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?