Wheatley’s classical learning was her poetical survival resource in poverty

Evidence

Phillis, I would like to think that after you were released unto the world, when they jailed your husband for his debts and you lay in the maid’s quarters at night, a free and poor woman with your last living boy, that you thought of the Metamorphoses, making the sign of Arachne in the tangle of your fingers. — Nikole Hannah-Jones et al., The 1619 Project, 335

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the chapter’s broader reframing thesis: enslaved literacy and classical learning as self-possession against dehumanizing philosophy. Resonates with the standing reading goal of tracing how origin stories determine what counts as deviation vs design.