblem of illness who haunts the background of
f\1anet's Olympia.
For Manet's Olym,pia stands exactly midway between the glorification
and the conde1nnation of the sexualized female. She is the antithesis of
the fat prostitute. Indeed, she \Vas perceived as thin by her conte1nporaries,
much in the style of the actual prostitutes of the 1860s. But Laura, the
black servant, is presented as plun1p, which can be best seen in Manet's
initial oil sketch of her done in 1862-63. Her presence in both the sketch
and in the final painting emphasizes her face, for it is the physiognon1y
of the black which points to her own sexuality and to that of the white

Black Bodies, White Bodies

251

fe1nale presented to the vie\ver unclothed but with her genitalia demurely
covered, T'he association is between these hidden genitalia and the signifier
of the black. Both point to potential corruption of the male viewer by
the female. "fhis is made even more evident in that work which arr
historians have stressed as being heavily influenced by Manet's Olympia,
his portrait Nana._ Here the associations would have been quite clear to
the contemporary viewer. First, the n1odel for the painting was Henriette
Iiauser, called CitTon, the rnistress of the prince of Orange. Second,
Manet places in the background of the painting a Japanese crane, for
which the French word (grue) was a slang term for prostitute. I1e thus
labels the figure as a sexualized female. Unlike the classical pose of the
Olympia, Nana is presented being adn1ired by a well-dressed man-about~
to\Vn (afliineur). She is not naked but partially clothed. \\That Manet can
further draw upon is the entire vocabulary of signs which, by the late
nineteenth century, \\'ere associated with the sexualized female. Nana is
fulsome rather than thin. Here Manet employs the stigmata of fatness
to characterize the prostitute. ~fhis convention becomes part of the visualization of the sexualized female even while the reality of the idealized
sexualized female is that of a thin female. Constantin Guys presents a
fat, reclining prostitute in 1860, while Edgar Degas' Madam's Birthday
( 1879) presents an entire brothel of fat prostitutes. At the same time,
Napoleon Ill's mistress, Marguerite Bellanger, set a vogue for slenderness.
She \Vas described as "below average in size, slight, thin, almost skinny." 17
This is certainly not Nana. 11anet places her in a position vis-a-vis the
viewer (but not the male observer in the painting) which e1nphasizes the
line of her buttocks, the steatopygia of the prostitute. Second, Nana is
placed in such a way that the viewer (but again not the fldneur) can observe
her ear. It is, to no one's surprise, Darwin's ear, a sign of the atavistic
fe1nale. Thus we know where the black servant is hidden in Nana-within
Nana. Even Nana's seeming beauty is but a sign of the black hidden
'vithin. AJI her external stig1nata point to the pathology within the sexualized
fen1ale.
Manet's Nana thus provides a further reading of his Olympia, a reading
which stresses Manet's debt to the pathological model of sexuality present
during the late nineteenth century. 'The black hidden within Olympia
bursts forth in Pablo Picasso's 1901 version of the painting: Olyrr1pia is
presented as a sexualized black, with broad hips, revealed genitalia, gazing
at the nude ftiineur bearing her a gift of fruit, 1nuch as Laura bears a gift
of flol<vers in Manet's original (fig. 16). But, unlike Manet, the artist is
himself present in this -work, as a sexualized observer of the sexualized
female. Picasso owes part of his reading of the Olympia to the polar image
of the primitive female as sexual object, as found in the lower~class
prostitutes painted by Vincent van Gogh or the Tahitian rnaidens a la
Diderot painted by Paul Gauguin. Picasso saw the sexualized female as
the visual analogue of the black. Indeed, in his rnost radical break with

Black Bodies, White Bodies

253

the impressionist tradition, Les Denwiselles d'Avignon ( 1907), he linked the

inmates of the brothel with the black by using the theme of African
masks to characterize 1-heir appearance. rrhe figure of the male represents
the artist as victim. Picasso's parody points toward the i1nport:ance of
seeing Manet's Nana in the context of the medical discourse concerning
the sexualized female which dominated the late nineteenth century.
'fhe portrait of Nana is also ernbedded in a complex literary n1atrix
which provides many of the signs needed to illustrate the function of
the sexualized female as the sign of disease. 'fhe figure of Nana first
appeared in Emile Zola's novel L'Assonimoir (1877) in which she was
presented as the offspring of the alcoholic couple who are the central
figures of the novel. 48 Her heredity assured the reader that she would
eventually become a sexualized female-a prostitute-and, indeed, by
the close of the novel she has run off with an older man, the O\vner of
a button factory, and has begun her life as a sexualized female. Manet
was captivated by the figure of Nana (as was the French reading public),
and his portrait of her sy1nbolically reflected her sexual encounters presented during the novel. Zola then decided to build the next novel in
his Rougon-Macquart cycle about the figure of Nana as a sexualized
female. 'fhus in 7....ola's Nana the reader is presented with Zola's reading
of Manet's portrait of Nana. Indeed, Zola uses the portrait of the fldnenr
observing the half-dressed Nana as the centerpiece for a scene in the
theater in which Nana seduces the simple Count Muffat. In11nediately
before this rneeting, Zola presents Nana's first success in the theater (or,
as the theater director calls it, his brothel). She appears in a revue, unable
to sing or dance, and becomes the butt of laughter until, in the second
act of the revue, she appears unclothed on stage:
Nana was in the nude: naked with a quiet audacity, certain of the
omnipotence of her flesh. She was wrapped in a simple piece of
gauze: her rounded shoulders, her An1azon's breasts of which the
pink tips stood up rigidly like lances, her broad buttocks which
rolled in a voluptuous swaying motion, and her fair, fat hips: her
whole body was in evidence, and could be seen under the light
tissue with its foamy whiteness. 19
\Vhat Zola describes are the characteristics of the sexualized woman, the
"primitive" hidden beneath the surface: "all of a sudden in the co111ely
child the v.. ornan arose, disturbing, bringing the n1ad surge of her sex,
inviting the unknown elernent of desire. Nana v.. as still smiling: but it
was the sn1ile of a rr1an-eater." Nana's atavistic :-.exuality, the sexuality of
the Amazon, is destructive. The sign of this is her fleshliness. And it is
this sign \Vhich reappears when she is observed by Moffat in her dressing
room, the scene which Zola found in Manet's painting:
1

254

Sander L. Gilman
Then calmly, to reach her dressing-table, she walked in her drawers
through that group of gentlemen, who made \Vay for her. She had
large buttocks, her drawers ballooned, and with breast well forward
she bowed to them, giving her delicate s1nile. [N, p. 135]

Nana's childlike face is but a mask which conceals the hidden disease
buried within, the corruption of sexuality. 1'hus Zola concludes the novel
by revealing the horror beneath the mask: Nana dies of the pox. (Zola's
pun works in French as well as in English and is needed because of the
rapidity of decay demanded by the moral in1plication of Zola's portrait.
It vvould not do to have Nana die slowly over thirty years of tertiary
syphilis. Smallpox, with its play on "the pox," works quickly and gives
the same visual icon of decay.) Nana's death reveals her true nature:
Nana remained alone, her1 face looking up in the light from the
candle. It was a charnel-house scene, a mass of tissue-fluids and
blood, a shovelful of putrid flesh thrown there on a cushion. 'rhe
pustules had invaded the entire face with the pocks touching each
other; and, dissolving and subsiding with the greyish look of tnud,
there seemed to be already an earthy inouldiness on the shapeless
muscosity, in which the fCatures were no longer discernible. An
eye, the left one, had con1pletely subsided in a soft mass of purulence;
the other, half-open, was sinking like a collapsing hole. The nose
\Vas still suppurating. A whole reddish crust was peeling off one
cheek and invaded the mouth, distorting it into a loathsome grimace.
An<l on that horrible and grotesque mask, the hair, that beautiful
head of hair still preserving its blaze of sunlight, flowed down in a
golden trickle. Venus was decomposing. It seems as though the
virus she had absorbed from the gutters and from the tacitly pern1itted
carrion of hu1nanity, that baneful ferment with which she had poisoned a people, had now risen to her face and putrefied it. [N, pp.
464-65]
The decaying visage is the visible sign of the diseased genitalia through
which the sexualized female corrupts an entire nation of warriors and
leads thern to the collapse of the French Army and the resultant German
victory at Sedan. 1~he image is an old one, it is Frau Welt, Madam World,
who masks her corruption, the disease of being a woman, through her
beauty. It reappears in the vignette on the title page of the French
translation (1840) of the Renaissance poem Syphilis (fig. 17). 50 But it is
yet more, for in death Nana begins to revert to the blackness of the earth,
to assume the horrible grotesque counten.ance perceived as belonging to
the world of the black, the world of the "primitive," the world of disease.
Nana is, like Olyn1pia, in the words of Paul Valery, "pre-eminently undean."51

Fie. 17.-Fronnspie.,.
. re Augu' t Barthelemy, SyjJhilis,

25 6

Sander L. Gilman

It is this uncleanliness, this disease, which forms the final link between
two i1nages of woman, the black and the prostitute. Just as the genitalia
of the Hottentot v.'ere perceived as parallel to the diseased genitalia of
the prostitute, so too the power of the idea of corruption links both
i1nages. 'Ihus part of Nana's fall into corruption con1es through her
seduction by a lesbian, yet a further sign of her innate, physical degeneracy.
She is corrupted and corrupts through sexuality. Miscegenation was a
fear (and a word) from the late nineteenth-centu1y vocabulary of sexuality.
It was a fear not merely of interracial sexuality but of its results, the
decline of the population. Interracial inarriages \Vere seen as exacr.ly
parallel to the barrenness of the prostitute; if they produced children at
all, these children were weak and doo1ned. Thus Ellis, drawing on his
viev.r of the oqjective nature of the beauty of mankind, states that "it is
difficult to be sexually attracted to persons who are fundamentally unlike
ourselves in racial constitution" (SPS, p. 176). He cites Abel Herrnant to
substantiate his views:

Differences of race are irreducible and between two beings who

love each other they cannot fail to produce exceptional and instructive
reactions. In the first superficial ebullition of love, indeed, nothing
norable may be n1anifested, but in a fairly short time the two lovers,
innately hostile, in striving to approach each other strike against
an invisible partition which separates them. 'rheir sensibilities are
divergent; everything in each shocks the other; even their anato1nical
confor1nation, even the language of their gestures; all is foreign. 52
It is thus the inherent fear of the difference in the anatorny of the Other
which lies behind the synthesis of images. T'he Other's pathology is revealed
in anaton1y. It is the similarity between the black and the prostitute-as
bearers of the stigmata of sexual difference and, thus, pathology-which
captured the late nineteenth century. Zola sees in the sexual corruption
of the male the source of political impotence and projects what is basically
an internal fear, the fear of loss of power, onto the world.53
The "white man's burden" thus becomes his sexuality and its control,
and it is this which is transferred into the need to \'.'.ODtrol the sexuality
of the Other, the Other as sexualized female. 'rhe colonial mentality
which sees "natives" as needing control is easily transferred to '\vorr1an"but wornan as exemplified by the caste of the prostitute. This need for
control was a projection of inner fears; thus, its articulation in visual
images was in terms which described the polar opposite of the European
male.
l'he roots of this image of the sexualized fe1nale are to be found in
male observers, the progenitors of the vocabulary of images through
which they believed themselves able to capture the essence of the Other.
Thus when Freud, in his Essay on Lay Analysis (1926), discusses the ignorance

Black Bodies, White Bodies

257

of contemporary psychology concerning adult female sexuality, he refers

to this lack of knowledge as the "dark continent" of psychology (SE,
20:212). 54 In using this phrase in English, Freud ties the image of female
sexuality to the image of the colonial black and ro the perceived relationship
between the female's ascribed sexuality and the Other's exoticism and
pathology. It is Freud's intent to explore this hidden "dark continent"
and reveal the hidden truths about female sexuality, just as the anthro~
pologist~explorers (such as Lombroso) were revealing the hidden truths
about the nature of the black. Freud continues a discourse \vhich relates
the images of male discovery to the images of the female as object of
discovery. The line from the secrets possessed by the "Hottentot Venus"
to twentieth~century psychoanalysis runs reasonably straight.

1. The debate between E. H. Gombrich, The Image and the 1'.)e (Ithaca, N.Y., 1982)
and Nelson Good1nan, Ways of Worldmaking (Hassocks, 1978) has revolved mainly around
the manner by which conventions of representation create the work of art. Implicit in their
debate is the broader question of the function of systems of conventions as icons wi1hin
the work of art itself. On the limiration of the discussion of sys1erns of conventions to
aesthetic objects,sce the extensive bibliography compiled ln Ulrich \Veisstcin, uBibliogTaphy
of Literature and the Visual Arts, 1945-1980," Comparative Critil'i!,w 4 (1982): 324-34, in
which the special position of the work of art as separate from other aspects of society can
be seen. This is a holdover from the era of Gtiotesgeschichte in which special stat.us was given
to the interaction between aesthetic objects.
This can be seen in the alternative case of works of aesthetic provenance which are,
however, part of medical discourse. One thinks irnmediately of the anatomical works of
Leonardo or George Stubbs or of painr.ings with any medic.a! reference such as Rembrandt's
Dr. Tulp or Theodore Gericault's paintings of the insane. When the literalure on these
works is examined, it is striking how most analysis remains embedded in the discourse of
aesthetic objects, Le., the anatomical drawing as a ~su~jectiven manner of studying human
form or, wirhin medical dist~ourse, as part of a "scientific" history of anatomical illustration.
The evident fact that both of 1hese modes of discourse exist simultaneously in 1he context
of social history is lost on most critics. An exception is \Vi!liarn Schupbach, The Paradox of
Rembrandt's "Anatomy of Dr. Tulp," Medical History, supp. 2 (London, I 982).
2. George Heard Hamilton, Manet and His Critics (New Haven, Conn., l 954), p. 68.
I am ignoring here George Mauner's peculiar position that "we may conclude that Manet
makes no commenr at all with this painting, if by coinment we understand judgment or
criticism" (Manet: Peintre-Philm-ophe: A Study of the Painter's Themes [University Park, Pa.,
1975], p. 99)3. For my discussion of Manet's works, I draw especially on Theodore Reff, Manet:
"OlympW.." (London, 1976), and Werner Hofmann, Nnna: Mythos 11,nd Wirklidiketi (Cologne,
1973); neither of these studies examines rhe medical analogies. See also Eunice Lipton,
"Manet: A Radicalized Female Imagery," Artforum 13 (Mar. 1975): 48-53.
4. See George Needham, ~Manet, Olympia, and Pornographic Photography," in Woman
as Sex Object, ed. Thomas Hess and Linda Nochlin (New York, 1972), pp. 81-89.
5. See Philippe Rebeyrol, "Baudelaire et Manet," Les Temps modernes 5 (Oct. 1949):
707-25.
6. Georges Bataille, !tfanet, trans. A. Wainhouse and James Emmons (New York, 1956),
p. 113. And see Hofmann, Nana.

258

Sander L. Gihna.n

7. See Edmund Bazire, quoted in Anne Coffin Hanson, hlanet and the Alodern TradiJion
(New Haven, Conn., 1977), p. 130.
8. Sec my On Blaclmess without Blncks: Essay:, on the Image of the Black in Germany (Boston,
1982). On the image of the black, see Ladis!as Bagner, ed., L'lmage du noir dans l'art
occidental, 3 vols. (Paris, 1976-); the fourth volume, not. yet published, will cover the postRenaissance period.
9. See the various works on Hogarth by Ronald Paulson, such as Hogarlh: Hll Life,
Art, and Times, 2 vols. (New Haven, Conn., 1971) and Hogarth's Graphic Works, 2 vols. (New
1-Iaven, Conn., l 970); and see Ross E. Taggert, ''A Tavern Scene: An Evening at the Rose,"
Art Quarterly 19 (Aututnn 1956): 320-23.
10. M. N. Adler, trans., The Itinerary of Benjamin of Tudela (London, 1907), p. 68.
l I. See John Herbert Eddy, Jr., uBuffon, Organic Change, and the Races of Man"
(Ph.D. diss., University of Oklaho1na, 1977), p. 109. See a!so Pan! Alfred Erickson, uThe
Origins of Physical Anthropology" (Ph.D. diss., University of Connecticut, 1974) and \Verner
Krauss, l11r Anthropologie des achlzdmten Jahrhunderts: Die Frilhgeschichte der Memchheit im
Blickjmnkt der Aufklarung, ed. Hans Kortum and Christa Gohrisch (Munich, I 979).
12. See Guillaum-Thomas Rayna!, 1-Jistoire philosophique et politique des itabb.ssemens et
du commerce des Europiens dans les dew: Indes, IO vols. (Geneva, 1775), 2:406-7.
13. See \Villiam F. Bynum, "The Great Chain of Being after Forty Years: An Appraisal,"
History of Science 1.3 (1975): l -28, and "Time's Noblest Offspring: The Problem of Man in
British Natural Historical Sciences" (Ph.D. diss., Cambridge, 1974).
14. See J J Virey, "NCgre," Dictionnaire des sciences midicales, 41 vols. (Paris, 1819),
35:398-403.
15. See Virey, !Ji~toire nature/le du genre himwine, 2 vols. (Paris, 1824), 2: 15 l.
16. See George M. Gould and \.Valter L. Pyle, Anomalies awl Curiosities of Medicine
(Philadelphia, 1901), p. 307, and Eugen Hollander, Aeskulap und Venus: Eine Kultur- und
Sittengeschichte im Spiegel des Arzles (Berlin, 1928). Much malerial on the indebtedness of
the early pathologis1s lo the reports of travelers to Africa can be found in the accounts of
the autopsies I will discuss below.
One indication of the power which the image of the Hottentot still possessed in !he
late nineteenth century can be found in George Eliot, Daniel Deronda, ed. Barbara Hardy
(l 870; Harmondsworth, l 967). On its surface the novel is a hymn to racial hannony and
an attack on British middle-class bigotry. Eliot's liberal agenda is nowhere better articulated
than in the ironic debate concerning the nature of the black in which the eponymous hero
of the novel defends black sexuality (see p. 376). This position is attributed to the hero
not a half-dozen pages after the authorial voice of the narrator introduced the description
of this very figure with the comparison: "And one man differs from another, as we all
differ from the Bosjesman" (p. 370). Eliot's comment is quite in keeping wi1h the underlying
understanding of race in the novel. For just as Deronda is fated to marry a Jewess and
thus avoid the taint of race mixing, so too is the Bushman, a Hottentot surrogate in the
nineteenth century, isolated from the rest of mankind. The ability of Europeans to hold
simultaneously a polygenetic view of race and a liberal ideology is evident as far back as
Voltaire. But in Eliot's novel the Jew is contrasted to the Hottentot, and, as we have seen,
it is the Houento! who serves as the icon of patho!ogica!ly corrupted sexuality. Can Eliot
be drawing a line between outsiders such as the Jew or the sexualized female in \Vestern
society and the Hottentot? The Houentot comes to serve as the sexualized Other onto
whom Eliot projects the opprobrium with which she herself was labeled. For Eliot, the
Hottentot remains beyond the pale; even in the most whiggish text, the Hottentot re1nains
the essential Oi.her.
17. Paul FA ward~ and James Walvin, Black Personahti.es in the Era of the Slave Trade
(Baton Rouge, La., 1983), pp. 173, 175. A print of the 1829 ball in Paris with the nude
~Hottentot Venus" is reproduced in Jllu1trierte Geschichte der A1edizin, ed. Richard Toetlner,
9 vols. (Salzburg, 1980), 4:1319; 1his is a German reworking of.Jacques Vie et al., Hi1toire
de la midecine, 8 vols. (Paris, 1977).

Black Bodies, White Bodies

259

18. See Henri de Blainvi!le, "Sur une fen1me de la race hottentote," Bulletin des scitne.>
la socidti philomatique de Paris ( 1816): 183-90. This early version of the autopsy seen1s
lo be unknown to \Vi!liam B. Cohen, The French Encounter with Africans: White ReJponse to
Blacks, 1530-1880 (Bloomington, 1980), esp. pp. 239-45. Sec also Stephen Jay Gould,
~The Hottentot Venus," Natural fli>tmy 91 (1982): 20-27.
19. Georges Cuvier, "Extraits d'observations faites sur le cadavre d'une femme connue
a Paris et a Landres sous le nom de VCnus Hottentote," Memoires du A!w;eum d'h.irtoire
naturelle 3 (l 817): 259-74; rpt. with plates in Geoffrey Saint.-Hilaire and Frederic Cuvier,
Hi>loire naturelle des mammifires avec desji'gures originates, 2 vols. (Paris, 1824), I: l -23. The
substance of the autopsy is reprinted again by Flourens in the jounw.l complimentaire du
dictionrw.ire des sciences midicales 4 (1819): 145-49, and by Jules Cloquet, A1anuel d'anatomie
de l'homme descriptive du corps humaine (Paris, 1825), pl. 278. Cuvier's presentation of the
Hottentot Venus" forms the major signifier for the image of the Hottentot as sexual
primitive in the nineteenth century.
20. See, e.g., Walker D. Greer, "John Hunter: Order out of Variety," Annals of the
Royal College of Surgeons of England 28 (l 961 ): 238-51. See also Barbara J. Babiger, "The
Kunst- und Wunderkarmnern: A catalogue raisonni of Collecting in Germany, France and
England, 1565-1750" (Ph.D. diss., University of Pittsburgh, 1970).
21. See Adolf \Vilhdm 01to, Sellene Beobachtungen zur Anatomie, Physiologie, und Pathologir.
gehOrig (Breslau, 1816), p. 135; Johannes Mii!ler, ~uebcr die iiusseren Gcschlechtstheile
der Buscbmii.nninnen," Ardtiv fiir Anatomie, Physiologie, und uiis>ensch.aftliclre Atedizin (1834),
pp. 319-45; VV. H. Flower and Jarncs Murie, "Account of the Dissection of a Bushwornan,"
Journal of Anatomy and Phy.iiology I (1867): 189-208; and Hubert von Luschka, A. Koch,
and E. GOrtz, "Die iiusseren Geschlechlstheile eincs Busd1weibes." lV/onat>schriftfilr Gelmrtskunde
32 (1868): 343-50. The papularity of these accounts can be seen by their republicatjon
in extract for a lay audience. These extracts also stress the sexual anomalies described. See
Anthropological Revi.ew 5 (July, 1867): 319-24, and Anthropologr.'cal Re11iew 8 (Jan., 1870):

/)(Jr

89--318.

22. Edward Turnipseed, "Some Facts in Regard to the Anatomical Differences between
the Negro and \Vhite Races," AHiericanjo11rrw.l ofOl>stetrio 10 (!877): 32, 33.
23. See C. 1-L Fon, "Some Corroborative Facts in Regard to the Anatomical Difference
between the Negro and White Races," American journal of Obstetrics IO (1877): 258-59. Paul
Broca was influenced by similar American material (which be cites from the New York City
Medical Record, 15 Sept. 1868) concerning the position of the hymen; sec his untitled note
in the Bulletins de fa societi d'anth.ropologie de Paris 4 (1869): 443-44. Broca, like Cuvier
before him, supported a polygcncdc view of the human races.
24. See \Vi!liam Turner, "Notes on the Dissect.ion of a Negro," journal of Anatomy and
Physiology L\} (1878): 382-86; "Notes on the Dissection of a Second Negro," journal of
Anatomy and Physiology 14 (1879): 244-48; and "Notes on the Dissection of a Third Negro,"
.Journal of Anatomy and Physiology 31 (l 896): 624-26. Thi& was not 1nere!y a British anornaly.
Jefferies Wyman reports the disseclion of a black suicide (originally published in Proceed~
ings of the Boston Society of Natural Hirtory, 2 Apr. 1862 and 16 Dec. 1863) and does not
refer to the genitalia of the male Hottentof at all; see Anthropological Review 3 (1865): 330-
35.
25. H. Hildebrandt, Die Krankheiten der iiusseren weibliclien Genitalien, in llandbuch der
Frauenkrankheiten 3, ed. Theodor Billroth, 3 vols. (Stuttgart, 1885-86), pp. I J-l 2. See also
Thomas Power Lowry, ed., Tiu: Classic Clitori>: Jfi.itoric Contributions to Scientijic Sexuality
(Chicago, 1978).
26. Havelock Ellis, StudJes in the Psychology of Sex, vol. 4, Sexual Selection in Man (Philadelphia, 1920), p. 158; all further references to 1his work, abbreviated SPS, will be induded
in the text.
27. Sec Willem Vrolik, Considerations sur la diversite du bassin dfs d![ffrenles race.1 humaines
(Amsterdam, 1826) and R. Verneau, Le hassin dans les sexes el dans !es races (Paris, !875),
pp. 126-29.

260

Sander L. Gilrnan

28. Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex (Princeton, N.J.,
1981), 2:317, and see 2:345-46.
29. Sec John Grand-Carteret, Die Erotik in der franzOsischen Karikatur, trans. Cary von
Karwarth and Adolf Neumann (Vienna, l 909), p. 195.
30. [Hugues Rebell?], The Mmnories of Dolly Aforton: The Simy of a Woman's Part in the
Struggle to Fru ih11 Slaves: An Account of the Whippings, Rapes, and Violences That Preceded the
Civil War in America with Curious Anthro/)ological Observations on the Radical Diversities in the
Conformation of the Female Bottom and the Way Different Women Endure Chastisement (Paris,
1899), p. 207.
3 L See Sigmund Freud, The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of
Sigmund Freud, ed. and trans. James Strachey, 24 vols. (London, 1953-74), 7: 186-87, esp.
n. I; al\ further references to this work, abbreviated SE and with volume and page nun1hers,
will be included in the text.
32. The best study of the image of the prostitute is Alain Corbin, Les filles de noce:
Misere sexuelle et prostitution (dix-neuvibne et vingtifrne siecles) (Paris, 1978). On the black
proslitute, see Khalid Kishtainy, The Prostitute in Progressive Literature (London, 1982), pp.
74-84. On !.he iconography associated with the pictorial representation of the prostitute
in nineteenth-century art, see Hess and Nochlin, Woman as Sex Object; Nochlin, ~Lost and
Found: Once :More the Fallen Woman," Art Bulletin 60 (Mar. 1978): J 39-53; and Lynda
Nead, ~seduction, Prostitution, Suicide: On the Brink by Alfred Elmore, Art llistory 5 (Sept.
1982): 310-22. On the special status of medical representations of female sexuality, see
the eighteerl1h-century wax models of female anatomy in the Museo ddla Specola, Florence,
and reproduced in Mario Bucci, Anatomia come arte (Florence, 1969), esp. pl. 8.
33. See A. J. B. Parent-Duchateler., De la prostitution dans la ville de Paris, 2 vols. (Paris,
1836), l:J93-244.
34. Parent-Duchatelet, On Prostitution in the City f!f Paris, (London, 1840), p. 38; all
further references to .this work, abbreviated P, will be included in the text. It is exactly the
passages on the physiognonq and appearance of the prostitute which 1his anonymous
translator presents to his English audience as the essence of Parent-Duchatelet's work.
35. See my "Freud and the Prostitute: Male Stereotypes of Female Sexuality in fin de
sitcle Vienna, journal of the American Academy of P~ychoanalysis 9 (1981): 337-60.
36. See V. M. Tarnowsky, Prostituislja i abolit1ioniszm (Petersburg, 1888) and Prostitution
und Abolitionl~m1;.s (Hamburg, 1890).
37. See Pauline 'l'arnowsky, Etude anthropomritrique sur les prostitutes et les voleuses (Paris,
1889).
38. Tarnowsky, "Fisiomie di prostitu1e russe, Archivio di psichiatria, scienze penali e
antropologi,a criminale 14 (1893): 141-42; my translation.
39. Ibid., p. 141; my translation.
40. See Cesare Lombroso and Guillaume Ferrero, Ladonna deliquente: La prostituta e
{{, donna normale (Turin, 1893), esp. pp. 349-50, 361-62, and 38.
41. See Adrien Charpy, "Des organes gCnitaux externes chez Jes prostitutes," Annales
des dermatologie 3 (1870-71): 271-79.
42. See L. Jullien, "Contribution a l'Ctude de la morphologic des prostitu6es," in
Qyatribne Congrt.s international d'anthropologi,e criminelle, 1896 (Geneva, 1897), pp. 348-49:
43. See Ferrero, "L'atavisme de la prostitution," Rivuescient!fique (1892): 136-41.
44. See A. de Blasio, "Staetopigia in prostitute," Archivio di psichiatria 26 (1905):
257-64.
45. See \Vinthrop D.Jordan, White over Bf.ack: Amirican Attitwles toward the Negro, 15501812 (New York, 1977), pp. 3-43.
46. See Iwan Bloch, Der Ursprung der Syphilis; Eine medizinische und kulturge,schichtliche
Untersuchung, 2 vols. (Jena, 1901-11).
47. Reff, }Janet: "Olympia," p. 58; see also p. 118.
48. See Theodore Lascaris [Auriant], La veritable histoire de "Nana" (Paris, 1942). See
also Demetra Palaniari, ~The Shark \Vho Swallowed His Epoch: Family, Nature, and Society

Black Bodies, White Bodies

261

in the Novels of Emile Zola," in Chang-ing images of the Family, ed. Virginia Tufte anc
Barbara Myerhoff (New Haven, Conn., 1979), pp. 155-72.
49. Emile Zola, Nana, trans. Charles Duff (London, l 953), p. 27; all further reference~
to this work, abbreviated N, will be included in the text.
50. See August Barthelemy, trans., Syphilis: Poeme en dew: chants (Paris, 1840). This i1
a translation of a section of Fracastorius' Latin poem on the nature and origin of syphilis
The French edition was in print well past mid-century.
51. Paul Valery, quoted in Batai!le, Manet, p. 65.
52. Abel Herman!, quoted in E!!is, Stw:lies in the Psychology of Sex, 4 176 n. L
53. See Joachim Hohmann, ed., Schon auf den ersten Blick: LeJebuch zur Geschichte umere;
FJ:irulbiMer (Dannstadt, 1981).
54. See Renate Schlesier, Komtruktion dfr Weiblichkeil bei Sigmund Freud (Frankfurt
1981), pp. 35-39.