The Odd One Out: Allegory and Ostracization
Despite the fluidity of the Black bas-relief’s meaning, the allegorical woman continues to be singular in her Blackness, particularly when compared to her other female white allegorical peers on the monument. Outside of her facial features and hair, the allegorical woman is differentiated from the others in additional ways. To start, the Black woman’s garb is shorter than the other allegorical bas-reliefs. While the other women wear various garments that reach their feet, the Black woman’s stop just below the knee, leaving her calves and shins exposed. Additionally exposed by the garment is one of the Black woman’s breasts. Her partial nudity lies in stark contrast to the rest who remain fully clothed. This style of clothing also draws attention to her bare feet while the others wear sandals.
One of the most intriguing differences in these bas-reliefs, however, is what the women hold in their hands. War holds a sword in her right and a shield in her left. Victory holds a sword and a branch of laurel—a plant whose leaves represent victory, success, and triumph. [6] Peace holds an olive branch in her right hand while the other wraps around a cornucopia. Like the figure itself, the olive branch represents peace, as well as harmony and hope. [7] The cornucopia symbolizes abundance and fruitful harvest. [8] While these women have both hands full holding two different items, History (Emancipation) holds only one. In her right hand she holds her own broken enslavement chain, and in the other she holds nothing. Both hands are facing outward to the viewer. In this way, after viewing, the Black bas-relief figure leaves the impression that she has nothing left to offer other than this moment of having broken her chains. What remains is what has occurred (the breaking of her bondage) and what is absent (the continual links on her chains), reflecting the dual aspects of this bas-relief as both history and emancipation.
As allegorical women are made with the intention of representing abstract concepts, while also meant to represent the ideal versions of those concepts by hosting them in ideal female bodies, the inclusion of a Black female figure within this conversation paves a way for Black figures in the monumentscape. This can be seen in the fact that this monument was the first of its kind to have a Black figure present on it outside of a cemetery. [9] At the same time, this monument also serves to augment racial difference between the allegorized bodies within this idealism. By portraying a Black woman as a freed slave for the ideal depiction of emancipation, the monument continues to operate under and perpetuate ideas of hegemony. This is not to say that acknowledging the past of the Black woman as a slave makes the monument wholistically unproductive, but rather her role on the monument as a slave in conversation with the other women as mythical abstract ideals highlights the restrictive and binary lens placed on Black people; one where a Black person is either free or enslaved. The monument then seems to say that the Black body dubbed free (even with the remnants of those chains still clinging to her wrists) is the most idyllic state for her possible, when, with the perspective of over a century later, we know there is still far more to be done.