Plot Summary

Oroonoko: or, the Royal Slave is a relatively short novel set in a narrative frame. The narrator opens with an account of the colony of Surinam and its inhabitants. Within this is a historical tale concerning the Coramantien grandson of an African king, Prince Oroonoko. At a very young age Prince Oroonoko was trained for battle, becoming an expert captain by the age of seventeen. During a battle the best general sacrifices himself for the Prince by taking an arrow for him. In sight of this event, the Prince takes the place of General. Oroonoko decides to honorably visit the daughter of the deceased general to offer the "Trophies of her Father's Victories", but he immediately falls in love with Imoinda and later asks for her hand in marriage.

Portrait of Aphra Behn, aged approximately 30, by Peter Lely. From the Yale Center for British Art

The king hears Imoinda described as the most beautiful and charming in the land, and he also falls in love. Despite his Intelligence saying she had been claimed by Oroonoko, the king gives Imoinda the royal veil, thus forcing her to become one of his wives, even though she is already promised to Oroonoko. Imoinda unwillingly, but dutifully, enters the king's harem (the Otan), and Oroonoko is comforted by his assumption that the king is too old to ravish her. Over time the Prince plans a tryst with the help of the sympathetic Onahal (one of the king's wives) and Aboan (a friend to the prince). The Prince and Imoinda are reunited for a short time and consummate their marriage, but they are eventually discovered. Imoinda and Onahal are punished for their actions by being sold as slaves. The king's guilt, however, leads him to lie to Oroonoko that Imoinda has instead been executed, since death was thought to be better than slavery. The Prince grieves. Later, after winning another tribal war, Oroonoko and his men visit a European slave trader on his ship and are tricked and shackled after drinking. The slave trader plans to sell the Prince and his men as slaves and carries them to Surinam in the West Indies. Oroonoko is purchased by a Cornish man named Trefry, but given special treatment due to his education and ability to speak French and English (which he learned from his own French mentor). Trefry mentions that he came to own a most beautiful enslaved woman and had to stop himself from raping her. Unbeknownst to Oroonoko, Trefry is speaking of Imoinda who is at the same plantation. The two lovers are reunited under the slave names of Caesar and Clemene.

The narrator and Trefry continue to treat the hero as an honored guest. The narrator recounts various entertaining episodes, including reading, hunting, visiting native villages, and capturing an electric eel. Oroonoko and Imoinda live as husband and wife in their own slave cottage, and once she becomes pregnant, Oroonoko petitions for their return to the homeland. After being put off with vague promises of the governor's arrival, Oroonoko organizes a slave revolt. The slaves, including Imoinda, fight valiantly, but the majority surrender when deputy governor Byam promises them amnesty. After the surrender, Oroonoko and Tuscan, his second-in-command, are punished and whipped by their former allies at the command of Byam. To avenge his honor, Oroonoko vows to kill Byam. He worries, however, that to do so would make Imoinda vulnerable to reprisal after his death. The couple both decide that he should kill her, and so Imoinda dies by his hand. Oroonoko hides in the woods to mourn her and grows weaker, becoming unable to complete his revenge. When he is discovered, he decides to show his fearlessness in the face of death. Oroonoko cuts off a piece of his own throat, disembowels himself, and stabs the first man who tries to approach him. Once captured, he is bound to a post. Resigned to his death, Oroonoko asks for a pipe to smoke as Banister has him quartered and dismembered.

Analysis

The novel is written in a mixture of first and third person, as the narrator relates events in Africa secondhand, and herself witnesses, and participates in, the actions that take place in Surinam. The narrator is a lady who has come to Surinam with her unnamed father, a man intended to be the new lieutenant-general of the colony. He, however, dies on the voyage from illness. The narrator and her family are put up in the finest house in the settlement, in accord with their station, and the narrator's experiences of meeting the indigenous peoples and slaves are intermixed with the main plot of Oroonoko and Imoinda. At the conclusion of the narrative, the narrator leaves Surinam for London.

Structurally, there are three significant pieces to the narrative, which does not flow in a strictly biographical manner. The novel opens with a statement of veracity, wherein the narrator claims to be writing neither fiction nor pedantic history. She claims to be an eyewitness and to be writing without any embellishment or agenda, relying solely upon real events. A description of Surinam and the Southern American Indians follows. The narrator regards the indigenous peoples as innocent and living in a golden age. Next, she provides the history of Oroonoko in Africa: the betrayal by his grandfather, the captivity of Imoinda, and his capture by the slaver captain. The narrative then returns to Surinam and the present: Oroonoko and Imoinda are reunited, and Oroonoko and Imoinda meet the narrator and Trefry. The final section describes Oroonoko's rebellion and its aftermath.

Fact and fiction in the narrator

Anne Bracegirdle appearing in John Dryden's The Indian Queen in a headdress of feathers purportedly given by Aphra Behn to Thomas Killigrew. Scholars speculate that Behn had this headdress from her time in Surinam.

Researchers today cannot say whether or not the narrator of Oroonoko represents Aphra Behn and, if so, tells the truth. Scholars have argued for over a century about whether or not Behn even visited Suriname and, if so, when. On one hand, the narrator reports that she "saw" sheep in the colony, when the settlement had to import meat from Virginia, as sheep, in particular, could not survive there. Also, as Ernest Bernbaum argues in "Mrs. Behn's 'Oroonoko'", everything substantive in Oroonoko could have come from accounts by William Byam and George Warren that were circulating in London in the 1660s. However, as J.A. Ramsaran and Bernard Dhuiq catalogue, Behn provides a great deal of precise local colour and physical description of the colony. Topographical and cultural verisimilitude were not a criterion for readers of novels and plays in Behn's day any more than in Thomas Kyd's, and Behn generally did not bother with attempting to be accurate in her locations in other stories. Her plays have quite indistinct settings, and she rarely spends time with topographical description in her stories.^[5] Secondly, all the Europeans mentioned in Oroonoko were really present in Surinam in the 1660s. It is interesting, if the entire account is fictional and based on reportage, that Behn takes no liberties of invention to create Europeans she might need. Finally, the characterisation of the real-life people in the novel does follow Behn's own politics. Behn was a lifelong and militant royalist, and her fictions are quite consistent in portraying virtuous royalists and put-upon nobles who are opposed by petty and evil republicans/Parliamentarians. Had Behn not known the individuals she fictionalized in Oroonoko, it is extremely unlikely that any of the real royalists would have become fictional villains or any of the real republicans fictional heroes, and yet Byam and James Bannister, both actual royalists in the Interregnum, are malicious, licentious, and sadistic, while George Marten, a Cromwellian republican, is reasonable, open-minded, and fair.^[5]

On balance, it appears that Behn truly did travel to Surinam. The fictional narrator, however, cannot be the real Aphra Behn. For one thing, the narrator says that her father was set to become the deputy governor of the colony and died at sea en route. This did not happen to Bartholomew Johnson (Behn's father), although he did die between 1660 and 1664.^[6] There is no indication at all of anyone except William Byam being Deputy Governor of the settlement, and the only major figure to die en route at sea was Francis, Lord Willoughby, the colonial patent holder for Barbados and "Suriname." Further, the narrator's father's death explains her antipathy toward Byam, for he is her father's usurper as Deputy Governor of Surinam. This fictionalised father thereby gives the narrator a motive for her unflattering portrait of Byam, a motive that might cover for the real Aphra Behn's motive in going to Surinam and for the real Behn's antipathy toward the real Byam.

It is also unlikely that Behn went to Surinam with her husband, although she may have met and married in Surinam or on the journey back to England. A socially creditable single woman in good standing would not have gone unaccompanied to Surinam. Therefore, it is most likely that Behn and her family went to the colony in the company of a lady. As for her purpose in going, Janet Todd presents a strong case for its being spying. At the time of the events of the novel, the deputy governor Byam had taken absolute control of the settlement and was being opposed not only by the formerly republican Colonel George Marten, but also by royalists within the settlement. Byam's abilities were suspect, and it is possible that either Lord Willoughby or Charles II would be interested in an investigation of the administration there.

Beyond these facts, there is little known. The earliest biographers of Aphra Behn not only accepted the novel's narrator's claims as true, but Charles Gildon even invented a romantic liaison between the author and the title character, while the anonymous Memoirs of Aphra Behn, Written by One of the Fair Sex (both 1698) insisted that the author was too young to be romantically available at the time of the novel's events. Later biographers have contended with these suggestions, either to deny or prove them.

Models for Oroonoko

An engraving by William Blake illustrating "A negro hung by his ribs from a gallows," opposite page 116 in Captain John Stedman's Narrative of a Five Years Expedition Against the Revolted Negroes of Surinam, 1792. The hanging took place in the then-Dutch ruled Surinam, an example of the barbarity of punishments of slaves, and the reputation of Surinam.

One figure who matches aspects of Oroonoko is the John Allin, a settler in Surinam. Allin was disillusioned and miserable in Surinam, and he took to over-indulging in alcohol and wild, lavish blasphemies so shocking that Governor Byam believed that the repetition of them at Allin's trial cracked the foundation of the courthouse.^[7] In the novel, Oroonoko plans to kill Byam and then himself, and this matches a plot that Allin had to kill Lord Willoughby and then commit suicide, for, he said, it was impossible to "possess my own life, when I cannot enjoy it with freedom and honour".^[8] He wounded Willoughby and was taken to prison, where he killed himself with an overdose. His body was taken to a pillory,

where a Barbicue was erected; his Members cut off, and flung in his face, they had his Bowels burnt under the Barbicue... his Head to be cut off, and his Body to be quartered, and when dry-barbicued or dry roasted... his Head to be stuck on a pole at Parham (Willoughby's residence in Surinam), and his Quarters to be put up at the most eminent places of the Colony.^[8]

While Behn was in Surinam (1663), she would have seen a slave ship arrive with 130 "freight", 54 having been "lost" in transit. Although the African slaves were not treated differently from the indentured servants coming from Europe (and were, in fact, more highly valued),^[9] their cases were hopeless, and both slaves, indentured servants, and local inhabitants attacked the settlement. There was no single rebellion, however, that matched what is related in Oroonoko. Further, the character of Oroonoko is physically different from the other slaves by being blacker skinned, having a Roman nose, and having straight hair. The lack of historical record of a mass rebellion, the unlikeliness of the physical description of the character (when Europeans at the time had no clear idea of race or an inheritable set of "racial" characteristics), and the European courtliness of the character suggests that he is most likely invented wholesale. Additionally, the character's name is artificial. There are names in the Yoruba language that are similar, but the African slaves of Surinam were from Ghana.^[9]

Instead of from life, the character seems to come from literature, for his name is reminiscent of Oroondates, a character in La Calprenède's Cassandra, which Behn had read.^[9] Oroondates is a prince of Scythia whose desired bride is snatched away by an elder king. Previous to this, there is an Oroondates who is the satrap of Memphis in the Æthiopica, a novel from late antiquity by Heliodorus of Emesa. Many of the plot elements in Behn's novel are reminiscent of those in the Æthiopica and other Greek romances of the period. There is a particular similarity to the story of Juba in La Calprenède's romance Cléopâtre, who becomes a slave in Rome and is given a Roman name—Coriolanus—by his captors, as Oroonoko is given the Roman name of Caesar.^[10]

Alternatively, it could be argued that "Oroonoko" is a homophone for the Orinoco River, along which the colony of Surinam was established and it is possible to see the character as an allegorical figure for the mismanaged territory itself. Oroonoko, and the crisis of values of aristocracy, slavery, and worth he represents to the colonists, is emblematic of the new world and colonisation itself: a person like Oroonoko is symptomatic of a place like the Orinoco.

The name "Oroonoko" is also associated with tobacco.^[11]

Slavery and Behn's attitudes

According to biographer Janet Todd, Behn did not oppose slavery per se. She accepted the idea that powerful groups would enslave the powerless, and she would have grown up with Oriental tales of "The Turk" taking European slaves.^[12] Although it has never been proven that Behn was actually married, the most likely candidate for her husband is Johan Behn, who sailed on The King David from the German imperial free city of Hamburg.^[13] This Johan Behn was a slaver whose residence in London later was probably a result of acting as a mercantile cover for Dutch trade with the colony of Suriname under a false flag. One could argue that if Aphra Behn had been opposed to slavery as an institution, it is not very likely that she would have married a slave trader. At the same time, it is fairly clear that she was not happy in marriage, and Oroonoko, written twenty years after the death of her husband, has, among its cast of characters, no one more evil than the slave ship captain who tricks and captures Oroonoko.^[14] It can also be argued that Behn's attitude towards slavery can be exemplified through her characteristics of Oroonoko and Imoinda, both characters given significantly positive attributes. Oroonoko was a strong, brave, heroic figure, while Imoinda was beautiful and pure in her ways.

The final words of the novel are a slight expiation of the narrator's guilt, but it is for the individual man she mourns and for the individual that she writes a tribute, and she lodges no protest over slavery itself. A natural king could not be enslaved, and, as in the play Behn wrote while in Surinam, The Young King, no land could prosper without a king.^[14] Her fictional Surinam is a headless body. Without a true and natural leader (a king) the feeble and corrupt men of position abuse their power. What was missing was Lord Willoughby, or the narrator's father: a true lord. In the absence of such leadership, a true king, Oroonoko, is misjudged, mistreated, and killed.^[14]

One potential motive for the novel, or at least one political inspiration, was Behn's view that Surinam was a fruitful and potentially wealthy settlement that needed only a true noble to lead it.^[14] Like others sent to investigate the colony, she felt that Charles was not properly informed of the place's potential. When Charles gave up Surinam in 1667 with the Treaty of Breda, Behn was dismayed. This dismay is enacted in the novel in a graphic fashion: if the colony was mismanaged and the slaves mistreated by having an insufficiently noble ruler there, then the democratic and mercantile Dutch would be far worse. Accordingly, the passionate misrule of Byam is replaced by the efficient and immoral management of the Dutch. Charles had a strategy for a united North American presence, however, and his gaining of New Amsterdam for Surinam was part of that larger vision. Neither Charles II nor Aphra Behn could have known how correct Charles's bargain was, but Oroonoko can be seen as a royalist's demurral.^[14]

Kingship

Aphra Behn herself held incredibly strong pro-monarchy views that carried over into her writing of Oroonoko.^[25] The idea that Behn attempts to present within the work is that the idea of royalty and natural kingship can exist even within a society of slaves. Although Oroonoko himself is a native who later becomes a slave, he possesses the traits of those typically required of a king within a typically civilized society.^[26] He is admired and respected by those who follow him, and even in death he keeps his royal dignity intact—as he would rather be executed by his owners than surrender his self-respect. Oroonoko's death can be viewed as being unjustified and outrageous as the death of any king would be when caused by those who fall below him, as even though the whites are the ones who enslaved him, they are portrayed as being the ones who are the true animals.^[25]

Female narrative

The unnamed female narrator of the story serves as being a strong reflection of a woman's role in society throughout the 18th century, as well as being a reflection of Behn's own personal views regarding the major themes within her work. Women within this time period were most often expected to remain silent and on the sidelines, simply observing rather than actively contributing, and the narrator in Oroonoko is a portrayal of that. A female narrator is also a way to voice the real world disagreements over women's rights, as well as slavery, to the fictional story. The narrator's disgust surrounding the treatment of Oroonoko, as well as her inability to watch his murder, is a way in which Behn inserts her own voice and viewpoints into the story, as her feelings towards kingship, slavery and the slave trade have been established. Likewise, the narrator's relatively inactive involvement in the story could also be viewed as a reflection of the way in which female writers of the time were viewed as well—silent and non contributing due to their male peers—especially with Behn herself being one of very few female authors of the time.^[27]

Slavery and servitude

The view of slavery and other forms of forced servitude in Oroonoko is intentionally mixed. While Oroonoko himself is shown as wrongly imprisoned by the whims and cruelty of his European captors, the character himself comes out in direct support of slavery multiple times throughout the text. Slavery is depicted as a natural order of things, the weak overcoming the strong and using these lower people as tools in order to conduct busywork such as manual labor and chores in order to free the betters of society into perusing the more important work that must be done. Oroonoko goes from being a warrior and prominent figure in his society to being captured and turned to slavery at his own expense. Oroonoko is seen as unjustly held in bondage as a singular entity rather than as a moral imperative for the evils of slavery in itself.^[28]

Gender roles

Despite having little dialogue in Oroonoko, Imoinda is a multifaceted character; she exhibits both traditionally feminine and masculine traits. On one hand, Imoinda is characterized as submissive and frail, for instance, when she faints into Oroonoko’s arms on two occasions. However, when the slaves make an effort to escape from their masters, Imoinda acts as a heroine and injures one of the slave masters that chased after them.^[29]

Author

As a member of the "British female transatlantic experience" and an early canonical female author, Aphra Behn's writings have been the subject of various feminist analyses in the years since Oroonoko's publication.^[27] Through the eponymous Oroonoko, and other periphery male characters, masculinity is equated with dominance throughout the text, a dominance which is supplemented by feminine power in the form of strong female characters. Behn challenges the predetermined patriarchal norm of favoring the literary merit of male writers simply because of their elite role in society. In her time, Behn's success as a female author enabled the proliferation of respect and high readership for up-and-coming women writers.^[27]

As an author who did not endure the brutality of slavery, Behn is considered a duplicitous narrator with dual perspectives according to research from G.A. Starr's "Aphra Behn and the Genealogy of the Man of Feeling". Throughout Behn's early life and literary career, Starr notes that "Behn was in a good position to analyze such a predicament... as a woman-single, poor, unhealthy-supporting herself by writing, and probably a Roman Catholic, she knew about marginality and vulnerability".^[30] As evident in this excerpt, Behn's attitude towards the "predicament" of slavery remained ambiguous throughout Oroonoko, due in part to her identity and inexperience with racial discrimination.^[30] Despite the fact that this story is told through Behn's perspective as a marginalized female author in a male-dominated literary canon, the cultural complexities of the institution of slavery are still represented through the lens of an outside source.^[30]

Throughout the novella, Behn identifies with Oroonoko's strength, courage, and intelligence but also includes herself in the same categorization of the higher European power structure. For example, in Albert Rivero's "Aphra Behn's 'Oroonoko' and the 'Blank Spaces' of Colonial Fictions," the author gives context to Oroonoko within a greater body of colonial fictions. Rivero describes Behn's novella as "the romance of decorous, upper class sentiments".^[16] The multi-layered components of Behn's publication parallel her ever-changing perception of racial tension throughout the novella. Behn as a duplicitous narrator plays into the ambiguity of her support for abolition, mixed with the control afforded to her because of her race and economic status.^[16]

Imoinda

Imoinda serves as a strong female character in Oroonoko due in part to Behn's emphasis on Imoinda's individuality. Behn's depiction of Imoinda is mostly unrelated to the central plot point within the text; the protagonist's journey of self-discovery. During the era in which the work was written, male heroism dominated the literary field. Most often, protagonist roles were designated to male characters, and with this, the voice of the female remained silent.^[31] In this sense, Behn's characterization of Imoinda as a fighter and a lively autonomous woman, despite the cultural climate of slavery and the societal norm to view females as accessories, prompted a sense of female liberation.^[31]

Behn's novel awakens the voice of the female that deserves more recognition in literature. Imoinda is Oroonoko's love interest in the novel, but this is not all she is. Rather than falling into the role of the typical submissive female, Imoinda frequently displays that she is strong enough to fight alongside Oroonoko, exemplified by her killing of the governor (Behn 68). Imoinda is portrayed as Oroonoko's equal in the work; where Oroonoko is described as "Mars" (16), Imoinda is described as "the beautiful black Venus" (16). Ultimately, their strengths of aggression and beauty are exemplified through mythological parallels. Comparisons with Mars, the God of war, in the beginning of the novella provides a framework for Oroonoko's rise as an admired warrior, while Imoinda's relation to divinity is more feminine from the start, drawing a connection between her appearance, and that of the powerful Venus, goddess of love and beauty in Roman myth. Imoinda being compared to a goddess of love is fitting of her character, for through reading the novella, readers can easily see that she is a character that is driven by love, particularly hers for Oroonoko. She fights alongside her husband to free themselves from slavery, and to obtain a better life for both themselves and their unborn child. By the end of her life, Imoinda obediently accepts her death at the hands of her husband, along with that of her unborn child, out of love, admiration, and respect for Oroonoko.

By paralleling Imoinda with a Roman goddess, she is given an air of prominence and power, a revolutionary concept in literature at the time. Behn herself was a revolutionary part of seventeenth-century literature, as she played the role of a female author, narrator, and character. Behn bases the story upon her trip to Surinam and, in the beginning of the text, she makes it clear that it is a "true story", presenting Oroonoko as both an anti-slavery and proto-feminist narrative combined.

In regards to Imoinda, In "The White Female as Effigy and the Black Female as Surrogate in Janet. Schaw's Journal of a Lady of Quality and Jane Austen's Mansfield Park" by David S. Wallace, "MacDonald emphasizes the whitening of the character of Imoinda--Oroonoko's wife--in every adaptation of the novella.” Wallace also discusses how Imoinda is hypersexualized in this novel to desexualize white women. Wallace writes: "At least a few white, female authors became agents in this desexualization of white women and hyper-sexualization of their black counterparts."^[32]

Sexuality

One of the first attributes allotted to Imoinda in Oroonoko is her stunning and beautiful exterior. Behn depicts her as godlike in appearance, describing her as "the beautiful black Venus" (Behn 16). For example, Behn boasts about the hundreds of European men who are "vain and unsuccessful" (16) in winning her affections. Here, Behn raises Imoinda's appearance and value above the standards of a whitened sense of European beauty. By claiming that these "white men" are unworthy of her attention, she is granted greater merit than them (16). Furthermore, Behn states that Imoinda was of such high prominence that she was "too great for any but a prince of her own nation" (16). Though our female protagonist is once again linked to the male hero here, she is still evidently given an air of dominance over the men Behn describes.^[33]

When Imoinda is taken as the King's mistress, she does not give herself to him sexually simply because of his position in society. Though he makes advances towards the young Imoinda, she and the King never consummate their marriage; it isn't until Imoinda reunites with Oroonoko that she feels prepared to give up her virginity (29). With this, Behn connects a female's virtue with her sovereignty, indicating that Imoinda maintains autonomy over her own sexuality.^[33]

Imoinda is not the only female protagonist who symbolizes female sexuality. Based on her portrayal of, and attitude towards Oroonoko, Aphra Behn emphasizes the sexual freedom and desires of the female gender. She molds Oroonoko in her own image, depicting him with European features despite his "ebony" flesh (Behn 15). By doing so, she is not only creating a mirror image of herself, a hero who seeks to dismantle the institution of slavery, but she is also embodying the desires of female sexuality.^[33] Rob Baum claims that "Behn's attraction to Oroonoko is not engendered by his blackness but despite it" (14) and that she ultimately reveres him, not merely for his heroism, but for his overt physical attractiveness.^[33]