They are painted as duplicitous, cruel and cowards. He is tricked into slavery rather than captured in battle and even his home country is depicted as having a structural society rather than just a group of Blacks running around with spears killing each other where even battles are pre-arranged.In contrast the few Whites come out with any credit. The book can certainly be seen as anti-slavery because it is the Oroonoko who is the one having all the noble characteristics, loving, honest, brave, lenient etc. It is interesting that Oroonoko is described as a person ,with handsome features, rather than a pure commodity as at the time when this book was written 'Blacks' would have been seen as lesser lifeforms but then there seems little distinction between the imported slaves and the local Indians tribes. Behn's literary background is as a playwright and you can certainly feel this in her writing as there is a certain rhythm throughout although the strange use of punctuation, in particular apostrophes, initially feels rather odd. A professional writer, is this is reputed to be the first ever novel, having turned writer after release from a debtors prison but also a spy, anti-slavery and suspected of taken a black lover, which as a white woman would have been strictly taboo back then. for it was she who earned them the right to speak their minds.Aphra Behn is herself as interesting as the story.
Two centuries after Behn's burial in Westminster Abbey's Poets Corner, Virginia Woolf observed, "All women together ought to let flowers fall upon the tomb of Aphra Behn. The storyteller's account of an African prince who is sold into slavery and becomes the leader of a rebellion represents one of the first fictional treatments of colonial and abolitionist themes, and it is unusual for its era in its sympathetic regard for black Africans.ĭespite the considerable success of her poetry, plays, and fiction, little is known for certain about the life of Restoration-era author Aphra Behn (1640–89). Originally published in 1688, the tale combines memoir, biography, and travelogue in the form of a narrative by an Englishwoman visiting Surinam.
A landmark in the history of the novel, Oroonoko is among the earliest such works in the English language and its author, Aphra Behn, is often cited as the first professional woman writer.
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