What struck me most as I read Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko was the way that Behn describes the natives. She uses phrases like “native beauty” (ebook p. 9) to describe their appearance, which makes them into a commodity because it portrays them as a rare and exotic thing to be obtained. Such phrases could easily have been used to describe land that the English wish to colonize or goods to be imported abroad for consumption. Her descriptions suggests that prominent attitudes toward native peoples during the Early Modern Period were that natives were to be collected and consumed like goods, which explains the acceptance and rationalization of slavery throughout the book.
Behn also seems to idolize nature and look upon foreign lands as pure or free of corrupted influence from the West. Perhaps she is responding to the political turmoil in England during this period in the aftermath of the English Civil War. She described the natives saying, “these people represented to me an absolute idea of the first state of innocence, before man knew how to sin. And ’tis most evident and plain that simple nature is the most harmless, inoffensive, and virtuous mistress. ‘Tis she alone, if she were permitted that better instructs the world than all the inventions of man” (ebook p. 6). Here Behn seems nostalgic for simpler times and looks upon nature almost as utopic, which is signaled by her emphasis on innocence and comparison of it to man’s influence. Quotations like this seem to be a commentary on the state of affaires during which she is writing.
Finally I would like to raise a question. Professor Rabin mentioned that there were many novels similar to Oroonoko published during this period, and that it was a common type of book within its genre. This being said, I wonder why this particular book is so well known. Why not one of the countless others?
What I found most interesting was how Behn states that if the natives were taught the Christian religion, they would be worse for it, as the Christian religion recognizes sin and vice, of which they have no concept. This contrasts with the expressed desire put forth by the writers “Envisioning America” to convert the native population in order to pacify them. Curiously enough, the native people do go to war and take slaves, thus signifying warfare and slavery as part of the natural state of man. Slavery, then, would not be considered sinful as lying would be, which fits Behn’s general portrayal of slavery. Suriname is treated as a sort of lost Eden, which, while heavily fictionalized, no doubt intrigued Behn’s English readers.
One reason for the prominence of the text is the fame of Behn herself – she was a very famous playwright (The Rover), who was also closely connected in Court circles. (Which makes the picaresque anecdote about the misbehaving tribal king a bit interesting, perhaps.)
I might have mentioned this in class, but the editors of the forthcoming Cambridge complete Behn were working in the rare books collection earlier this semester. One of the anecdotes that they told was about an elderly aunt of Walter Scott who had asked him to send her some Behn. Some time later, she sent the package back to him with a note saying something along the lines of – “Burn this – I have no idea what I was thinking of. It’s terrible. But there was a time when everyone in London thought that is was magnificent.”
While I am unsure about the answer to your question, I wonder if it lies in her treatment of Oroonoko himself. Rather than treat him as a common slave, which I think many writings in this time period would, she aligns with the trope of the “Noble Savage,” making him above the rest of the African slaves. Rather than his own doing, she blames his downfall on the English and Irish people present in the colony. It is interesting that he is so absolved of fault in her eyes, given the actions he took toward the end.
Good question – I’ll let other weigh in. The genre is amatory fiction and among English scholars, it is getting more and more attention (at least here at U of I where two graduate students whose dissertation committees I sat on wrote about it).