By Lel

In “The Plot of Her Undoing,” Saidiya Hartman presents a historical retelling of female oppression. She compels her readers to truly understand the dehumanization that women have experienced, using specific accounts of women’s experiences of abuse, subjugation, and degradation by men and societal institutions. Ranging from the allowance of the slave trade in “the fifteenth century with a papal bull” to her later mention of today’s current issues of “data mining,” Hartman leaves few stones unturned when it comes to listing the contributions – those of premodern times and the present-day – to the discrimination of women (Hartman 1, 5). Notably, she accomplishes this historical account through the use of a specific pattern of repetition, initiating and continuing a list of events by constantly utilizing the titular phrase: “the plot of her undoing” (Hartman 1). 

Hartman establishes this pattern from the start of her essay: 

The plot of her undoing begins with his dominion. It begins in the fifteenth century with a papal bull, with a philosopher at his desk, pen in hand, as he sorts the world into categories of genus and species. It begins with a bill of sale, with a story in the newspaper that enumerates her crimes, with a note appended to the file: she answers questions easily, but appears stupid; it begins with a wanted poster that reduces the history of her life to a single word – condemned. The plot of her undoing begins with a man in his study writing a tome about the Americas, the species, the fauna, the races, it is a compendium illustrated with botanical drawings, architectural plans, sketches of farm buildings, and a microscopic view of her scarfskin. The plot of her undoing begins with the violence of reason (Hartman 1).

But, to the reader, this combination – the comprehensiveness of history told through the specificity of the titular phrase – feels vaguely inharmonious. The pattern of repetition itself emphasizes the importance of the meaning of this repeated phrase – making clear the fact that the entirety of Hartman’s dreadful and extensive recount of women’s history not only contributes to but essentially exists in reference to “the plot of her undoing…the plot of her undoing…the plot of her undoing…” (Hartman). Crucially, Hartman does not just iterate “plot” but “the plot,” and she does not just follow that with “undoing” but “her undoing” (Hartman). With the article “the” and the singular pronoun “her,” just reading the title itself and noting its many repetitions at face value, we might expect that this essay articulates one story about one woman – one “plot”, one “her,” one “undoing,” one singular narrative of discrimination (Hartman). Moreover, we might be confused when instead we find that Hartman is describing many distinct and seemingly disparate experiences that have been had by many perceivably disconnected women. For instance, in her first paragraph, Hartman tells the story of a woman being traded as a slave. She writes, “It begins with an entry in the ledger that itemizes her as number 71, a meager girl, and forever erases her name” (Hartman 1).  Three paragraphs later Hartman describes the much more modern situation, “The plot of her undoing begins…when he forces her in the freshman dorm” (Hartman 2). It is highly unlikely that these two women existed at the same time, much less exist as the same person; but they are both distinctly identified as individuals – one given a specific number one given a specific dorm room. This conflict between what Hartman portrays the essay as – one narrative – and what it actually turns out to be – a combination of various particular instances of oppression – leads the reader to question whether the definition of female oppression according to Hartman is one compilation of history or single exclusive experiences of individualized misogyny.

In order to make sense of this dissonance, one must understand the interaction between Hartman’s use of historical analysis and her use of individualized storytelling and subjective experience. Hartman simultaneously presents history through the lens of individual perspectives and emphasizes the importance of viewing individual perspectives in the context of history. Instead of simply listing slavery as a part of the history of Black women’s oppression, she writes “the legal fact that she belongs to him” (Hartman 2). In the process of portraying the historical events that stripped away Black women’s personhood, she gives a woman an identity – simply by saying she. 

Most overtly, Hartman points out objective and traceable accounts of oppression in history – identifiable time periods, organizations, and documents – but she portrays each scenario through a specific woman’s point of view. She references the United States Constitution, writing that “The plot of her undoing begins with the constitution that endows her with rights that no white man is bound to respect” (Hartman 3). Not only is Hartman placing a fixed “her” into a distinct moment in history, she is also describing the way in which that historical event will be intertwined with that woman’s specific experience (Hartman). She writes about Emancipation, articulating “the calculation of her worth necessary to secure her freedom papers” (Hartman 3). Here, the reader can’t help but conceptualize a personalized calculation for this particular enslaved woman. Each well known aspect of history is eventually  tied to a woman’s experience of it – “It begins with the pledge of allegiance, with the stars and stripes, with the iron cross, with the dream of belonging, with the division of us and them” (Hartman 3). When Hartman writes “endows her,” “her worth,” and “division of us;” she is applying history to specified personhood, even utilizing the first person (Hartman). Individualizing as a means of reflecting these occurrences commentates on the fact that history – commonly a remembrance of events and the dates on which they took place – is generally distant from subjective perspective. In opposition to this convention, Hartman’s personalized way of retelling moments in women’s history not only invokes empathy in the reader but also instills an idea that viewing history as it is experienced by individual persons is essential to truly understanding it.

Further embracing the significance of distinctive human experience, Hartman additionally includes individualized references of oppression that do not fall under a specific realm of history. She writes, “The plot of her undoing begins when he sleeps with her best friend, when he molests her daughter, when he refuses to wear the condom, when he forces her in the freshman dorm”(Hartman 2). These are very personalized experiences that Hartman sprinkles throughout the essay. She extends that intimacy of personal experience to emotional subjectivity, writing about “the loneliness that breaks her” (Hartman 2) She even goes so far as to briefly highlight feminine sexuality – perhaps the peak of her intimate humanization – articulating, “The plot of her undoing begins with the word consent, with faking an orgasm, with finishing herself off in secret, with coming quietly, with wanting more, with wanting it longer and harder, with not wanting it at all, with wanting it too much, with not wanting it enough, with wanting at all” (Hartman 4). This could be seen as the perspectives of several different women or a complex internal experience of one woman; regardless, Hartman’s description of feminine sexuality is a microcosm for her holistic description of women’s history – both existing as an intertwinedness of varying independent yet intimately personal perspectives. 

Hartman continues this pattern for nearly four and a half pages of despondency, but abruptly switches pattern to end her essay. The mode of repetition does not cease; instead the phrase itself does – to “the undoing of the plot” (Hartman 5). The interaction between historical analysis and individualized storytelling continues as Hartman shifts her subject matter towards the topic of resolution. However – although the usage of the individual “she” remains –  this section of the article is more situationally arbitrary (Hartman 5). Hartman continues emphasizing singularity with “her runaway tongue” and “her outstretched hands,” but abandons her usage of specified historical events, instead opting to generalize “proclamations or constitutions” (Hartman 6, 5). There is no specified time, only “When life approaches extinction, when no one will be spared, when nothing is all that is left, when she is all that is left” (Hartman 5). There is no specified place, only “at the river…in the squatter city…in the clearing” (Hartman 5-6). This ambiguity of experience may reflect that, although she writes that “all things will be changed,” Hartman is unsure about the deconstruction of oppression and has no decisive response to the compilation of occurrences she has thus far chronicled (Hartman 6).

In an essay that specifically highlights the stripping of women’s personhood and individuality, Hartman’s rhetoric of portraying various perspectives within both the defined “plot” and ambiguous “undoing” conveys the significance of each and every individual woman’s experiences not only to the history of women’s oppression as a whole but also to one another’s subjective experiences (Hartman). In the same way that history can be told broadly and impersonally but is portrayed by Hartman through the lens of human distinctiveness, female oppression can be defined in an individual experience – a single occurrence that leads to a single woman’s single “undoing” (Hartman). However, through her reinvention of the standard rendering of history, Hartman reveals that the best way to understand the whole of female oppression is to view separate occurrences in reference to each other. “The plot” of the black woman who “can’t…defend her home when the sights of the Glock 22 fall on her chest” is a horrifying instance of oppression alone, but the true nature of that oppression is amplified further when understood in the context of the slave woman who “learns to pronounce the words master and mistress”(Hartman 5, 2). Hartman renders this true nature of oppression to be that one instance of it is rooted in another – so much so that one would not exist without the other. Considering this in combination with the ambiguity of experience associated with “undoing of the plot,” Hartman leads readers to a new pessimistic concern: If we cannot disentangle ourselves from history nor can we erase it, is it even possible to undo the plot (Hartman)?

Works Cited:

Hartman, Saidiya. “The Plot of Her Undoing.” Notes on Feminisms, Feminist Art Coalition, 2019. https://feministartcoalition.org/essays-list/saidiya-hartman.