"Sara Baartman and the Hottentot Venus: A Ghost Story and a Biography" was, to put it bluntly, a load of crap. Read my review to find out why!

1. Haley Lynn Shoemaker
Senior Seminar
Spring 2013
Word Count: 1090
The Hottentot Venus: Continuing the Exploitation of Sara Baartman
Sara Baartman and the Hottentot Venus: A Ghost Story and a Biography was written by
Clifton Crais, a professor at Emory University with a doctorate in history from John Hopkins
University,1 and Pamela Scully, a professor of African Studies as well as both professor and
Chair of the Department of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Emory University, who
has a Ph.D. in history from the University of Michigan.2 Hottentot Venus was written in the style
of a popular biography, yet in the introductory text the authors spoke of it as a scholarly work of
history. Who the book was intended for was unclear at best. Little to no background information
on the subject was given, which rendered the book unsuitable for the general public. However,
Hottentot Venus was filled with empty ornate language, dramatic conjecture about Sara
Baartman’s life, and endless tangents on every imaginable detail of history unrelated to the life
of Sara Baartman. These flaws make the book equally unsuited to a scholarly readership, though
that seemed to be the anticipated audience. The authors discuss the life of Sara Baartman, who
would become The Hottentot Venus, and their purpose was stated in the introduction as
“[wanting] to discover the person behind the Hottentot Venus, where necessary to set the record
straight, to tell the story of a woman… killed in Europe by a figment of other people’s
imaginations.”3 Clais and Scully did indeed tell a story; in fact, they invented as necessary to add
to the drama, marking conjecture with a subtle “perhaps” or “maybe” before building on their
1 http://history.emory.edu/home/people/faculty/crais.html
2 http://wgss.emory.edu/home/people/faculty/pamela_scully.html
3 pg. 4

2. unfounded assumptions, thereafter in the text treating them as fact. This review will argue that by
mining the history of Sara Baartman for every possible scrap of melodrama, Clais and Scully
have unwittingly subjected the Hottentot Venus once again to the inquisitive stares and
determined exclusion of the western world.
In the introduction, the authors discussed their problems with research. It was apparent
that they did research their topic exhaustively, and their bibliography was impressive. However,
they did not refer to their sources in the text as the basis of their information. In many parts of
Sara’s life, sources were rare or simply do not exist. For example, the book skimmed over Sara’s
childhood in South Africa, for which little evidence could be found, as well as her first Dutch
owner. More detailed emerged as they recounted her sale and trip to Cape Town and the ten
years she spent there. The authors tell of how Sara lost her first child, and in noting Sara’s
silence on the matter, they speculate that “perhaps Baartman’s silence suggests an experience of
trauma, experiences best forgotten.”4 The authors create titillation where the record offers none.
Once in Cape Town, they decide without any supporting citation that Sara may have been a wet
nurse for her family and devote several paragraphs to how that might have made her feel.5 Sara
had a lover in Cape Town, Hendrik van Jong, and here Crais and Scully opine that “for Sara,the
relationship was the first in her adult life that was hers to hold… for the two years Sara lived on
and off with her lover near the seaside, poor but together…” painting a factually unsupported
tableu for the reader. Scotsman and doctor Alexander Dunlop saw Sara Baartman being shown to
sick and injured sailors at the Naval Hospital. Dunlop convinced Sara and her master to travel
with him to London. There, Sara was put on display as a cross between a circus sideshow and an
anthropological exhibit. Dunlop was charged with having a slave in London, but was cleared of
4 pg. 38
5 pgs. 40, 44

3. the charges when he promised to change the exhibit. He took Sara to Ireland, and there she was
baptized and married to an unknown man. Again the authors insert fictional controversy, saying
“Alexander Dunlop signed the copy of the baptism. Was he the husband? Perhaps Sara was
pregnant… if Sara Baartman was pregnant, the child apparently perished, joining its siblings in
early death.”6 Sara’s tour of Ireland failed, and Dunlop died shortly after. Sara continued
performing, and a man named Henry Taylor took her to Paris. In Paris, Sara was examined by
Georges Cuvier, the famous 19th Century scientist. She died in Paris of an unknown disease.
After her death, Cuvier dissected her. The book ended by detailing the campaign to return Sara’s
remains to South Africa, and how that campaign was related to the end of apartheid.
Sara Baartman and the Hottentot Venus lacked focus. There was no clearly stated thesis,
no indication of why the authors wrote the book. Insufficient background information was
provided for the reader to understand the terminology used or the significance of Sara
Baartman’s life. The narrative wandered aimlessly and often plunged into digressions.
Considerable space was devoted to poetic yet meaningless decorative language. People would
appear or disappear suddenly from Sara’s life, and the cause was mentioned as an afterthought if
at all. A tighter focus and a more demanding editor would have improved the book significantly.
There were fundamental problems this work that mere editorial or organizational
improvements could not fix, however. In their highly imaginative handling of historical fact,
Crais and Scully exploited Sara Baartman’s life; they made a spectacle out of her. It seems that
they did this to showcase the brutality of colonialism, but their handling of the material,
especially their voyeuristic sense of drama, made their work read more like a lurid soap opera
than a scathing condemnation of imperialism. In painting their portrait of a colonial woman
ripped from her home and set trembling before a live studio audience, they made Sara the eternal
6 pg.108

4. “Other” just as effectively as Dunlop once did in London. Crais and Scully speak with all the
assumptions and biases of well-educated, Caucasian, middle-class Americans, and they did not
seem to examine their own cultural and social conditioning when writing this work.
Overall, Professors Crais and Scully did not get any closer to discovering the truth of the
woman behind the Hottentot Venus. They unwittingly mimicked those they were condemning
with their presentation of the material. They did not cite their sources properly, and included
excessive bouts of supposition. The book is aimless, sentimental and verbose. Sara Baartman
herself remains a mystery. Whether she is painted as the savage, unreasoning Hottentot Venus,
as the maternal totem of a burgeoning democracy or as the eternally exploited and voiceless
colonial victim, the Hottentot Venus is indeed a powerful symbol.