Oroonoko

Oroonoko is a short novel (or novella) by Aphra Behn (July 1640 – April 16, 1689), published in 1688, concerning the tragic love of its hero, an enslaved African in "Suriname" in the 1660's and the author's own experiences with the new American colony. It is generally claimed (most famously by Virginia Woolf) that Aphra Behn was the first professional female author in English. While this is not entirely true, it is true that Behn was the first professional female dramatist and novelist, as well as one of the first novelists in English. Although she had written at least one novel previously, Aphra Behn's Oroonoko is both one of the earliest English novels and one of the earliest by a woman.

Biographical and historical background

Oroonoko is now the most studied of Aphra Behn's novels, but it was not immediately successful in her own lifetime. It sold well, but the furore for the work would wait for its adaptation for the stage by Southerne (see below). Soon after her death, the novel began to be read again, and from that time onward the factual claims made by the novel's narrator, and the factuality of the whole plot of the novel, have been accepted and questioned with greater and lesser credulity. Because Mrs. Behn was not available to correct or confirm any information, early biographers took the "I" of the novel as Aphra Behn speaking for herself and incorporated the novel's claims into their accounts of her life. It is important, however, to recognize that Oroonoko is a work of fiction and that its "I" need be no more factual than Jonathan Swift's "I" in Gulliver's Travels or Daniel Defoe's "I" in Robinson Crusoe.

Related Topics:
Jonathan Swift - Gulliver's Travels - Daniel Defoe - Robinson Crusoe

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Fact and fiction in the narrator

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 Surinam and, if so, when. On the 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, in "Mrs. Behn's 'Oroonoko'" argues, everything substantive in Oroonoko could have come from accounts by William Byam and George Warren that were circulating in London in the 1660's. However, as J.A. Ramsaran and Bernard Dhuiq catalog, Behn provides a great deal of precise local color 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 (Todd 38). Secondly, all the Europeans mentioned in Oroonoko were really present in Surinam the 1660's. It is interesting, if the entire account is fictional and based on reportage, that Behn takes no liberties of invention to create European settlers she might need. Finally, the characterization of the real life people in the novel does not 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 fictionalizes 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 (Todd 38).

Related Topics:
Surinam - London - Thomas Kyd - Interregnum

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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 (Todd 40). 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 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 fictionalized 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.

Related Topics:
Lord Willoughby - Barbados - Suriname

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Further, it is 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 single woman would not have gone to Surinam, if she was in good standing and socially creditable. 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 over 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.

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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 claims, either to prove or deny them. However, it is profitable to look at the novel's events as part of the observations of an investigator, as illustrations of government, rather than autobiography.

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Models for Oroonoko

As with other elements of the narrator's account, the idea that there was an historical figure named Oroonoko or that there was even a black African slave who led a revolt in English Surinam whom Aphra Behn might have met has been taken seriously by readers, and even scholars, for centuries, and yet the truth of the matter is impossible to ascertain. It has been taken on faith that the real Behn met a real enslaved African prince, but there is no reason for this generosity. In three centuries, no researchers have been able to produce an actual figure who matches Behn's description. Therefore, it is likely that the hero of the novel is a fiction inspired by reality.

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One figure who matches aspects of Oroonoko is the white Thomas Allin, a settler in Surinam. Allin was disillusioned and miserable in Surinam, and he was taken to alcoholism 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 (Todd 54). In the novel, Oroonoko plans to kill Byam and then himself, and this matches a plot 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" (Exact Relation, quoted in Todd 55). He wounded Willoughby and was taken to prison, where he killed himself with an overdose. His body was taken to a pillory,

Related Topics:
Thomas Allin - Alcoholism - Pillory

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:"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." (Exact Relation, quoted in Todd 55)

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Allin, it must be stressed, was a planter, and neither an indentured nor enslaved worker, and the "freedom and honour" he sought was independence rather than manumission. Neither was Allin of noble blood, nor was his cause against Willoughby based on love. Therefore, the extent to which he provides a model for Oroonoko is limited more to his crime and punishment than to his plight. However, if Behn left Surinam in 1663, then she could have kept up with matters in the colony by reading the Exact Relation that Willoughby had printed in London in 1666 and seen in the extraordinary execution a barbarity to graft onto her villain, Byam, from the man who might have been her real employer, Willoughby.

Related Topics:
Indentured - 1663 - 1666

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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 England (and were, in fact, more highly valued), 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 the character possesses suggests that he is most likely invented wholesale. Additionally, the character's name is artificial. There are names in Yoruba that are similar, but the African slaves of Surinam were from Ghana. 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 (Todd 61). Oroondates is a prince of Scythia whose desired bride is snatched away by an elder king. Alternatively, "Oroonoko" is an obvious homophone for the Orinoco River, along which the English settled, and it is possible to see in the character as an allegorical figure for the mismanaged territory itself.

Related Topics:
Race - Yoruba - La Calprenède - Cassandra - Scythia - Orinoco River - Allegorical

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Slavery and Behn's attitudes

The colony of Surinam began importing slaves in the 1650's, since there were not enough indentured servants coming from England for the labor-intensive sugar cane production. In 1662, the Duke of York got a commission to supply 3,000 slaves to the Caribbean, and Lord Willoughby was also a slave trader. For the most part, English slavers dealt with slave-takers in Africa and rarely captured slaves themselves. The story of Oroonoko's abduction is plausible, for such raids did take place, but English slave traders avoided them where possible for fear of accidentally capturing a person who would anger the friendly groups on the coast. Most of the slaves came from the Gold Coast, and in particular from modern-day Ghana.

Related Topics:
Duke of York - Caribbean - Gold Coast - Ghana

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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 (Todd 61-3). The most likely candidate for Aphra Behn's husband is Johan Behn, who sailed on The King David from the German imperial free city of Hamburg (Todd 70). 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 English colonies under a false flag. Had Aphra Behn 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.

Related Topics:
Oriental tales - Turk - German - Hamburg

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Todd is probably correct in saying that Aphra Behn did not set out to protest slavery, but however tepid her feelings about slavery, there is no doubt about her feelings on the subject of natural kingship. 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. 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.

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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. 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 English, with their aristocracy, mismanaged the colony and the slaves 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.

Related Topics:
1667 - Treaty of Breda - Democratic - New Amsterdam

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