ABSTRACT
Drawing on previous work on the correlation between whiteness and manhood in the nineteenth century, this chapter illustrates Captain Delano's feminization of blacks throughout the story, who, like women, are objectified as dependent, infantile, docile, simplistic, emotional, and sensuous. Captain Delano's racial views, then, rest on the "commonsense" assumption of white supremacy—and black inferiority—and, therefore, on the impossibility of organized black action, let alone insurrection. As is known, much of Herman Melville's "Benito Cereno" deals with Captain Amasa Delano's inability to see the slave rebellion aboard the San Dominick, as his "singularly undistrustful good nature" keeps preventing him from even imagining the mutiny that has taken place on the Spanish vessel. Ultimately, then, Melville's story provides a complex articulation of the intricate relations between whites and blacks in American history. Challenging traditional assumptions of white supremacy, Melville not only questioned the "natural" subordination of blacks, represented by the institution of slavery.
