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.