61 pages • 2 hours read
Suzan-Lori ParksVenus
Fiction | Play | Adult | Published in 1996A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Author’s Notes-Scene 25Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Author’s Notes Summary
Parks describes some unusual devices in the play. “Rests” are defined as “spells, brackets, and parentheses, which each serve to modify the way Scenes are performed” (Author’s Notes). Rests are pauses, often used as a transition from one topic of discussion to the next, while “spells” are longer, and Parks notes that “directors should fill this moment as they best see fit” (Author’s Notes), meaning “spells” can take on different meanings in a performance, though they only appear as pauses in the text. Brackets indicate possible cuts or modifications, allowing directors to change certain scenes. Finally, parentheses are Parks’s way of indicating whispering or asides, in which a character speaks softly to the audience, themselves, or another character.
Overture Summary
The Venus rotates slightly. The Negro Resurrectionist; The Man, later the Baron Docteur; the Man’s Brother, later the Mother-Showman, later the Grade-School Chum; the Chorus; and the Venus chant each other’s names. The Negro Resurrectionist announces that the Venus Hottentot is dead, explaining she either died from drinking too much alcohol or from the cold. The show is canceled, and the Chorus wants their money back. The Venus groans, drums play, and a Chorus Member explains that people traveled far to hear the drums and see the Venus. The scene is composed of repeated lines, each character repeating other characters’ lines as new lines are added.
The Venus whispers that she is dead, and the Man’s Brother says the Venus was shameless and must have sinned without understanding Christianity. The Man’s Brother explains that the Venus has very large buttocks, which made her the star attraction of their show. The Chorus wonders what the show will be without a star, and the Man and Man’s Brother apologize for disappointing the Chorus. The Negro Resurrectionist announces a scene of love, the Venus says “Kiss me” repeatedly, and the Man says he sees love when he looks at the Venus. The Men and Chorus fantasize about the Venus, noting that they could pay extra to stand closer and touch her body. The Men and the Venus introduce the show, with the Venus telling the Chorus to “Hur-ry.” A Chorus Member says he sees science when he looks at the Venus, imagining her as a pickle on his shelf.
The Negro Resurrectionist concludes the scene, repeating other characters’ lines about the Venus and her death. The Negro Resurrectionist says the Venus’s body has been pickled by the Baron Docteur.
Scene 31 Summary: “May I Present to You ‘The African Dancing Princess’/She’d Make a Splendid Freak”
In Southern Africa, the Girl scrubs the floor while the Brother begs the Man to invest in his next scheme, a dancing African princess. The Man recalls the Brother trying other ventures, like a zoo and a flower collection, neither of which succeeded. The Negro Resurrectionist announces the scene title. The Man is surprised the Brother does not remember the Girl, reminding him of Scheme #1, Marriage with the Hottentot, and the men remark on the Girl’s large buttocks. The Brother tells the Girl to dance, clapping time, and he and the Man agree she would be a good “freak.” The Girl asks to stop dancing, but the Brother tells her to continue. The Man tells the Brother the Girl’s name is Saartjie, or “Little Sarah.”
The Man agrees to finance the Brother’s show, and the Brother tells the Girl to stop dancing. They ask her if she wants to go to England, telling her England’s streets are paved with gold, and people will pay gold to see her dance. The Girl is excited at the prospect of becoming a princess, but she is shy. The men promise her she will work for two years, then come back home rich. After a pause, the Girl agrees, and they plan to go to England. The Negro Resurrectionist announces the next scene title.
Scene 30 Summary: “She Looks Like She’s Fresh Off the Boat”
The Chorus of the 8 Human Wonders sees the Girl enter their dark room, and they debate whether they should greet her with pleasantries or warn her that her life is about to get worse. The Girl greets them, asking if they have seen the golden streets of England, and they tell her she is a fool. The Girl chooses to sit alone, and the Brother enters with food for the Girl. He tells her they are in England, but she cannot leave the room yet. The Brother says she will be in the room for two or three days, while the Brother bribes officials to allow the Girl to stay in England.
The Brother asks if the Girl remembers him from Scheme #1, 12 years prior, and she says she does. The Brother tells the Girl that he loves her, and that he brought her to England in part so that he could love her “properly.” She asks him to take her shopping, and he gropes her buttocks. The Girl laughs and says she doesn’t like it here, and they caress each other, with the Brother caressing more passionately than the Girl.
The Negro Resurrectionist announces a “footnote,” saying that in 1810 a young woman revealed her buttocks, while, on the other side of town, a different performance occurred. They announce the next scene title.
Scene 29 Summary: “‘For the Love of the Venus.’ Act I, Scene 3”
The Baron Docteur watches a play featuring the Bride-To-Be and the Young Man, while the Venus, standing off to one side, watches the Baron Docteur. The Bride-To-Be offers the Young Man coffee, tea, and chocolate, and the Young Man rejects all three. The Bride-To-Be is amazed by a banana, and the Young Man tells her to peel it. The Young Man tells her his uncle took his father to Africa. The Young Man reads from a piece of paper a passage about men becoming true men by wandering outside of the “Familiar” into the “Known-Not.” The Bride-To-Be laments that the Young Man used to write her poetry. She quotes one of his poems, in which he describes his love for her as “artificial.” The Young Man criticizes the passage he read for omitting God from the universe. The Baron Docteur applauds.
Scene 28 Summary: “Footnote #2”
The Negro Resurrectionist guides the Venus by the arm, reading from the Baron Docteur’s notebook. They read out the autopsy report of the Venus, including specifications on the size and weight of her organs. The doctor preserved her spinal cord, and he noted that there were no significant deviations in her nervous system. Her liver was large and fatty, her gallbladder was small, and her kidneys were large. The Negro Resurrectionist releases the Venus’s arm, and she runs, smacking into the Mother-Showman.
Scene 27 Summary: “Presenting the Mother-Showman and Her Great Chain of Being”
The Mother-Showman gives the Girl a brush to scrub herself, telling the Girl she smells bad and will drive away the crowd, but she also notes the Girl’s potential as a new member in her Human Wonders show. The Girl asks about the Brother, and the Mother-Showman says he left town. The Mother-Showman tells the Chorus of the 8 Human Wonders to start the show with drums, and they proceed to introduce themselves. The Mother-Showman encourages the Wonders to act depressed, and she offers the audience the chance to pay to see the Wonders perform. Wonder 1 is a woman with a beard, Wonder 2 eats fire, Wonder 3 is a boy with black and white spots, Wonder 4 is a man who weighs 1,200 pounds, Wonders 5 and 6 are conjoined twins, Wonder 7 is a man with genitals on his face, and Wonder 8 is a woman with one eye. The Mother-Showman encourages the Wonders to perform, and they strike poses.
The Negro Resurrectionist watches the Girl bathe, and the Mother-Showman introduces the Girl as the Venus Hottentot, describing her large buttocks. The Mother-Showman calls the Venus, now in the spotlight, the “Stepsister-Monkey to the Great Venal Love Goddess” (35), telling the audience to “Hur-ry.” The Venus calls herself unloved. The Negro Resurrectionist announces Footnote #3, an excerpt from Robert Chambers’s Book of Days. The excerpt describes how, in 1810, a woman was displayed to the public under the name “The Hottentot Venus,” so-called because Europeans found her ugly but she was considered beautiful in her native country. In 1807, the Parliament of England passed a bill to ban the slave trade, and the Venus Hottentot show was both successful and protested.
A Spectator screams, and the Mother-Showman tells the Venus to get used to it. The Negro Resurrectionist announces the next scene title.
Scene 26 Summary: “‘For the Love of the Venus.’ Act II, Scene 9”
The Baron Docteur watches the play, and the Venus watches him. The Bride-To-Be complains to her Mother that the Young Man is no longer interested in her. The Mother tells her to try whist, a card game, but the Bride-To-Be laments that the Young Man only writes essays on Africa now, no longer writing poetry for her. The Mother urges the Bride-To-Be to have faith in love, and the Bride-To-Be declares herself unloved. The Negro Resurrectionist announces the next scene title.
Scene 25 Summary: “Counting Down/Counting the Take”
The Mother-Showman tells the Venus to get used to spectators’ reactions, adding that they will be rich. The Mother-Showman asks if the Venus can count, the Venus responds that she can, and the Mother-Showman says they will keep her ability a secret. The Mother-Showman counts to 90 six times, at which point the Venus counts from one to six. The Mother-Showman complains that she must feed all nine Human Wonders and herself, and the Negro Resurrectionist counts down from 31 to 24.
Overture-Scene 25 Analysis
The Overture of the play reveals the ending, in which the Venus dies and her show is canceled. The use of reversed scene numbers and the Venus’s death in the Overture clarify the play’s intention of building tension toward a known endpoint. The Negro Resurrectionist’s announcement of the “Tail end of our tale” not only alerts the audience of the end of the story (7), but it blames the Venus for whatever hardships she will face: “Venus, Black Goddess, was shameles [sic], she sinned” (8); she did not know “r godfearin ways” (8). The play then becomes a countdown, literally involving a counting down at the end of Scene 25, in which the Negro Resurrectionist and the audience are linked in their mutual understanding that the play is gradually circling back to the Venus’s death.
The opening scenes introduce the theme of The Exploitation and Commodification of Black Female Bodies. The Brother seeks to market the Girl in England as the “Dancing African Princess” (5), noting: “The English like that sort of thing” (11), and he coerces the Girl with promises of wealth. The Girl’s ultimate response—“I would have a house. I would hire help. I would be rich. Very Rich. Big bags of money!” (16)—shows how this promise shifts the Girl’s perception of her own role in the narrative from being exploited to exploiting others. This section begins the development of the “diva” persona Parks envisions for Baartman. However, the Venus realizes the challenges of making money off her own body in her first appearance. As the Chorus of Spectators stares at the Venus in a “spell,” the Venus remarks: “Oh, God: Unloved” (35), understanding that she is an object for people to gawk at, criticize, and marvel over, rather than the “princess” the Brother promised her she would be. The Venus may or may not have come to England willingly, but once there she realizes she has been deceived.
The character of the Negro Resurrectionist introduces the theme of The Construction and Manipulation of Historical Narratives, interspersing footnotes and historical artifacts throughout the action of the play. Scene 28 is an extract from the Venus’s actual autopsy, again reminding the audience of the Venus’s death, but also adding information on how the Europeans viewed the Venus, focusing on measurements and observations. After the Venus’s first performance, the Negro Resurrectionist presents Footnote #3, which explains how the Europeans thought the Venus had “an intensely ugly figure, distorted beyond all European notions of beauty” (35).
The Baron Docteur’s first appearance is in the audience of “For the Love of the Venus,” the play-within-a-play that Parks includes as a modified form of a real French play, The Hottentot Venus, or The Hatred of French Women (1814). In the play-within-a-play, the Bride-To-Be fears she has lost her Young Man to his imperialist fantasies and desires, noting how he used to write poetry to her and now only talks about Africa. The play-within-a-play also introduces the theme of Colonialism and Racism as Motivations and Obsessions, showing how the Young Man gradually becomes more absorbed in European fantasies of conquering foreign lands. but it also introduces the idea of love as a one-sided, even detrimental feeling. The Young Man writes to the Bride-To-Be: “My love for you, My Love, is artificial / Fabricated much like this epistle” (38), which the Bride-To-Be sees as a profession of love for her. However, the isolation of “My Love” creates the Young Man’s “Love” as a separate object, “artificial” because he creates it himself. This “Love” is not mutual, but the product of one individual’s desire, which can be directed at a person, a fantasy, or a goal.
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By Suzan-Lori Parks
