Oroonoko, Aphra Behn

[AlysonofBathe]

Hey everyone,

So I recently finished Oroonoko. Has anyone else read it?

I'm a tad conflicted. I had heard going into it that it was very progressive, antislavery etc. And I honestly didn't really get that from reading it. If anything it seemed to support imperialism. Her support of Oroonoko seems to come from that fact that he's created as a very European character, associated with European models of romance. He's even described in Caucasian terms. Not so much antislavery; her objections seem to be on the basis that someone as civilized as Oroonoko shouldn't be enslaved. I don't really know to interpret it, honestly.

Anyone have any thoughts?

Cheers,
Alyson

[Galadrielthefree]

I first read three works of Aphra Behn, which included Orinoko, in one of my English classes. Personally, I feel that Behn is better when it comes to writing plays. I love Aphra for the most part, but Orinoko I found very hard to get through. Take for example how verbose she is in the begining of Orinoko, where she, despite saying how she will not go into all the details of "the adventures" of Orinoko's life, procedes in describing every little detail of the adventures of Orinoko's life.

[roguexunited]

Well, she was a woman of her times. Compared to her contemporaries Behn's Oroonoko presented a different point of view, though it still maintains the idea of the noble savage, Daniel Defoe shares this trait in his portrayal of Friday in Robinson Crusoe. Unlike Defoe's book - which is epically long and full of detail, which makes the narrative slow - Behn tend to condense Oroonoko's story in a much more efficient manner, which is an accomplishment for her times, at least from a contemporary reader's perspective.
The thing that I disliked about the book was that it is extremely melodramatic. The character suffers tradegy after tragedy and the happy moments he has in the story are short lived.
In the humanitarian anti-slavery front I think Behn does manage to portray the imperialists in a manner which they hadn't been shown before, Oroonoko was noble and trusting, and the Europeans were shown to have no honor and to objectify people. Nonetheless, Behn was not an activist of the cause, I don't think there was much of an anti-slavery at her times, but the merit of her book was that she observed and reported what she saw. The narrator does show sympathy for Oroonoko and she is able to distance herself from the slave merchants and give an opinion of them. I don't think that Behn was glorifying imperialism, but she did have to describe some of its activities to present her point of view.