The Venus Hottentot was considered a freak of nature and sent to London to be part of freak show. She thought that getting away was an opportunity at first but really it had become a white man’s way to make some money. Throughout the poem we learn that a Venus Hottentot is a women from a South African tribe with physical abnormalities. In the ending stanza of Alexander’s poem she is saying how the white men have made her a freak based on her appearance. “I’d spirit his knives and cut out his black heart, seal it in a jar, and place it on the low shelf in a white man’s museum so the who world could see it was shriveled, hard and deformed.” I think this stanza is trying to say that the white men are freaks on the inside who are inconsiderate and heartless and if she were to take their part like they did to her then his parts would be on the bottom shelf.
Aimee Bender has a very mysterious and magical style to her writing. In her short story The End of the Line there are two men the big man and the little man. Both men compete for superiority over the other. The big man purchases the little man and tries to make himself feel more powerful than the little man. He makes the little man feel like an outcast and this is similar to The Venus Hottentot. The white men take her from her society because she looks different and treat her like a specimen making her feel small just like the little man.
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