The Broken Letter

After being forced to leave Oberlin College, Mary Edmonia Lewis moved to Boston where she began her career as a sculptor. Using the money she made in Boston creating various busts, Lewis was able to travel to Europe in 1865.[1] Before her trip, she was interviewed by Mrs. L Maria Child, an American abolitionist and a women’s rights and Native American rights activist. Despite her blooming success in the art world, Lewis was questioned mainly about her race. Society first viewed Lewis as an African American and Native American woman, and then as an artist. As Child states in The Broken Letter,

“Being aware how difficult it is to attain to excellence in sculpture, and that, in addition to deficiency of early culture, [Edmonia Lewis] had the double disadvantage of being a woman and colored, I did feel somewhat sorry she had undertaken a task so formidable.”[2]

Many doubted Lewis’ dream of becoming a professional sculptor, because of her various identifiers. Once she achieved fame, however, Lewis’ artwork was still viewed through the lens of her race and gender. The Broken Letter is one example of how society was unable to objectively critique her sculptures.

            “There’s a problem with biography for those who have ovaries or those who [are people of color]; their biography then becomes the explanation for their work,” said Kirsten Pai Buick in an interview with the Oberlin Review. Mary Edmonia Lewis fell subject to this. Her artwork has been described as having, “no real care for her people,”[3] due to what many thought was a lack of African American and Native American representation in her sculptures. In her work, Forever Free, Mary Edmonia Lewis portrays a woman kneeling beside a man. Both figures are made of white marble, and many scholars believe that they are of white European descent. Many have commented on the ways in which Lewis’ work of art, Forever Free, enforces the patriarchy because the woman is kneeling beside the man and looking up at him. Kirsten Buick has a different opinion, she expresses in her essay on “The Ideal Works of Edmonia Lewis”; “[The] sculpture presents a reconstructed image of the African American family after slavery and becomes a subtle commentary on the hopes for the newly liberated population.”[4] Scholars who critiqued Lewis for depicting white models are searching too far into her background and therefore minimizing her work as an artist. Instead of viewing the art on its own terms, “[her] pathologies become the explanation for [her] work,”[5] says Buick in an interview with the Oberlin Review. In The Broken Letter, Mrs. L Maria Child asks Edmonia Lewis multiple questions about her background. After Lewis explains what it meant for her to spend three years with the Chippewa community, Child states that Lewis, “[does] not talk like an untutored Indian.”[6] The 19th century worked against Lewis in that her artwork was not discussed without first mentioning her race.

            In 1842, Lydia Maria Child published the short story, “The Quadroons,” in which she described a character now known as the “tragic mulatto.”[7] The character reappeared in 1843, in Child’s story, “Slavery’s Pleasant Homes.”[8] “She portrayed this light skinned woman as the offspring of a white slaveholder and his Black female slave,” said Dr. David Pilgrim, a Sociology Professor at Ferris State University. The young woman in the two stories believed she was white, however, once her father died it was discovered that she was Black. As a result, she was forced into slavery and died while enslaved. “The tragic mulatta...was just white enough to bridge the gap between Black and white women. Her very whiteness...symbolized the ‘penetration’ of her body by the white master,” said Buick in her essay “The Ideal Works of Edmonia Lewis.” In 19th century white society, freedom meant whiteness. It meant assimilation. Lydia Maria Child begins her interview with Edmonia Lewis by asking her if she, “had any...white blood in her veins.”[9] It was therefore difficult for Child to believe that a woman of Lewis’ status could be so talented in her field of work.

            Mary Edmonia Lewis’ works of art should be discussed without bias. Scholars do not use artists like Rembrandt, Picasso, and Van Gogh’s identity to explain their artwork. They instead take the work as it is and examine it without considering the artists’ background. It is important to not forget what strides Mary Edmonia Lewis made in the artworld. She is the first Native American and African American sculptor to achieve fame for her artwork. It is our job, in the 21st century, to view Lewis’ work as intended. Lewis did not write an autobiography that was hung next to her sculptures, therefore her history as a Native American and African American woman should not be at the center of discussion regarding her artwork. Critics should instead put Lewis’ works of art in conversation with major events of the 19th century, in order to gain perspective on what stories she was attempting to depict in her sculptures. Society made it extremely difficult for Mary Edmonia Lewis to succeed in the art world. Despite the obstacles she faced due to her race and gender, Edmonia Lewis succeeded in gifting the world her numerous sculptures. It is now time that we pay tribute to Mary Edmonia Lewis’ work by viewing it with an objective eye.

[1] “Edmonia Lewis.” Smithsonian American Art Museum. Accessed May 1, 2020. https://americanart.si.edu/artist/edmonia-lewis-2914.

[2] Child, L undefined. Edited by Charles K Backus and S.W. Maria Duffield. The Broken Letter, March 3, 1865

[3] Buick, Kirsten P. "The Ideal Works of Edmonia Lewis: Invoking and Inverting Autobiography." American Art 9, no. 2 (1995): 5-19. Accessed May 17, 2020. www.jstor.org/stable/3109182.

[4] Ibid

[5] Dunbar, Kameron, and Alex Davies. “OTC: Kirsten Pai Buick, Art History Professor – The ...” The Oberlin Review, March 9, 2018. https://oberlinreview.org/15769/news/otc-kirsten-pai-buick-art-history-professor/.

[6] Child, L undefined. Edited by Charles K Backus and S.W. Maria Duffield. The Broken Letter, March 3, 1865

[7] “The Tragic Mulatto Myth.” The Tragic Mulatto Myth - Anti-black Imagery - Jim Crow Museum - Ferris State University. Accessed May 1, 2020. https://www.ferris.edu/jimcrow/mulatto/.

[8] Ibid

[9] Child, L undefined. Edited by Charles K Backus and S.W. Maria Duffield. The Broken Letter, March 3, 1865