Venus

Content Warning: This section contains descriptions of racism, enslavement, sexual coercion and assault, as well as racist language and outdated terminology for race and gender.

The Venus’s favorite food in the text is chocolate, and, near the end of the play, she presents the history of chocolate. The history of chocolate is a seemingly irrelevant or tangential scene in the play, but it highlights the symbolic importance of chocolate in understanding Parks’s view of Baartman’s life. Chocolate is a symbol of the desire of imperial societies to claim and bring back specimens from their colonies, and the Venus’s explanation of the history of chocolate shows how chocolate was discovered by the Aztec people, brought back to Europe by the Spanish, made popular across Europe, celebrated for health benefits, then dismissed as sinful, decadent, and unhealthy. This same pattern is enacted in the play through the Venus’s life, as she is initially prized sexually, then shared across England and France, and then accused of being decadent or sinful.

The fact that chocolate is the Venus’s favorite food shows the connection between the Venus’s story and that of chocolate, with chocolate serving as a comfort to the Venus, and a representation of her own agency in the play.