PRESIDING DIVINITIES: IDEAL SCULPTURE IN ... - Indiana University

the wrists, she stands on the auction block stoically awaiting her imminent sale into
sexual slavery. In light of its subject matter, the Greek Slave might seem a bizarre choice
for a wedding altar. Nevertheless, it created a vision of domesticity that mid-nineteenth-
century viewers found immensely appealing.
At a time when a growing number of Americans were protesting the legal,
political and economic disenfranchisement of married women in the United States,
Powers’ sculpture idealized the western model of marriage and family by contrasting it
with a fantasy of the dissolute East. His chaste subject stands in marked contrast to a
woman of the harem. As Powers’ friend and promoter Minor Kellogg noted, “The cross
and the locket, visible amid the drapery, indicate that she is Christian and beloved.” 6
Viewers often focused as much attention on the slave’s past as they did on her future fate,
contrasting “her distant, happy cottage home in Greece,” where she had been cherished
and adored, with the polygamous, lustful and pecuniary union about to be imposed on
her. 7 From this comparison emerged an idealized vision of Christian domestic life
characterized by “love, trust, hope and joy”—an ideal that obscured the actual second-
class status of married women throughout the western world at this time. 8 The Greek
Slave also embodied the mid-nineteenth-century ideal of “true womanhood” —an ideal
6 Quoted in the promotional pamphlet Powers’ Statue of the Greek Slave (Boston:
Eastburn’s Press, 1848).
7 W. H. Coyle, “Powers’ Greek Slave,” undated excerpt from The Detroit Advertiser,
quoted in ibid.
8 James Freeman Clarke, “The Greek Slave,” quoted in ibid. The rhetorical use of the
Orient as a foil against which Westerners define themselves and their culture has been
discussed at length by Edward Said in his seminal book Orientalism (New York:
Pantheon Books, 1978).
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