On Imagination

For an Indigenous African such as Wheatley, winter in New England, the “northern tempests” (Line 51), was no symbol. It was a real-time challenge as a grim season that could last months. “Winter,” the poet/speaker says, “frowns” on “Fancy’s raptur’d eyes” (Line 23). That winter momentarily yields to the power of the poet’s imagination in Stanza 5 feels like a dazzling triumph for the unchained fancy. Gone are the bleak skies, the relentless snowfall, and the chilling air—suddenly, the poem breaks out in a lush garden world of flowers and trees, a dazzling symbolic landscape both real and unreal. The world breaks the “iron bands” of winter, and the poet celebrates an unfamiliar freedom.

However, within a handful of lines, “austere” (Line 50) winter reasserts its chill. Winter thus symbolizes the buzzkill of the real-time world. For Wheatley, winter surely represents the conditions of her enslavement that her flights of fancy can never entirely overcome. Massachusetts, after all, is not going anywhere.

The season of winter as a concept also speaks to a broader reading. Winter symbolizes any tragedy that people must endure—people who find grateful refuge, even momentarily, in the consolation of the imagination despite knowing that their real life will reassert itself.