Signe Arnfred

ture of his own sexuality” (Gilman 1989:302). In Gilman’s reasoning black wom­en are targets for projection in a double capacity (as women and as black) thus be­coming sexual beings par excellence; sexuality as such is savage, and implicitly black. As also expressed in Haggard’s landscapes: beneath the peaceful and invit­ing virgin land—as surveyed by the explorers’ imperial gaze—danger and terror are lurking: “The white body conceals the black body with its threatening and primitive sexuality… beneath the veneer is a sexuality that corresponds to the myth of black female sexuality, primitive, sadistic, active and death-threatening” (Stott 1989:81). That is: the white woman conceals the black (sexual) woman. Ag­gressive, devastating black sexuality may break through at any moment: In so far as the white woman is sexual—she is black.