In Herman Melville’s Benito Cereno, there is a scene where Captain Delano encounters a group of black women and children on the deck of the Saint Dominick. While looking at them, Delano assumes that the women are uncivilized but at the same time are well-mannered, innocent and loving towards their children. This scene, unlike what Delano has seen so far, appears to have no deception for him, and he is seeing something as it really is instead of having it hidden from him like the rest of the scene. But the women’s innocence is a lie: they are actually complicit in the revolt that Delano does not know about and are just as vicious. Delano reaction to this scene makes his prejudices explicit through his reliance on notions about “nature”, while the scene’s narrative form heightens the irony of his assumptions.

When Delano is looking at the “Negress” sleeping under the bulwarks, and her child attempting to get to her, he frequently compares them to animals. He compares her “to a doe in the shade of a woodland rock” (Melville 23). Even here with this simile he has begun infantilizing her by making her innocent, as a doe is associated with innocence.  This analogy continues with the metaphor of her child as a “fawn”, which is strengthened by it being naked, and the mother is even called a “dam”. But there appears to be a contradiction here, as the child’s hands are compared to paws which are obviously not in a fawn. This simile may be connected to the child’s “uncommon vigour” and its “grunts”, which to Delano appear more like those of an animal with paws such as a dog or cat than a doe. After the woman wakes up, grabs her child, and sees Delano, he thinks about the other “Negresses” and is impressed with them: “like most uncivilized women, they seemed at once tender of heart and tough of constitution, equally ready to die for their infants or fight for them. Unsophisticated as leopardesses, loving as doves” (Melville 23). Here, Delano is employing the “noble savage” stereotype, idealizing the goodness and toughness of the uncivilized women. Their fierceness is fittingly represented by a leopardess, a fierce animal which has connotations of perseverance, while their love is represented by a dove, a symbol of love and peace. To Delano the women are peaceful until roused to violence. But the women are also compared to animals once again, and by doing this, Delano is dehumanizing and infantilizing them, even as he is praising them for their “tenderness and love” (Melville 23). 

Unlike the previous scenes, this one seemingly has no deception for Delano, and he thinks he is seeing something as it really is. Delano has found “naked nature, now, pure tenderness and love” (Melville 23). It is something positive and loving in a story that is generally gloomy and dark. Unlike the other two sailors that Delano has previously seen, the black woman is not ashamed of being seen uncovered, since she has nothing to hide. Unlike them, the Negress is one-dimensional as she is authentic and natural. The sailor tarring the block has, to Delano, a haggard face which is not naturally allied to his hand, and he believes that he may be guilty to some extent. Delano thinks that “if there be any wickedness on board this ship, that man there has fouled his hand in it, even as now he fouls it in the pitch” (Melville 22). The old Barcelona tar is also dismissive of Delano, who later thinks that “he betrayed a consciousness of ill desert” (Melville 23).  Both of those sailors are surrounded and being watched by blacks, while the lady is not being watched by anyone but Delano. There is a duality between the two men that is disconnected: the first sailor’s black hand is disconnected with his haggardness and the second sailor’s bear-like demeanor is contrasted with his sheep eyes and air. The black women also have dualities, but they are positive and work together. This is the first time in the story where love is seen, and one of the only times where women are shown. Delano describes the sight as “sunny” and “sociable” (Melville 23). This could also be why he ends up feeling better, because he has seen a family together, and because he has finally seen something “natural” in an environment that is unnatural to him.

But the black women’s apparent innocence hides something. Of course, he is not aware of the mutiny of the blacks in the ship. He suspects something from Don Benito, but not anything from the black women. In reality, “the Negresses, of age, were knowing to the revolt, and satisfied with the death of their master, Don Alexandro: that, had the Negroes not restrained them, they would have tortured to death, instead of simply killing, the Spaniards slain by command of the Negro Babo” (Melville 56). This disproves the innocence that Delano believes that they have. But there is another thing that Delano misses in his comparison of them to animals and nature: nature can be very violent and chaotic. He is also using descriptors of carnivorous, violent animals, such as him giving paws to the black woman’s child, and him comparing the black women to leopardesses. There is a twist in that while the two other sailors that Delano has encountered are afraid for their lives and in a position of submission to the blacks, which is why the first one is” haggard” and the other is “furtive” and “diffident”, the black women are not afraid of Delano or anyone because they are in control of the ship. The sailors have to work hard while the black women can relax. There is another hint: when Delano approaches the Barcelona tar, the “Negroes” around the windlass join him and become talkative, and he by degrees becomes “mute and glum and seems morosely unwilling to answer more questions” (Melville 23). He is afraid of the blacks because they are really in control and do not want him to give it up. But this misses Delano completely.

So Delano’s assumptions infantilize and objectify the woman and her son, and give him something seemingly natural in an unnatural environment, but he is unable to see the truth about the woman and her place in the situation. He is creating his own reality in his head. What Delano sees as a transparent and comforting moment actually shows his own biased perspective. What may seem transparent and natural isn’t always so, and images that are conceptualized in the head often do not conform to realities. Fantasies and naiveties can lead one to miss the realities of a situation as it makes one less skeptical and objective.

Works Cited

Melville, Herman. Benito Cereno. Generic NL Freebook Publisher, n.d.