Selfish Simpathy

 Oroonoko: Or, The Royal Slave

     

I am not a historian, but I do like good stories, especially true stories about the history of our world and its inhabitants. I may have some of the facts mixed up and for that, I ask forgiveness but have added a link for you to journey to if you want to know the better of the truth, as far as it is recorded. I find that it is useful to know a bit of the history of the time a non-fictional story is written. It gives us a peek into the lens the author was seeing her world through, and why she might have felt certain ways, or engaged in certain experiences while acting as a high-class woman of her time period. And as the daughter of the colony’s governor, high-class she was.   

When Aphra Behn published Oroonoko, the country of England was undergoing some major changes. During the time she was writing about her experience in Surinam, James II was losing power, Parliament was gaining it, and William of Orange was plotting a militaristic takeover. William III married his cousin, Mary Stuart, a Protestant. She was the daughter of James II who was a converted Catholic. 

Charles II, James’s brother, held the crown and insisted that James continues to take the Protestant sacraments (even after he converted to Catholicism,) and his two daughters, Mary and Anne, were to be raised Protestant as well. In the online publication, Encyclopaedia Britannica, John P. Kenyon wrote an article in which he stated that James II was “more favorable to the Anglican church than was his Protestant brother.” Later, James had to prove to the Catholic church that he hadn’t switched to the church for political reasons and he stayed true to it even though it led to the end of his reign. James got the throne from Charles II, shaking England up a bit from having a Protestant King to a Catholic King. He was king over England, Scotland, and Ireland.  

After his wife died, he had the audacity to marry a Roman Catholic princess, Mary of Modena. This created hysteria in England and laid the groundwork for the takeover by the Protestant William of Orange, who through the help of the French army, became King. As stated above, Parliament was gaining power while James II was losing the crown. It is believed that his downfall solidified the political leadership of Parliament over the monarchy from that time to the present. While all this was happening in England, I forgot to mention that the Dutch played a serious role in the takeover battle, and later was given Surinam while the English moved on to more land in what was later the American colonies. 

This post is supposed to respond to some of the criticisms and allegations expressed in the article Captains and Slaves – Aphra Behn and the Rhetoric of Republicanism. The article starts off asking if we, (the reader and critical thinkers that we are) thinks Oroonoko was written as an Anti-slavery book, pro-slavery, or indifferent to slavery. In our class discussions, I was not shy in bringing up the fact that Aphra Behn, the author/narrator only became involved with Oroonoko because of his status as a Prince. She even feigned feeling sorry for him and his lover Imoinda, taking as much interest in their story as one does a reality T.V. show in the 21^st century. I claim that her involvement with their lives was for pure entertainment and will try to explain the reasons below.

    

Prince Oroonoko was a mighty general by the age of 17. After battle, it was common practice to gather his defeated armies and sell them off to slave ship captains. Later, when he became a slave, he found himself placed among the very men and women he had previously sold into slavery! Strangely enough, they did not rise up and kill him for this act, but they revered him as an honored King. Even his new owners treated him with honor, giving him the name Caesar. Behn had this to say about his arrival, “But if the King himself (God bless him) had come ashore, there could not have been greater expectations by all the whole plantation, … and he was received more like a governor than a slave … he endured no more of the slave but the name … receiving all visits that were made him, without stirring towards that part of the plantation where the Negroes were” (Norton 164). When he was introduced to the other slaves, “… they all came forth to behold him, and found he was that prince who had … sold most of ‘em to these parts … they all cast themselves at his feet, crying out in their language, ‘Live, O King! Long live, O King!’ and kissing his feet, paid him even divine homage” having a great celebration at his arrival. Later, when they fail an escape attempt led by Oroonoko, he chastises them equating them with dogs who love their master the more they are whipped. Even being a slave doesn’t change his mind about slavery, it just makes him even angrier that he must, for the time being, suffer to be so.

    Behn adored the slave prince, and admired not only his beauty but his position and his ability to carry himself with great strength and pride above all others. In her description she adds, “the most illustrious courts could not have produced a braver man, both for greatness of courage and mind, a judgment more solid, a wit more quick, and a conversation more sweet and diverting …” She describes him as well educated in history, speaking French and English, and called him graceful and civil, noting nothing barbarous about him. In his appearance, she explained that “He was pretty tall, but of a shape the most exact that can be fancied … more admirably turned from head to foot. His face was not of that brown, rusty black … but a perfect ebony or polished jet. His eyes were the most awful that could be seen, and very piercing, the white of ‘em being like snow … His nose was rising and Roman, instead of African and flat; his mouth the finest shaped that could be seen, far from those great turned lips which are so natural to the rest of the Negroes …” (Norton 145). She seems quite enamored with him, yet it is hard to pass the understanding that he is Only lovely because he is more Roman than African. Even his skin color is not “typical” and so therefore could not be equated with the common slave who she has little want to pay any mind.

   

 Behn later becomes obsessed with the love between Oroonoko and Imoinda, that is, Caesar and Clemene. When they learned that Clemene was pregnant, the plantation owners became so concerned about a mutiny that they employed Aphra Behn to befriend Caesar to play on his civility and manipulate his kindness. “This thought made him very uneasy, and his sullenness gave them some jealousies of him; so that I was obliged, by some persons who feared a mutiny … to discourse with Caesar, and to give him all the satisfaction I possibly could” (Norton 167). And later, “After this, I neither thought it convenient to trust him much out of our view” (Norton 168).

     To further the argument that he was always a slave first, there were quotes such as, “… we entertained him with, or rather he, us.” And to show that no other slave was given as much attention, there was a maidservant who joined them in a journey to visit the Indians near them, who is never given a name. She is only referred to as “Woman.” Caesar then is used to kill a “Tiger,” be their bodyguard while visiting the Indians, and as entertainment when he went to search out the electric eel and to perform many other great feats.

  

A performance it is. Oroonoko is not doing these things for their pleasure, but because he is constantly lied to that the governor is coming and will most assuredly set him free. He performs to bring some sort of dignity to his life as a captured warrior. He performs to hopefully save the life of his most precious Imoinda and unborn child. He does what is needed to earn their good graces and to stay one step ahead of his enslavers. Until, when he, at last, must admit defeat, and he takes the life of his most beloved, and hands over his own in the very end. Being as against the way of slavery (as performed by his captors) that he was, it reinforced to Oroonoko that he would never serve the God they were trying to convert him to. He never said that he changed his mind about slavery, as aparantly his god allowed it too (so long as it was performed honorably.) That is, only those defeated in battle were allowed to be enslaved by their victors. Both gods in his eyes allowed it, but the people who followed the Christian God did not do it with honorable intentions. From the view of the a 21st Century Christian, it is difficult to see the attrocities done in the name of Jesus, that Jesus himself, would never condone.

    

This is from a different story artist, but 
the image was suiting.

So, you tell me. Is this a story of anti-slavery? Did Aphra Behn write this account of the royal slave to tell of the horrors of slavery, or to give a tragically romantic account of star-crossed-lovers, who would never be together, fully happy, fully free? One point to remember is that Oroonoko never changed his mind about slavery. He wanted to have the slaves rise up and not continue to endure the shame and torments they endured, but why? Could he have been fulfilling the warrior’s part of his character, adding to the boasting he would have on the other side of this battle? Behn, herself, felt no more sadness or remorse for him than one does at the end of a really good book when the hero dies a horrible death. Her life will remain the same. Could she have used her status to free this happy couple, would she have even glanced in the direction of the other slaves on her plantation, or continued on with the necessary evils to keep her life and curiosities satisfied?  

References

Kenyon, John P. EncyclopaediaBritannica.com. 3 April 2020. 22 September 2020. <https://www.britannica.com/biography/James-II-king-of-England-Scotland-and-Ireland>.

All quotes come from Oroonoko: Or, The Royal Slave, as found in the Norton Anthology, English Literature, 10^th edition. “The Restoration and the Eighteenth Century.

"Oroonoko: Or the Royal Slave - Literature Summary Review." Youtube, uploaded by Estoc Productions, November 14, 2018, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_9Eid3m80D0