Discussion Boards for Behn’s novel Oroonoko.

Aphra Behn is a fascinating person–spy, poet, playwright, novelist–but little is really known about her life. The Restoration of the monarchy after the death of Oliver Cromwell and the dissolution of his Commonwealth played a crucial role in Behn’s professional success as a writer. After Charles II was crowned, the playhouses reopened and English culture flourished again (Cromwell’s Puritan government controlled and quashed the arts, among countless other restrictive activities). Behn’s biography was largely based on the narrator’s identity she creates in Oroonoko, but that persona is almost certainly invented. We will encounter a somewhat similar issue with Olaudah Equiano in a few weeks.

As noted by our editors–and I strongly urge you to read all of their author biographies and introductions–Behnwas incredibly prolific and absolutely crucial to the rise of the English novel (the European novel grew out of many traditions, but can in many ways be said to have begun with Miguel de Cervantes’ Don Quixote) before spreading to other European cultures and languages. Behn wrote four novels including Oroonoko and many plays; her work and importance to English literature has been rescued from obscurity–largely due to her gender and explorations of gender, race, and sexuality–starting with Virginia Woolf in her seminal 1929 work A Room of One’s Own. There are now several biographies of Behn and many scholarly essays and books on her work. It is no small thing to say that her impact was willfully obscured in favor of male writers of the Restoration period due to her gender and subject matter.

The novel itself opens with interesting details of setting and some of the narrator’s story–but it gets particularly remarkable when Oroonoko himself is first introduced p. 204-05; look at how carefully Behn describes his physicality as different from the rest of the Africans–his complexion is more beautiful, his nose is ‘Roman,’ he has perfect teeth, he speaks two European languages, his hair is long and well-combed–his African-ness is in many ways denied on a physical basis–he looks refined, not ‘common.’ Behn’s narrator elevates Oroonoko, then, well above the rest of the slaves–he is a king and not some common slave.

Look also at the introduction of Oroonoko’s general’s daughter, the beautiful ‘Black Venus,’ Imoinda. She is so beautiful that even white men, even! by the 100fold fall in love with her.

What does all this suggest to you? Why do you think that Behn would elevate her subjects in these ways? What can we say about racist constructions? How can we seem them as a means to elevate the King (Behn was a monarchist herself, praising and working directly for Charles II) as well as to denigrate the common Africans who were held in bondage?

Look at the style of the language–Behn published Oroonoko 72 years after Shakespeare’s death in 1616, but her style is certainly very different from Shakespeare’s–first, she is writing in prose, not verse–the language of poetry is designed to be as elegant and formal as possible, and she is decidedly not going for that style. Further, she writes very little dialog–most of the novel is description; what do you think of this style?

Second, people sometimes get confused about what to call Renaissance, Restoration, and Enlightenment English; both Shakespeare and Behn (like Swift and Pope for next week) were very much writing in “Modern” English (not the Old English of Beowulf or the Middle English of Chaucer), but Behn’s language is much lighter and more, we might say, contemporary to our ears, I think. What about you?

In terms of plot points–Oroonoko’s seduction of Imoinda as an act of treason against his grandfather, the King, leads to their exile into slavery in the New World is perhaps the least common way that Africans were sent into slavery, but it remains a powerful story for modern readers, I think, as we tend to view freedom and the pursuit of romantic love to be paramount virtues in our societies.

On p. 223, we see the renaming of Oroonoko as ‘Caesar’–a very common practice as Behn tells us was for slave-owners to rename their slaves–if you have seen the miniseries based on Alex Haley’s book Roots you know that the re-naming of Kunte Kinte as ‘Toby’ is among the more brutal scenes in the mini-series, which is saying something. But the re-naming custom was done for reasons other than what Behn’s narrator says–though the idea that African names were ‘barbarous’ and ‘hard to pronounce’ was certainly part of the reasoning. But more importantly, as Behn does not say this, renaming a slave was a show of power–the white, Christian slavers used the renaming as a show of domination–they were taking away everything about a slave’s identity as a free person and replacing it with that of a non-person, a piece of property, chattel. That was truly barbarous.

Oroonoko is reunited with Imoinda, now called ‘Clemene,’ and they are married, but again, Imoinda’s beauty attracts attention and danger–so much so that Oroonoko fosters a slave revolt–this was the slavers’ great fear–there often being more slaves than slavers on plantations. Whether in the Caribbean, South America, Central America, or North America, slave-owners were constantly fearful for their lives and property (we’ll see this in Equiano and especially Douglass’ Narratives in a few weeks) as they knew that they were outnumbered; so, they did what any occupying force does: they divided the slaves against each other–often, as Behn notes, to keep slaves who spoke the same African languages apart–and kept the workload as high as possible, the conditions as difficult as possible, and the resources as low as possible to ensure the slaves were exhausted and hungry, dependent, in other words, on the masters for survival.

The beating/flogging of Oroonoko on p. 240 is just an introduction to the violence we will see done to African and African-American bodies in our readings–I should warn you now, Douglass is far more detailed and disturbing in his Narrative than Behn is here; slavery was truly barbaric in every way. Likewise, Behn’s depictions of Oroonoko’s murder of Imoinda and Oroonoko’s ritual execution are horrific and quite disturbing, but should reinforce slavery’s true nature: They would rather be dead than slaves.

Your thoughts on this short novel (or perhaps better, “novella”)?

Please ask any questions in the comments as well–I’ll do my best to answer them.