Jerin Varghese Journal Entry #1 Hartman, Venus in Two Acts In the reading A Venus in Two Acts, Hartman searches

s for and talks about two slave girls named Venus. Although Hartman refers to the girls as Venus, we actually dont know the true names of the girls. Venus simply serves as a reference to them. Hartmans thoughts about her search for details on both Venus life are shown to the reader to understand the frustration that goes with trying to find something that unfortunately, may just be lost to history. The archive, as Hartman calls it, is a collection of historical records found and kept together by numerous historians. It is important to note the role of historians in the archive. Though the archive is very vast in its information on history, there are countless gaps of details details that historians try to look for in documents, letters, and other sources of information. They primarily work in the limitations of the archive, identify silences, and give voices to them. Hartman talks about her attempt to give a voice to the slave girls who died during the Middle Passage aboard a ship called The Recovery. Hartmans primary argument or message to the reader is the limitations of the archive. The archive talks about slavery the horrific violence surrounding it, but it fails to contain stories of the people who actually went through them. This is what causes Hartman to refer to the archive as a death sentence or a tomb, because all we see is the final body, the violated and abused corpse. But the story behind that body however, is forever lost to history. Hartman tells us what she finds in the archive that mentions the two girls. The information is very little and contains references to them such as dead girl and another girl on board the Recovery. We are only known to their presence on the ship through a legal indictment against a slave ship captain who was being tried for the murder of two slave girls. But thats it, we merely know their presence on a ship, and their death on a ship. The information found in the archive is extremely lacking and doesnt have personal information about the girls themselves. This is what brings about Hartmans argument. She didnt want to create a romance out of them by fabricating her own story of their lives. Doing that, as she says, would be trespassing the archives boundaries. The archive is limited to and adheres to facts. She admits to the readers that she felt a powerful temptation to produce her own voice for Venus because of her anger at the silence of the two girls. However, she constantly reminds us that it was better to leave them as is instead of creating fiction that would ultimately determine what is said about history. The key concept of the reading is the archive and its limitations. Hartmans argument and message surrounds this concept and her frustrations with it. The reader learns some historical facts, as the archive is limited to what is fact, about the brutal violence committed towards slaves. This becomes a point and supporting fact in Hartmans argument that the archive only discusses the violence towards the victims, but not the victims themselves. We learn that sailors were allowed to have intercourse with the black women on board, and the women, in order to escape, would suicide by jumping overboard and drowning themselves. We are exposed to whippings that lead to death, the disgusting degradation of life, involving both black men and women, torture, the excruciating punishments on plantations, and the general inexplicable violence surrounding slavery. History can easily be manipulated by people who just want to say what they want to say, but history itself follows the only thing it can follow, which are facts. Hartman admits to the reader that she had the urge to make a romance out of the silences of Venus. Her honesty earned her my respect and propelled me further to believe her argument. Moreover, the reader can sense Hartman's disappointment throughout the article, as she has trouble finding information about the girl. We feel her emotions and sadness in her efforts to give a voice to Venus among millions of slaves lost in silence to history. The reading helped me better understand this course because while we are being taught about

Jerin Varghese black culture in the United States, there will be a lot of silence. There will be times when we realize we are learning so much about historical events, but miss out on facts about the lives of the people who went through it. Hartmans argument brought this to light and helped the reader see and understand the terrible beauty of history.