The Fifth Canto of Aciloe

There is a focus in canto five of Peru on Aciloe.  In fact, the entire canto revolves around Aciloe in some way.  The canto starts off with a character description of Zamor and his love of Aciloe, goes into Aciloe describing her sire and his ruling of the tribe, and then a tender moment between Aciloe and Zamor being ruined by the invasion of the Spanish.  The rest of the canto follows directly alongside Aciloe as she struggles with her father's torture, the "death" of and the reunion with her lover, and Aciloe's, Zamor's, and her father's freedom from Alphonso.  Then Jessica Damian accounts in her article "Helen Maria William's Personal Narrative of Travels from Peru (1784) to Peruvian Tales (1823)" that Helen Maria William's added subheadings to her cantos "privileging the gendered perspective of its female protagonists," such as Aciloe being the subheading of canto five (10, paragraph 25). This focus on Aciloe in canto five is HMW's way of keeping a character with "British" attributes at the forefront of the audience's mind in the canto and creating a character with which a British audience can sympathize.  HMW further humanizes the Peruvians in canto five through this focus on Aciloe by making Aciloe a character that a British audience can easily relate to.

"Alphonso and Aciloe"

A Peruvian Inca mummy (c. 14th-15th cent.)
with natural blond hair and fair skin.

When Zamor's love for Aciloe is being described, we begin to see the beginning of the attributes most favored in British society.  Zamor's love is founded by "Aciloe's beauties his fond eye confest,/Yet more Aciloe's virtues warm'd his breast" (Peru 25-26).  Physical beauty and virtues are attributes we have seen throughout the class, especially talked about by Wollstonecraft, and are ideal attributes for a "British" woman to have, as seen in Desmond.  In fact, Aciloe's virtue is what makes Alphonso ultimately fall for her after her beauty catches his attention during the lines "Yet, as he gaz'd enraptur'd on her form,/Her virtues awe the heart her beauties warm;" (113-114).  Her "snowy" white skin, while a true common physical attribute of Inca people (see article), is another ideal attribute for Aciloe as pale skin signified a high social standing in European societies (98).  The fact that HMW made a point to include this in her epic poem further pushes the British ideals and makes Aciloe a more relatable character to a British audience.



Another way that HMW makes Aciloe a more relatable character to the British audience that they can sympathize with is when she has Aciloe lament over the "death" of Zamor and talk about killing herself.  Like in the last class, we discussed that the act of killing yourself over a lover is one that was famous due to a slave narrative where a female slave, promised marriage with a wealthy European male, stabs herself in the heart upon entering England and finding out the man now owns her and will not marry her. We specifically linked this occurrence with Alzira stabbing herself in the heart over Atiliba's (her husband's) death. This occurrence is echoed again when Aciloe speaks of killing herself over Zamor's "death" in the lines "Death shall for ever, seal the nuptial tie,/The heart belov'd by thee is fix'd to die" (193-194).  By echoing a previous scene that's nearly the carbon copy of an already famous one, HMW draws the British audience in even more with a familiar tale of woe brought on by colonization.  The reason that Aciloe's talk of suicide over a lover would make her more relatable is because it is a familiar concept to the British audience.

This long article talks about the lost civilizations of the Andes, specifically the Incas and Pizarro's conquest of them.  It really helped clear a few things up for me (A.K.A. misconceptions I had), like Incas actually having incredibly pale skin and characteristics very similar to Europeans (towards the end of section 3 "Transoceanic contacts").  If you read/skim it, focus on the first and third sections, which clear up the most misconceptions I had about the Incas.

Discussion Questions

• Why do you think that HMW focuses the fifth canto on Aciloe?  How do the "British" attributes shown in Aciloe affect the influence the canto has?
• How, if at all, does HMW's edited subheadings to "privelege" a "gendered perspective" help or hinder her work as a whole?