18 pages • 36 minutes read
On Friendship
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Background
Literary Context: The Heroic Couplet
Phillis Wheatley is known for often using heroic couplets in her poetry. This form involves a series of five pairs of syllables with a pattern of unstressed/stressed per line, known as iambic pentameter, with pairs of end words rhyming with one another, known as rhyming couplets. These couplets are usually self-contained, meaning the thought finishes at the end of the line rather than rolling over to the next line.
This form’s use in English poetry reaches back to the Middle Ages, as seen in Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, and it was later associated with the works of John Dryden and Alexander Pope, most notably in Pope’s The Rape of the Lock. It reached the height of its popularity in the 18th century. Wheatley was exposed to these poets and their forms in her studies at the Wheatley household. Her adoption of the heroic couplet form in her poetry was therefore both a reflection of her sophisticated literary education and the aspirations she had for her own work.
Variations on the form, including enjambment with the rhyming couplets, developed as poets had to adjust the form in order to tell the story they need to tell. For example, in “On Friendship,” a few lines use enjambment, as when the seventh line bleeds into the eighth to complete the poet’s idea: “Now let my thoughts in Contemplation steer / The Footsteps of the Superlative fair” (Lines 7-8).
Authorial Context: Wheatley and Female Connections
In order to write about friendship, Wheatley likely drew on her own experiences with friends. In a 2014 essay for Legacy: A Journal of American Women Writers called “Phillis Wheatley on Friendship,” Tara Bynum refers to extant letters from Wheatley to Obour Tanner, an enslaved person in Rhode Island. In her letters, Wheatley discusses her book sales, her travels, and other matters two friends would share. The letters also accentuate their mutual belief in God and their kindly blessings towards each other.
The themes in these letters connect to the themes in Wheatley’s poem “On Friendship” regarding the “celestial strain” (Line 2) as well as the “gratitude” (Line 5) she feels towards having a friend. Not much leisure time existed for enslaved persons, so to take the spare free time allotted to write and check in on another human being shows a special type of care and dedication.
In addition to Tanner, Wheatley also had a relationship with her mistress Susanna Wheatley, and it is possible that this connection also influenced the poem. As Susanna had enslaved Wheatley, Susanna had freedom that Wheatley did not. As a result, it would seem fitting that Wheatley would liken her to a queen-like figure in the poem. On the other hand, throughout Wheatley’s time as an enslaved person, Susanna did encourage and support Wheatley’s writing, which was an unusual thing for an enslaver to do. Wheatley did eventually receive her freedom from the Wheatley family in 1774, but Susanna’s untimely death did not permit them to become friends as two free women.
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By Phillis Wheatley
