Aphra Behn's Portrayal of Slavery in OROONOKO

            Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko is often viewed as one of the earliest forms of literature to take issue with slavery.  This view, however, can be tempered somewhat if one more closely examines the narrator’s rationale and reasoning in her criticism of the slave trade.  The word trade, moreover, is key, since it is not completely clear that the narrator is against slavery per se, so much as the methods and customs of the trade itself.

            More than midway through this work, we learn from the narrator that she is the daughter of a high-ranking Englishman who was to be, before his untimely death, the “Lieutenant-General of six and thirty islands, besides the continent of Surinam” (p. 48).  Clearly, the narrator herself is of a certain class and therefore possesses certain values.  Nowhere is this clearer than in the narrator’s own description of the work’s central character, Oroonoko, a man whom the narrator holds in the highest regard.  She is quick to add that this Prince Oroonoko was educated formally by a Frenchman “of Wit and Learning” such that his training in “Morals, Language and Science” makes him an equal among the Englishmen and Spaniards traders (p.7).  Lest the reader view him as a barbarian, the narrator further informs us that Oroonoko is an equal Prince among European nobility, as someone who has “all the Civility of a well-bred great Man … as if his Education has been in some European Court” (p.7).  In short, she is impressed by his title (he is, as we say, “of the manor born,” albeit in some exotic place) and he is learned by European standards.  He is not as unlike the narrator as one would expect.

            Suspicions that that the narrator may be taking exception to Oroonoko because of his rank and European education are further underscored by the way she physically describes him in comparison to his people.  Oroonoko’s grandfather himself as “adorn’d with a native Beauty, so transcending all those of his gloomy Race” (p. 6), while Oroonoko is described as nearly perfect, “bating his Colour” (p.8).  She pointedly notes his European-shaped nose and lips that, inexplicably (yet naturally, according to the narrator’s hierarchy construct), differ from the rest of the Negroes.  Not surprisingly, Imoinda, as the daughter of a highly respected General, is also beautiful by European standards, “the beautiful Black Venus to our young Mars” (p. 9).   

            The hierarchy of beauty as a mirror to the hierarchy of status in the first half of the novel may seem nonsensical to the modern reader, although perhaps it shouldn’t.  Lookism still exists today in popular culture, and the assumed correlation between inner and outer beauty is consistently evident in children’s Disney animation, televised Miss America Pageants, and big budget Hollywood films.  One could argue that these modern-day examples are vestiges of a bygone fairytale era closer to Aphra Behn’s literary world.  In any event, the narrator establishes to the readers that certain foreign people -- Oroonoko, Imoinda, and the King of Cormantien – are special examples of their race and this specialness is most evident in their very appearance (the truth is literally self-evident, God’s favor is physically manifest).  One could argue that in so doing, Aphra Behn succeeds in making these characters separate from a vast continent of Negroes while making them familiar (and more accessible) to most non-Negro readers:  These are the good guys, the ones were are supposed to be rooting for, who are almost like us. 

            This becomes problematic in analyzing the work’s position on slavery, however, because of the continual “separateness” of these characters.  Through the narrator’s eyes, we feel sympathy for Oroonoko and Imoinda, but since they don’t seem to have much in common with their own people and are indeed separate and above them in status (and, hence, possess more beauty, wit, experience, values, intelligence, etc.), they are always treated as exceptions.  One wonders if Aphra Behn wrote the first half in the romance tradition to capture, in ways familiar to her time, the hearts and minds of her readers, causing an affection and empathy for these two “exotic royals.” 

If the “exotic royal” approach succeeds in raising questions about slavery in the first part of the story, this would later prove to be problematic, because by the second, more “realistic” half of the novel, there is little evidence presented by the narrator that she feels the majority of the Negro race is worthy of Oroonoko.  By the narrator’s own account, the Negroes are not only less physically attractive and commanding than their own Oroonoko, they are slavish and without dignity.  For example, upon seeing Oroonoko/Caesar in Surinam, the Negroes prostrate themselves before the very man who “sold most of ‘em to these parts” and pay him “Divine Homage” (p. 41).  Instantaneously, a relentless will for hierarchy persists even in Surinam.  The scene is also a convenient rationalization for slavery, as if to suggest that certain people are inherently passive and unable to self-govern.

Furthermore, the Negroes are vast in numbers but lack quality and therefore description.  The word quality is particularly notable because it appears continually throughout the work, but is used specifically for Oroonoko, Imoinda (“We took her to be of quality” p. 45), Jamoan, and Tuscan, a “tall Negroe of some more Quality than the rest” (p. 61).  It is as though the narrator is constantly searching for a parallel universe, some sort of hierarchical order through which she can translate her experiences vis-à-vis the exotic.  Wherever she goes, she takes special note of titles and rank (as if seeking her exotic yet familiar counterpart), always being sure to accord to them the attributes most desirable. 

This is actually very logical because in her worldview, there is still strict hierarchical structure that the then-emerging mercantilism system was only beginning to threaten (and overtake by the novel’s end).  The narrator is a citizen of the late 17^th century world of master/servant dichotomies and hierarchy; it can be presumed that she is of the monied classes, although not necessary of the emerging middle class.  In this context, it is hard to imagine that such a person would be capable of recognizing the “quality” of all – much less the concept of equality among all.  The matter-of-fact manner in which the narrator continually separates and categorizes the individuals she encounters attests to this persistent mental and cultural construct.  She is continually very astute to the details and clues of hierarchy, such as the body carvings of those with rank.   Because there is no evidence that she believes in equality of “quality,” it is all the more challenging to the reader that she would believe in equal rights, self-determination, and self-rule for all (the very issues of slavery). 

Similarly, Oroonoko also does not have a problem with slavery per se.  He himself was a participant in the slave trade as a member of a country that the narrator’s people “found the most advantageous Trading for these Slaves” (p. 5).  It was through his country’s never-ending conquests and battles that captives were taken and later sold.  Oroonoko’s role is clear here; he did business regularly with those European generals and ship captains, and this is something clearly not lost on the narrator:  she admits that even before meeting him, she had “an extreme Curiosity to see him, especially when I knew he spoke French and English” (p. 7).  Like the narrator, Oroonoko abhors the Civil Wars in England and the downfall of their monarch, he being a man coming from a place where “the Obedience the People pay their King was not at all inferiour to what they paid their Gods” (p. 12).  Like the narrator, he too is a loyalist.

For both Oroonoko and the narrator, the real obscenity is in the dishonorable (deceptive) practices of the trade, not slavery itself.  In a way, they are both becoming “old school” even for their times.  The narrator finds repellant the hypocrisy that is done in the name of Christianity by her countrymen, but this hypocrisy is in the sense of lying:  the Captain uses treachery to capture Oroonoko and his men.  There is no evidence that her definition of hypocrisy has anything to do with brotherly love or other Christian values; she never questions if slavery breaks the Christian commandment that no man can serve two masters.  Thus, she appears to be in perfect understanding with the non-Christian Oroonoko in her disgust and dismay of his capture – a capture that contrasts sharply with the more “honorable” conquest of battle that is Oroonoko’s way of capturing slaves.  “Have they vanquished us nobly in Fight?  Have they won us in Honourable Battle?  And are we by the Chance of War become their Slaves?” Oroonoko asks the fellow slaves, many of whom he himself had captured (p. 61). 

This is striking because what both the narrator and Oroonoko mainly take issue with is a lack of “fair play.” and forthrightness (the very noble qualities), as well as the wholesale disregard for rank.  It is as if some kind of primordial rule of nature has been broken that a Prince should be taken into slavery – “the greatest Revenge and the most disgraceful of any” fate to befall persons of a certain stature (p. 27).  However, this hardly matters to either of them when it happens to “those common Men who cou’d not ransom themselves” (p. 5). 

Both the narrator and Oroonoko are confounded by a new breed of men, “Rogues and Runagades that have abandoned their Own Countries for Rapine, Murders, Theft and Villanies” (p. 61).  Who are these men?  They could be seen as latter-day mercenaries, free agents, rugged individualists, and self-interested entrepreneurs.  Many of them may have sympathies for the Whigs (perhaps the narrator is a Tory, favoring a strong hereditary king?).  At any rate, they are a new breed of Europeans, clever in ways the loyalist-oriented narrator and Oroonoko could never be, and, more importantly, beholden to no one but themselves and their profit interests (the emerging middle class).  They have left a country in political turmoil and are spreading political turmoil abroad.

            In the final pages, Oroonoko/Caesar’s end is preceded symbolically by the encroaching powers of the new order.  The Governor sends the honorable Trefry up the river under pretenses of business, while the Banister, “a wild Irishman … of absolute Barbarity, and fit to execute any Villainy but rich” arrives to send Caesar off to his fate (p. 76).  The narrator herself is conveniently removed from the situation; while Tuscan becomes aligned with Byam.  Meanwhile, a Council is convened, consisting of “such notorious Villains … who understood neither the Law of God or Man, and had no sort of Principles to make them worthy the Name of Men” (p. 69).  A palpable sense of physical and moral disorder pervades the last pages, with an uncontrolled rabble of spectators and justices around the funeral pyre of “the mangled King” (p. 77). 

            It would appear, then, that a moral and political order promoted by the narrator would still include slavery, but with the strong recognition of each country’s internal hierarchy.  Slavery is all right if capture is done forthrightly in battle only and if the native nobles are spared (those of discernible quality).  In her view, there is an almost comforting (yet endangered) consistency of hierarchy:  Kings, princes, and that small number of “quality” people can be found everywhere, as if there were an umbrella of divine right covering the globe.  To see someone of Oroonoko’s stature betrayed and humiliated is, to the narrator, a gross misconduct, as abhorrent as the “deplorable Death of our great Monarch” and the political turmoils of her homeland (p. 7).  Such happenings would also have been symbolically ominous to the narrator who, given the times, would have been particularly sensitive to any challenge to kingly power, whether at home or abroad. 

Bibliography

Behn, Aphra.  Oroonoko.  New York:  W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1973.

The above essay was written by Patty K., published inwww.urgentexplanations.blogspot.com, written in 2004 and posted on August 17, 2014. URL is www.urgentexplanations.blogspot.com/2014/08/aphra-behns-portrayal-of-slavery-in.html.

Laurence Sterne's A SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY

NOTE: If you're going to use any of this for a term paper or whatnot (I'm referring to you "Birth of the Novel" English Lit students who come by at the end of every quarter -- like right about now), please be sure to credit me. The bibliography/source information is at the bottom of this entry, along with internal quote information. ALSO: COMMENTS would be nice. Thanks.

Laurence Sterne’s A Sentimental Journey literally hits the ground running, with its main character, Yorick, packing off to France, presumably at the mere indirect dare of his manservant. Yorick himself is the first to admit that he “generally act(s) from the first impulse” (Sterne, p. 22) and this quality is well demonstrated as we observe him indulge in a variety of whims and fancies through a series of French towns and cities. His adventure, as the title states, is a sentimental one, eschewing the usual gothic cathedrals and monuments for what amounts, in the end, to a search for the self in various locales that defy rational prediction.

Because Yorick is a “sentimental traveler,” the reader is treated to a quixotic ride of imagination, fancy, empathy, benevolence, wonder, and love. These internal workings are constantly juxtaposed against the fashionable theories of the day, particularly the mechanical nature of man and man as machine. Yorick’s own fascination with the pulse and involuntary blushes reveals a learned man’s understanding of the circulatory system by itself and vis-à-vis the emotions. Like the author, Yorick does not deny the mechanistic aspects of the human body, but there is an insistence that these are manifestations of the emotions. Martin Battestin makes a good case that Sterne was not only a great admirer of the French philosophes, but that he was also quite able to synthesize their views rather than reject them outright. “In these early sections of the novel – and in his emphasis throughout on the physiology of sentiment, on the innumerable ways in which our bodies serve as inlets to the soul – Stern pays tribute to the philosophes… Sterne … meant to reconcile body and soul, the laws of physiology and the freedom of the will.” (Battestin, p. 30, emphasis added)

The body can reveal emotions, betray the emotions, reflect the emotions and so on; the body in this respect serves emotion and is secondary to it. Yorick may be fascinated with the mechanics, but it is even more likely he is fascinated by the fact that the body does not lie. After all, there’s no such thing as a “fake” blush or a deceptively rapid heartbeat. The physical manifestation of something so invisible and potentially unknowable is of particular interest to Yorick, a man forever seeking emotional connection with women, their deepest internal states, and “the nakedness of their hearts” (Sterne, p. 84).

The novel’s preoccupation with emotion and sensory perception is key to understanding Yorick, a man not quite convinced, just as Sterne was not quite so convinced, that he is a mere automaton set in motion by some unknown and distant god. Indeed, Yorick seems to revel in his whimsy and flights of fancy that contrast the clocklike workings of man the machine. Emotion and sensory perceptions not only propel action and prompt body reactions, they are direct evidence of consciousness, what separates a man from, say, a garden hoe or spinning wheel. For Yorick, one need only insert “feel” or “sense” into Descartes’ “I think therefore I am.”

If Yorick’s stubborn independence to be his own free agent (not an automaton) is sustained primarily from his ungovernable feelings and often-inaccurate perceptions (and how he chooses by his own free will to act on them), there is the inevitable problem of a single, stable identity because perceptions and feelings themselves are unstable, unreliable, and fleeting. If one is one’s perceptions and/or feelings, one is in constant flux and indefinable. Yorick is painfully aware of this when he states: “There is not a more perplexing affair in life to me, than to set about telling any one who I am – for there is scarce any body I cannot give a better account of than of myself; and I have often wish’d I could do it in a single word – and have an end of it.” (Sterne, p. 85).

Furthermore, any kind of apt definition is impossible because his own solipsism bears an insurmountable complexity. He knows himself only too well and finds himself in a journey to the self that is like Chinese boxes. Extreme self-consciousness only muddies the definition. His search for “himself” has painted him into a corner, and this conundrum is compounded by the fact that he has become a nationless man abroad without a passport.

There are other traits to Yorick that hinder easy definition. His highly refined sensibility renders him effeminate while his status abroad (and perhaps at home) is not concrete. He is a part of an ambiguous, not fully formed bourgeoisie without the full credentials and authority of the established aristocracy. As Judith Frank points out, “Yorick’s journey in search of human nature – his journey of self-constitution as a benevolist – is undertaken as a response to a challenge from a servant” (Frank, p. 109). This is at odds with the Yorick at the beginning of the journey who so confidently defined himself to be the “Sentimental Traveler” (read: a latter day “sensitive man” who listens to his own drummer). The Yorick in Versailles, when actually put to the test, is at a loss for words and must resort to a clumsy reference to Hamlet’s court jester. This only adds to the confusion, however, and Yorick is doomed to be henceforth misconstrued by the French. His identity is further decimated in Paris when, amidst the philosophes and intellectuals of the day, he finds himself “of every man’s opinion” (Sterne, p. 112). Unable to be himself (i.e., express his own thoughts), he finds himself a slave to others’ au courant opinions; he is wildly popular (and well-fed) at the price of free will. Finally, it is probably no accident that those who misconstrue him the most are these French society people, peopled as they are by philosophes and “mechanists” overly beholden to sensory perception and reason, in direct contrast to the intuitive, irrational, emotional Yorick (who in some ways may be viewed as a prototype of the Romantic Movement’s dandy in the coming decades). Furthermore because Yorick “cannot take for granted his difference from the lower classes” and must “live by his wits,” he symbolically and literally becomes Yorick, “the character of a virtual slave in a feudal system … a laughing man … too servile to pose a danger to the (French) state” (Frank, p. 119). In the company of French aristocracy, Yorick becomes the emasculated company man, an experience which he likens to prostitution (so much for free will).

In many ways Yorick’s predicament is familiar to 20th and 21st century readers, and to many male readers in particular. What does it mean to be a “man” then and today? It would seem we’re still trying to figure that out, with our recent conversations about the New Man, the Metrosexual, and so on: he’s sensitive, in touch with his feelings, self-aware, in possession of taste, and monied. These last two qualities are no accident: money creates taste, and those who have money, via their heightened sensitivity, redefine quality. For example, if Yorick can sense and appreciate, say, a rustic vase with all its imperfections and clumsiness, valuing it instead for a feeling it evokes in him, he can pay for it handsomely. Hence the self-serving label we see frequently see today on various merchandise: This product you have just bought is handmade and may contain natural imperfections unique to its craftsmanship. When you buy that “imperfect” product, you’re buying a feeling that that product evokes (rustic simplicity, contentment, coziness, oneness-with-nature, and etcetera). And if there are enough Yoricks of the same sensibility (and there are), the price of such vases would be expected to increase, not unlike Amish furniture or otherwise useless Arizonian tumbleweeds.

But sensibility and its resultant taste have limited currency abroad, and it does not appear that Yorick will be raising the price of rustic vases any time soon in Versailles or Paris. Yorick cannot be the man he wants to be (and be seen as) because of his ambiguous status as an expatriate in Parisian society, but, upon fleeing to Moulines, he rediscovers his best self that fits his original label of the Sensitive Traveller. His self-image (today we would say self-esteem) is resurrected; he becomes like a father to Maria and speaks in almost paternalistic terms (he’s re-masculinated). It is in Moulines, where, upon consoling a deeply depressed Maria, that Yorick rediscovers the transcendent gift of a visceral emotion, empathy: “[S]uch undescribable emotions within me, as I am sure could not be accounted for from any combinations of matter and motion. I am positive I have a soul; nor can all the books with which materialists have pester’d the world ever convince me of the contrary.” (Sterne, p. 114)

With this confirmation that he has a soul, Yorick is unburdened of his own dead-end self-absorption that does little to make himself concrete to himself in any event. He also becomes strikingly aware that knowing – real knowing – is aided by the senses, his imagination, and his feelings of empathy which combine toward a higher purpose. When he experiences empathy, he is finally projecting outward, away from the self, and the experience is not only intense, but liberating (from the prison of one’s mind). Liberation does not come from an endless self-reference, a self-denying and unsatisfying purely mechanistic view, or even the imagination alone; these are all elements that, while necessary, are meant to lead to something greater. This something greater Yorick calls the “great SENSORIUM of the world” (Sterne, p. 117). Today we might call this any number of things, such as the Universe, the collective mind, the infinite, or the light. It is generally that which is “beyond myself” and typifies an interconnectedness of all things (Sterne, p. 117).

From here on, it would appear that Yorick is on a sort of roll of ecstatic bliss that is comical and, in a sense, dubious. He is clearly romanticizing the peasantry from a bourgeoisie point of view during “The Supper” and one can interpret this scene as Sterne’s own gentle reminder that, yet again, perceptions are not trustworthy, tainted as they can be with one’s own “state of mind,” biases, and emotional state. The scene may also illustrate how tourists, in their quest for culture and refinement, generally have come to be viewed in the pejorative. Nevertheless, the scene holds intense meaning for Yorick – never mind what the peasants think of him – and this intense meaning (via a previous visceral emotional experience) has a value unique to him. Who are we to say that it is wholly superficial, even if it is transitory? Isn’t this a judgment reserved for God himself, and isn’t this a private conversation between Yorick and God that we just happen to be privy to? “The inflated rhetoric Sterne uses here, however, as well as the utter conventionality of the pastoral vignette that follows, suggest that his tone is as much satirical as celebratory. The element in this passage that survives the satire is the direct link Yorick makes between sense and sentiment, his recognition of the human ability to endow objective phenomena with personal meaning.” (Chadwick, p. 198) The experience is real for Yorick and is beyond our limited judgment, different as we our in our own perceptions, imagination, point of reference, emotions, etcetera.

Thus, Yorick’s search for himself through self-definition (a man of taste, a sensitive traveler) becomes a discovery of God, however short the actual experience. We might assume that Yorick will have other transcendent experiences between his fascination with pulses and blushes, dalliances with chambermaids, fetishes, and off-kilter first impressions. Because spiritual bliss is transitory and difficult to sustain, it would not have been realistic for Sterne to end with “The Grace.” Instead, Yorick’s journey is open-ended and unpredictable, just as his personality is, and the novel ends with an implication that Yorick continues in his idiosyncratic, delicate, mannered sensibility to find connections with others.

REFERENCES:

Battestin, Martin C. “Sterne among the Philosophes: Body and Soul in A Sentimental Journey.” Eighteenth Century Fiction 7(1) (1994): 17-36.

Chadwick, Joseph. “Infinite Jest: Interpretation in Sterne’s A Sentmental Journey.” Eighteen Century Studies 12 (1978-1979): 190-205.

Frank, Judith. “A Man Who Laughs Is Never Dangerous”: Character and Class in Sterne’s A Sentimental Journey. ELH 56(1) (1989): 97-124.

Sterne, Laurence. A Sentimental Journey. New York: Oxford University Press. 1984.

The above essay was written by Patty K., published in www.urgentexplanations.blogspot.com, written in 2004 and posted on August 2, 2014. URL is http://urgentexplanations.blogspot.com/2014/08/laurence-sternes-sentimental-journey.html.

How Tanning Became Popular

Back in the day, in America and various European countries, being light-skinned was valued aesthetically (as opposed to being tan and sun-burnt) because it signified being aristocratic, or at least upper-middle-class. It meant you could afford to be indoors as a true blue-blood/WASP (so white you were almost blue) and did not have to do manual labor outdoors (hence, the derogatory term "redneck.")

The invention of the airplane reversed this. Because in the early days of flight, only the very wealthiest people could afford to fly … which they did frequently as tax exiles seeking tax havens in warmer climates such as the south of France, etc. After many months abroad, these wealthy, once-pale Americans/Europeans returned home and were noticeably tan.

It wasn’t long before being tan signified something else entirely. This was bolstered by the fact that so much of what the wealthy do and experience — play tennis and golf outdoors, sit by the pool drinking margaritas, etc. — causes tanning. By the second half of the 20th century, being tan was an indicator of higher social status and this continues today with tanning salons, etc.

This is how the beauty standard developped in the West. For some reason or other, however, it did not develop this way in many Asian countries, so that in certain Asian countries (South Korea comes to mind), it is still viewed as preferable to be as light-skinned as possible. Asians wanting to be pale has no more to do with wanting to be “white” than White people wanting to be tanned to look “Black.”

It’s a socio-economic perception, not a race thing.