Aestheticized Slavery: Blackamoor Jewelry in Hemingway’s Across the River and into the Trees

Abstract:In Ernest Hemingway’s 1950 novel Across the River and into the Trees, the protagonist’s love interest first covets and then wears a Venetian blackamoor brooch that evolved from a sixteenth-century tradition in Italian decorative arts. The brooch metaphorically “blackens” Hemingway’s otherwise white-centered text and invokes modernists’ fascination with Africa and the primitive. It also visually alludes to Othello and its themes of sexual jealousy and racial difference. Ultimately, through the motif of this peculiar piece of jewelry, Hemingway aestheticizes slavery and reaffirms white supremacy.