Aphra Behn's Oroonoko: Race, Slavery, and Colonial Identity
This paper analyzes Aphra Behn's 1688 novella Oroonoko as an early English-language work engaging with slavery, race, and colonialism. It examines how Behn constructs her African protagonist as a "Noble Negro," complicating European distinctions between noble savages and enslaved Africans. The paper explores the novella's implicit critique of the slave trade, its portrayal of European colonial attitudes toward indigenous and African peoples, its treatment of gender and female agency through the character of Imoinda, and the tension between Oroonoko's aristocratic identity and his enslaved condition. Together, these themes reveal the complex and sometimes contradictory ways that 17th-century European literature began grappling with race, power, and imperial expansion.
- Introduction: Context for Oroonoko within slavery and colonialism
- Questioning Slavery: Oroonoko's speech as anti-slavery statement
- Portrayal of an African Protagonist: Noble Negro tradition and Black literary representation
- European Thought and Colonial Economics: Slave trade economics and colonial power dynamics
- South American Natives and Gender in the Colony: Indigenous peoples, Imoinda, and patriarchal violence
- The Will to Freedom: Freedom, sexual politics, and the slave-master dichotomy
- References: Primary source citation for Oroonoko
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What makes this paper effective
- The paper uses well-chosen direct quotations from the primary text to anchor each analytical claim, grounding interpretation in textual evidence rather than assertion alone.
- It moves systematically through multiple dimensions of the novella — race, class, gender, and economics — giving the analysis both breadth and coherence.
- The discussion of Imoinda's killing as simultaneously an act of love and patriarchal violence demonstrates nuanced, multi-perspective thinking about a morally complex scene.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper exemplifies close reading combined with historical contextualization. The author situates Behn's literary choices — such as the "Noble Negro" tradition and the naming of Caesar/Oroonoko — within the economic and ideological frameworks of 17th-century colonialism and the Royal African Company monopoly, showing how literary form and historical context illuminate each other.
Structure breakdown
The paper opens with a brief contextual introduction, then moves through six thematic sections: Oroonoko's anti-slavery speech, the construction of a Black protagonist within European literary traditions, colonial economic thought, indigenous and gender politics, and finally the theme of freedom and power. Each section builds on the last, culminating in a reading of the slave-master dynamic as both social and sexual. The structure is thematic rather than strictly chronological, allowing comparative analysis across episodes.
Introduction
Aphra Behn's Oroonoko is a tale of a Coramantien prince and victorious general, Oroonoko, who loses his heart to the lovely Imoinda. First published in 1688, when African slavery through the barbaric trans-Atlantic slave trade had become established as an economic, transcontinental system, the tale draws on popular literary themes of aristocratic romance, social censure, and travel narrative. It reflects several ways in which the British were beginning to view cultural and racial disparities, as well as their own contribution to the slave trade and colonialism. Behn's tale, broadly considered, is one text that demonstrates how European literature on the subjects of slavery, colonization, and race evolved over the course of the 17th and 18th centuries.
Questioning Slavery
Oroonoko's inspirational speech to his fellow slaves clearly marks Behn's work as among the very first English-language fictional works to speak out against slavery. The lead character addresses his fellow slaves thus:
"And why, my dear friends and fellow-sufferers, should we be slaves to an unknown people? No, but we are bought and sold like apes or monkeys, to be the sport of women, fools and cowards: and the support of rogues and renegades that have abandoned their country for rapine, murders, thefts and villainies. And shall we render obedience to such a degenerate race, who have not one human virtue left to distinguish them from the vilest creatures? Will you, I say, suffer the lash from such hands?" (Behn, p. 128)
Portrayal of an African Protagonist
While Indians qualify as "unfamiliar" and "other," they inevitably figure in the author's discussion of the "Noble Savage" — a concept that, beginning in the 16th century, called to mind among Europeans the appeal of reverting to a simpler way of life. People taken from Africa and coerced into slavery were often seen as retaining a ferocity and lack of discipline that distinguished them from this idealized figure. Oroonoko, however, appears to cloud the divide between Noble Savage representatives — the Indians — and African persons as embodiments of wildness.
Behn breaches the two categories by placing Oroonoko, a unique African protagonist, within the domain of noble savages, thereby giving rise to a "Noble Negro" tradition. In doing so, she effectively lifts Oroonoko's character from racial stereotype, transforming him into the tale's honourable and chivalrous protagonist. She develops a new literary space for portraying the actual, if scarcely acknowledged, characteristics of Black individuals. However, this revolutionary insertion of a Black protagonist into white fiction is a risky and nearly unfeasible endeavour that generates irreconcilable tension in the author's narrative voice.
References
Behn, A. (17th Century). Oroonoko. Norton Critical.
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