Oroonoko by Aphra Behn (1175)

Oroonoko

By Aphra Behn

Analysis and Summary

Aphra Behn (1640-1689) wrote the novel Oroonoko in 1688 and based it on her trip to what many researchers believe is Surinam. Behn begins the story with a statement of her legitimacy as an author. Immediately, she breaks the form of classic Aristotelian fiction, which Aristotle describes as an imitation of nature as a whole. Aristotle (384 BC – 322 BC) believed that fiction told what could happen instead of what did, making it superior to history, which is random and may not have a beginning, end, cause or effect. Behn makes it clear in the beginning of the novel that she is “an eye-witness,” that this story is not heresy. Because she states that she is writing about true events, she begins her novel with this statement defending the legitimacy in order to make it believable to the reader: “…and it shall come simply into the world, recommended by its own proper merits and natural intrigues…without the addition of invention” (1). Throughout the novel, she gives extraneous detail, producing the experience of truth.

Oroonoko is often interpreted as an anti-slavery novel because of the way the narrator describes the struggle and injustices of a Coromantin slave from the Gold Coast, what is present-day Ghana. Behn’s work is highly contradictory in the sense that although she breaks the Aristotelian models of writing fiction, she promotes Aristotle’s idea of hierarchy in defense of an absolute monarchy. Oroonoko as a whole shows Behn’s contradictory stance on what is legitimate authority. This paper aims to examine these contradicting messages in order to understand this novel’s historical and societal significance.

In 1649, England’s King Charles I was captured and beheaded because of his resistance to instituting a constitutional monarchy. After his death, several theories about the need of a centralized government came into play, including Hobbes’ Leviathan written in 1651. In 1660, the monarchy in England was restored. Behn lived through what has been called the most conflict-ridden period in British history. During this time, there were major debates on how the British government should be structured.

Aristotle believed that equality in politics is illogical because society exists by nature like a family and therefore must have hierarchy. During this time period, two major philosophers wrote about democracy and the structure of government. Hobbes (1588-1675) introduced the idea that a strong centralized government should exist, as long as it is made up of those that are governed. Locke (1632-1704) took this idea further and proposed that the consent of those that are governed is needed to have an effective centralized government. In Aphra Behn’s novel, she profoundly rejects the idea of democratic society. For example, when Prince Oroonoko is amongst the slaves, dawning the same clothing as them, he is still treated like a figure of authority:

He begged Trefry to give him something more befitting a slave, which he did, and took off his robes: nevertheless he shone through all, and his osenbrigs…could not conceal the graces of his looks and mein; he had no less admirers than when he had his dazzling habit on: the royal youth appeared in spite of the slave, the people could not help treating him in a different manner, without designing it. As soon as they approached him, they venerated and insinuated it into every soul. So that there was nothing talked of but this young and gallant slave, even by those who yet knew not that he was a prince. (28)

Behn is illustrating to her reader that people with authority are given the power to rule even when dressed like a person with no authority. This is a rejection of democratic society, where authority is given to everyone equally. Behn’s novel blatantly promotes the idea of an absolute monarchy. She refers to “the deplorable death of our great monarch” (7). Through the character, Oroonoko, she shows that some people are meant to be in power.

Behn consciously separates Oroonoko from the other slaves in his character description. She shows an obvious stigma against the other slaves and their races, yet, Oroonoko is described in a way that makes him powerful and unique compared to the others:

His face was not of that brown rusty black which most of that nation are, but perfect ebony, polished jet…His nose was rising and Roman, instead of African and flat. His mouth the finest shaped that could be seen; far from those great turned lips which are so natural to the rest of the negroes. The whole proportion and air of his face was so nobly and exactly formed that, bating his color, there could be nothing in nature more beautiful, agreeable, and handsome. (7)

Behn describes Oroonoko as completely Roman, except for his skin color. He represents a figure of authority, one that despite his race will have power over others. Similarly, his slave name alludes to a reincarnation of all that is Rome, the model of civilization: “Mr. Trefry gave Oroonoko that of Cesear; which name will live in that country as long as that (scarce more) glorious one of the great Roman” (28). Although she seems to have sympathy for slaves, she only has sympathy for those that are noble like Oroonoko. This shows that Behn must have contradicting ideals like her novel. Later, Cesear defends the conditions that the slaves live in:

…we are bought and sold like apes or monkeys, to be the sport of women, fools and cowards; and the support of rogues and runagates, that have abandoned their own countries for rapine, murders, theft, and villainies…And shall we render obedience to such a degenerate race, who have no human virtue left, to distinguish them from the vilest of creatures? (42).

Though these quotes seem to promote an anti-slavery narrative, Behn’s novel remains contradictory.

In this time period, the Coromanti people were not uncivilized barbarians like the Africans described in Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad. The Coromanti people were multilingual, involved in trade, and far from primitive. They were not colonized or overtaken. Rather, slaves from the Gold Coast (present-day Ghana) were only obtained through war. Because of the slave trade, people that are taken were reduced to being treated as animals. If these individuals were not taken in war, it would be immoral to treat them this way.

If this were an anti-slavery narrative, Aphra Behn should have ended it with the death of slavery. Instead, she concludes her novel with the graphic death of Oroonoko: “They cut Caesar in quarters, and sent them to…the governor himself, that those of Caesar, on his plantations; and that he could govern his negroes without terrifying and grieving them with frightful spectacles of a mangled king” (53). Although the governor learns to rid of the distressing conditions of the slaves’ lives, he does not agree to rid of slavery entirely.

In conclusion, Behn’s novel is highly contradictory and has themes of obtaining an absolute monarchy contrasted with a sympathetic view on Oroonoko, a noble slave. While breaking Aristotelian models of fiction, Behn encourages the philosopher’s ideas on democracy and hierarchy. Her novel is neither pro- nor anti-slavery as some suggest. It is simply a historical narrative meant to capture the complications of societal structures.

GIST:

The prince, who has gotten to know Behn while he is a slave in Guiana and she is a sympathetic listener, tells her his story.  Successful in battle, he falls in love with a young woman who also catches the eye of the king.  Having pursued their love surreptitiously, the couple is discovered and Imoinda is sold into slavery.  Oroonoko, a slave-owner himself, despairs and nearly is defeated in battle by Jamoan's army, but he is roused to martial prowess by the pleas of his own troops.  Lured upon an English ship by a captain with whom he previously had bought and sold slaves, Oroonoko and all his men are betrayed and taken as slaves to Guiana.  There he is reunited with Imoinda, and his noble bearing attracts the praise of all who know him.  However, circumstances force him to rebel against his masters and to lead an army of ex-slaves to seek their freedom.  His capture, his murder of his own wife, and his torture and execution by the English slave-owners end Behn's narrative.

Behn Problems/Opportunities

        With Aphra Ben’s Oroonoko, we are dealing with a work for which it would be very difficult to answer the "what time is it?" question.  Any of these time-related issues might make a final paper topic, and you might find some of them working for other works we have read.  First, the text was published as a slim, 224-page octavo in 1688, the same year the English forced the abdication of the newly crowned James II (the kid Halkett helped free from prison).  James II had none of the caution, or even humility of Charles II, who had been deeply impressed by the provisional nature of his kingship at the outset of the Restoration in 1660.  When James ordered religious toleration for English Catholics and made his newborn (Catholic) son his heir, an act which also threatened to re-assert royal supremacy over Parliament, an otherwise unlikely coalition of Whigs (radicals) and Tories (conservatives) invited William of Orange, ruler of the Netherlands and wife of an English princess from the royal line, to become the next English king.  William actually invaded England with the aid of the massive Dutch fleet, and except for minor skirmishes, was welcomed with his wife, Mary, as England's new monarch.  James dithered, actually fleeing England twice, before finally abandoning the court to William and Mary.  Because Behn was probably a Catholic and definitely a monarchist supporter of the Stuart cause, these events could hardly have pleased her.  The text might readily be examined for evidence that it supported Stuart conceptions of monarchy, including perhaps intentional echoes of the fate of Charles I in 1642-9).

        The text's "time" is also complicated by its claim that it is "A True History," i.e., that the events she describes actually took place during the earliest days of the Restoration (1664-5) or even during the parliamentary Protectorate.  She claims to have received the facts of the first (African) portion of the narrative directly from Oroonoko, her protagonist.  She claims to have witnessed personally many of the events set in Surinam.  English students will recognize this kind of "inscribed narrator" as inherently unreliable, much like "Chaucer-the-pilgrim," because she has powerful motivations for telling the story.  "Chaucer-the-Pilgrim" is Geoffrey Chaucer's ironic, self-representation which he uses to distance his historical identity from the literary events he stages in his readers' minds.  In this case, Behn seems to wish to depict herself and her protagonist in the best possible light.  In fact, if one reads carefully her description of her own role in Oroonoko's tragic end (in the second part), one can even begin to piece together a sort of confessional narrative that seems interestingly appropriate for a woman of Catholic beliefs in the year before her death.  Add to that the possibility, raised by Behn's scholarly biographer, Janet Todd, that "Mr. Behn" (AB's husband) was a Dutch slave trader, himself, and Behn's ethical and political involvement in Oroonoko's fate becomes even more complex.  It's possible that this is a "Deconstructing" text with more than one discourse actively emerging from it.  

        The third "time" issue creates a third in that Behn's memory of the events, which may have occurred perhaps twenty-four years in her past before she wrote the manuscript (1664-1688), has been overlaid by her frequent retelling of them to English audiences.  The audiences' responses to Behn's oral performances of the narrative would necessarily have affected her sense of the tale's significance.  Behn's successive retellings also would have shaped her memory of the events even before she began composing the manuscript she sent to the printer.  As a writer of dramas, she would be motivated by her audience's reaction to the retellings of the tales to embellish portions of it with the "set speeches" that typically were used to characterize heroes and their antagonists.  (See, for instance, Edmund's soliloquy in Lear I.2, Volpone's in Volpone I.1, or Mosca's in Volpone III.1.)  Can you spot some of these pieces of dialogue that no reasonable person would expect to be remembered, word-for-word, twenty-four years after the words were spoken?

        A fourth "time" complication arises from the text's mythic dimension.  Oroonoko, and his beloved Imoinda, act out sacrificial roles in a highly polarized drama of good and evil that readers of medieval saints' lives would recognize immediately.  The saint is identified from youth as a superior being whose moral stature impress all around him with awe, that immobilizing but attractive emotion we associate with marvelous spectacles.  The same superior quality also attracts the attention of evil-doers who challenge and test the saint's virtue.  The saint suffers tortures for these same virtues, and he is rewarded by death's release from an unworthy world.  Miraculous events may occur during or shortly after the saint's battle with evil, and the saint's death may inspire others to seek martyrdom, as well.  To read examples from a famous medieval encyclopedia of saints' lives, see Jacobus de Voraigne's Legenda aurea (ca. 1260, translated to English and first printed in that language by William Caxton, 1484)

 Halkett's own role in Oroonoko's life seems to have involved telling him "tales of the nuns," which may have included the didactic saints' lives which remain a part of the Roman church's religious education (see the first two "time" issues above).

        A fifth "time" complication was produced by the text's prolific "afterlife," first as a 1689 stage drama adapted by Thomas Southerne  and as a forceful abolitionist tract that gained in fame and influence during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century.  Because England did not abolish slavery in the Empire until 1833, both Behn's prose version and Southerne's play continued to be read primarily as a condemnation of slavery, despite the fact that both Behn and her protagonist seem to find slavery a normal social institution.  The text's critiques of Christian Protestant hypocrisy, English marriage law, and the cruel depravity of English colonial subjects seem to have been submerged for those "communities of interpretation" (Stanley Fish, 1988).  Even in our own time, readers may come away with more vivid memories of slavery's wretched injustices than of the text's many other preoccupations, living as we do in a post-colonial culture that is still haunted by its own origins in slave-owning 

community.

Major Themes

European or Native Superiority

Behn depicts the natives of Surinam, with whom the British live, as being in "perfect peace," as innocent as Adam and Eve. Their native innocence is set against the corruption of civilization which is identified, in this work, with Europeans (1). The native people are portrayed as having basic human virtues such as creative artistry ("beads of all colors, knives, axes, pins and needles") and modesty ("very modest and shy and despite living practically naked, there is never seen among them any improper or indecent behavior," 2). They have basic survival skills which are lost by advanced technological societies; they can climb trees and fish for food. Morally, they are far better than the European slave traders, who also lie (although the vast majority of Europeans were not slave traders). The African prince Oroonoko is a model of nobility and honor, a magnificent physical powerhouse capable of killing two tigers that the whites could not kill. Oroonoko also will die for his belief in freedom. 

Behn's presentation of the natives and cololonists is mixed, and despite the model of the noble savage, she fully embraces the innate superiority of European people and European culture. The natives really are depicted as savages: "they cut into pieces all they could take, getting into houses and hanging up the mother and all her children about her" (54). When the narrator accompanies her social group of whites to the native village, the natives practically fall down in adoration of their skin, clothes, shoes and hair. Also, Oroonoko is portrayed as beautiful in terms of European physiognomy: 

 "The most famous statuary cou'd not form the figure of a man more admirably turned from head to foot...His nose was rising and Roman, instead of African and flat. His mouth, the finest shap'd that could be seen...The whole proportion and air of his face was so noble, and exactly formed, that, bating his colour, there cou'd be nothing in nature more beautiful, agreeable, and handsome" (8).

 Oroonoko is exceptional even among his people because he was educated and taught manners by a French tutor. His great virtue might be attributed to his nonnative education.

Anti-colonialism

Oroonoko is highly regarded as an anti-colonial text. It sheds light on the horrors of slavery and paints many of the white colonists as brutal, greedy, and dishonest. Behn, like other writers from her era, felt greatly disheartened that her countrymen could behead the late king Charles I (1649) and that countless assassination attempts continued on his son, the restored Charles II. Such writers feared that the British possessed a general predisposition towards violence, greed, and disobedience. For instance, the British slave trading captain first befriends Oroonoko, but later betrays him and twice lies to him, and then sells him to Trefry. In addition, Byam, the real-life historical deputy-governor of Surinam, also pretends friendship with Oroonoko and similarly assures him over and over again of his eventual freedom. Later, however, Byam hunts him down, whips him, and without a thought orders he be put to death. The author refers to Byam's greed ("he was one who loved to live at others' expense" and illustrates how he acts with kindness and friendship to someone's face and then plots behind his back (70). 

The barbarism Behn fears is inherent in the British nature is particularly apparent in the character Bannister, "a fellow of absolute barbarity," the member of Byam's elected council who condemns Oroonoko to death. Bannister captures Oroonoko and tells him honestly that he will "die like a dog," to which the African prince replies gratefully that he has finally heard a white man tell the truth (76-77). Even Trefry, who indeed is truthful and kind though he is an overseer of slaves, remains blind to the plight of all the other slaves in his charge. And while he defends Oroonoko, he never takes action on his and Imonida's behalf; he remains passive and helpless. Finally, even the narrator, who means well and befriends Oroonoko, runs away at the first sign of trouble. Like the other whites, she is two-faced. She assures him of her undying devotion, but shewarns immediately after that she and the others do not "trust him much out of our view, nor did the country who feared him" (48). 

If this pattern is common among British colonists, Behn suggests, the British are not suited to engage in colonialism.

Slavery

Oroonoko is regarded by scholars as having advanced the cause of abolitionism. The colonists certainly appear evil towards Oroonoko and others. The whites who whip Oroonoko act very cruelly in rending the flesh from his bones: 

"when they thought they were sufficiently revenged on him, they untied him almost fainting with the loss of blood, from a thousand wounds all over his body...and led him bleeding and naked as he was, and loaded him all over with irons and then rubbed his wounds, to complete their cruelty, with Indian pepper which had like to have made him raving mad" (67).

 These descriptions would have horrified seventeenth-century Europeans.

Even so, Behn fails to criticize colonialism's use of slaves altogether. It seems to be all right to treat slaves like the overseer Trefry does--being nice to them rather than cruel. Behn does not signal discomfort that slaves cannot retain their own names and are forced to leave their families and friends forever. Thus, though she writes of the horrors of slavery, she never suggests that it should be outlawed as an institution. Although Oroonoko suffers as a slave, he never regrets taking slaves himself. He merely justifies the practice of slavery in Africa as the fate of men honorably taken in war (after all, it is better to be a slave than to be dead). Oroonoko never seems troubled by the idea that the slaves he took honorably in war were then sold by him to the British for his own profit. Although he suffers the brutalizing whip before his ultimate death, the hero never shows regret over having been complicit in selling his own countrymen to the British.

The Female Narrative Voice

Behn's work is important for her innovations in developing the female narrative voice. In her case, this voice invites readers into the plot with a familiar tone that bears a resemblance to an ongoing everyday conversation. The narrator's voice is suggestive of someone using the epistolary form, writing a letter. For instance, some lines read, "I have already said..." or "I forgot to ask how..." In addition, the narrator's active and knowing involvement in the plot, and her follow-up conversations with those who were present when important events took place, provide a great sense of authority that makes the story believable and approachable. For instance, the narrator might not have been on the scene when Oroonoko was killed, but her mother and sister--who are eyewitnesses--inform her of the horrid happenings, which she can convey to her readers with immediacy and authority.

This pattern becomes a central feature of the female narrative voice. The narrator is considered an "intrusive narrator," someone who more or less interrupts the narrative when she deems fit to interject a personal aside on the basis of additional knowledge or interest. On the journey to the native village, for instance, the narrator makes a rather long digression by informing the reader how she came to be in Surinam: her father died on the trip to his new post as lieutenant-general, and now she and her family must wait for transport back to England. As a travel writer of sorts, she also provides her readers with a description of the local flora, fauna and cultural customs of the natives. Behn's narrative strategy would influence such major novelists as Henry Fielding, Jane Austen, and George Eliot.