To S.M., a Young African Painter, on Seeing His Works

The critical response to Wheatley’s poetry has been complicated and complex.

In her time, Wheatley’s work was wildly popular in American and in England. Both countries paraded her in front of political leadership and the upper class. Wheatley became a household name for literate colonists. Her achievements catalyzed the emerging abolitionist movement, who saw her poetry as proof of enslaved people’s intelligence and humanity. However, enslavers also found her writing valuable, using it to convince enslaved Africans to convert to Christianity.

Wheatley’s poetry was not primarily treated as art on its own merits, but became a tool of white people. During the Civil War and Reconstruction eras, the abolitionist movement drew on Wheatley’s poetry to support their movement. Margaretta Matilda Odell, for example, wrote a sentimentalized biography of Wheatley to support her abolitionist and proto-feminist goals—an example of exploitative appropriation.

Wheatley’s reputation became more complicated during the early 20th century, as scholars dismissed Wheatley’s poetry as unconcerned with slavery and lacking a strong sense of her identity as an enslaved Black woman. Scholars argued that she thus ignored what they perceived as the defining element of her life by not using her position to draw attention to the injustice of slavery and to explicitly advocate for change.