Oroonoko, by Aphra Behn

1361 Words3 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Features of post colonial theory in literature

Oroonoko is short literary novel, written in 1688 by Aphra Behn, which details the love story of two enslaved Surinam nobilities, who both meet their atrocious ends. Through her explicit analytical language she lets the English colonists know that the enslaved masses had a refined culture and ideological force that was incapable of being disregarded. Aphra Behn was innovative in her plight as being one of the foremost political female novelists of her time. Throughout her narrative she argues "centres on the problems of authority and representatively," and tries to incorporate the fact, "that the presence of the foreigner in our society turns the pronoun 'we' into an impossibility" (Grant p.114). Although Behn neither argues the point of attacking slavery nor denies the issue, she does show the brutal acts imposed on other cultures and helps her readers attach themselves to the protagonist in the narrative. Oroonoko sheds light on the terrors of slavery and paints many of the white colonists as inhumane, unethical and deceitful, furthering the notion that this piece of literature can be viewed as a work of anti-colonialism.

“Mrs. Behn who’s genius was of that force like homer’s, to maintain its gaiety in the midst of disappointments, which a woman her sense and merit ought never to have met with: But she had a great strength of mind and command of thought being able to write in the midst of company” (A. Behn). While Behn never asserts her true intentions in writings this narrative, it can be viewed in various aspects. Although, incorporating it in an aspect of anti-colonialism meter seems rash, the language used to inscribe this work makes Behn’s ploy more visible. Although, in the plights of the characters it seems hard not to ...

... middle of paper ...

... colonists as inhumane, unethical and deceitful, furthering the notion that this piece of literature can be viewed as a work of anti-colonialism.

Works Cited

Behn , Aphra. Oroonoko or The noble Slave. 1688.

Flood, 1530 what was a trickle of slaves had now become a, 000 slaves were being imported per annum. As more of the America, the Caribbean Islands were conquered the demand for slaves exploded, between 1800, and 1865 it is believed about 4 million slaves were landed in the Americas.. " The African Slave Trade - Slaves in Africa." ClickAfrique - Africa's leading online portal for africans by africans.. N.p., n.d. Web. 22 Mar. 2011.

Grant, S-M. Journal of American Studies 29.1 (1995): 113-114.

Molefi K. Asante, Abu Shardow Abarry. African intellectual heritage:. Temple University Press, 1996.

Show More
Related

  • John Smith: A Truthful Source on Early Colonial America?

    888 Words  | 2 Pages

    ...t be read in such a light and contrast to other sources on early colonial history.

    Read More

  • Hypocrisy Of Christianity In Behn's Oroonoko

    812 Words  | 2 Pages

    Although many themes arise in Behn’s Oroonoko, religion is the most dominant, that is, of course, the author’s emphasis on the hypocrisy of Christianity. For example, in the narrative, Imoinda, Prince Oroonoko’s wife, faces colonial settlers who use their religious effort in hope to justify the ‘righteousness’ of their doings, as Mr. Trefry says, “we have christened her. But she denies us all with such a noble disdain, that ‘tis a miracle to see that she, who can give such eternal desires, should herself be all ice and all unconcern” (Oroonoko 2337). In other words, neither end of the spectrum can come to a medium conclusion. However, if the reader looks in between the lines of the quote, he or she can see that Behn’s use of words, “christened,

    Read More

  • Analysis Of Oroonoko By Aphra Behn

    987 Words  | 2 Pages

    Throughout Aphra Behn’s short novel, her interest in the abolitionist agenda comes off as tepid at best. While reading Oroonoko, it is difficult to say if the author is against the institution of slavery as a whole, or just against the enslavement of a specimen as beautiful and noble as Oroonoko. Much of the slave’s eponymous story is spent waxing poetic about Oroonoko’s appearance and dignity instead of demonstrating the inherent evils of the inhumane commodification of other human beings.

    Read More

  • Oroonoko, by Aphra Behn

    1322 Words  | 3 Pages

    Aphra Behn’s novel, Oroonoko, gives a very different perspective on a slave narrative. Her characters embody various characteristics not usually given to those genders and races. Imoinda’s character represents both the modern feminist, as well as the subservient and mental characteristics of the typical eighteenth-century English woman. Oroonoko becomes an embodiment of what is normally a white man’s characteristic; he is the noble, princely, and sympathetic character that is not usually attributed to black men in general throughout most novels of slavery. The complete opposite character style is given to the slavers; the English are viewed as the barbaric, cunning, brutal characters that are usually portrayed in opposite and more generous fashion. Behn’s romantic tragedy comes full circle, from Oroonoko fighting a war, falling in love and being tricked into slavery, to Oroonoko in battle against his captors, to killing his love and dying in slavery.

    Read More

  • Oroonoko Sparknotes

    1034 Words  | 3 Pages

    The end of the 17th century marked the beginning of a new age known as the Enlightenment. During this time many remarkable philosophers such as Descartes, Locke, and Spinoza emerged. They handled very many difficult topics and discussed the world around them. They doubted ideas that had been thought of as absolutes for centuries and began to think in new and inventive ways. While this was going on, Europeans were conquering the Americas. Explorers had to deal with the moral dilemma of how they would handle the people they came across. Aphra Behn dealt with this issue of colonialism by writing the book Oroonoko, a tale about a noble African man. Behn, in this book, contrasts the civilized Europeans with Africans, whom the Europeans deemed savage.

    Read More

  • Heart of Darkness and Things Fall Apart

    3512 Words  | 8 Pages

    In the article, "Post-colonial Literatures and Counter-discourse," Helen Tiffin raises a number of issues in regards to the hybridization of the colonized and how European universals invariably clash with that of the native. From the very beginning of the article, Tiffin notes that there is a "call to arms" (so to speak) that encompasses the "demand for an entirely new or wholly recovered 'reality,' free from all colonial taint" (95). This hope is idealistic, especially when evaluating the role that the English language plays in the lives of those who are colonized. Tiffin realizes this fact and views most post-colonial literature as a "counter-discursive" mode of expression that is highly involved in "challenging the notion of literary universality" (96).

    Read More

  • Symbolism In The Heart Of Darkness

    834 Words  | 2 Pages

    In addition, Phillips responds to Achebe’s claim for describing the Africans as not human beings. Indeed, he argues that is to criticize the excessive power of the colonizer and misusing it against the natives. In other words, it reveals the viciousness of the Europeans as it emphasizes on slavery. That is to say, the natives are considered as animals; they are beaten and paralyzed with fear, claiming that it is part of their job. Such hypocrisy is well shown through the men who works for the company as he describes what they do as `trade' and their treatment of native Africans as part of a benevolent project of civilization. In like manner, it is often criticized by Marlow as he witnesses all sorts of cruelty during his three journeys, denouncing the hidden facet of the company and the horror that was occurring at

    Read More

  • Symbolism In The Novel Oroonoko

    1794 Words  | 4 Pages

    Writing on slavery, Aphra Behn in the novella Oroonoko; Or, The Royal Slave, is clever in putting together the life of a slave and that of the white man to create the character Oroonoko. Throughout Oroonoko, Behn places the character Oroonoko, between the top of the hierarchy of society as a Prince in his native country, that then parallels to being part of the society of the Englishman. However, such ideas are then balanced by the verity that Oroonoko is a black man who then is turned into a slave. That balance is carried throughout the novel, which becomes vital for bringing the reader to connect with the text through Oroonoko, and for the life of a slave to connect with the reader, which Behn does effectively in order to form and convey

    Read More

  • Anti-colonization and Dehumanization in Aphra Behn's Oroonoko

    1549 Words  | 4 Pages

    was conducting while assembling its overseas empire. Behn paints the majority of the white colonists as unmitigated illustrations of greed, dishonesty, and brutality. Through these depraved individuals, Behn regularly articulates the barbarism innate in British nature as opposed to the African prince Oroonoko, whom is conveyed as the quintisential model of nobility, physical prowness, and honor. These reoccuring motifs apparent throughout the literary work reveal Behn's intention of undermining the inhumane treatment of the colonized populice and the criticism of overseas expansion. Upon close examination of the literary work, one could conclusively view Aphra Behn's Oroonoko as an assailment against the dehumanization of the colonized people and a subtle criticism of Britain

    Read More

  • An Analysis Of The Novel 'Wide Sargasso Sea'

    1549 Words  | 4 Pages

    Postcolonial literature often emphasizes the problems and consequences of the decolonization of a country, emerging at the same time that many colonies were fighting their way to independence. Postcolonial writers, especially those who are from Africa, South Asia, and Caribbean, "wrote back" to the empire to challenge the imperial assumptions that had justified colonialism in the first place. Wide Sargasso Sea of Jean Rhys is the prequel of Jane Eyre, which tells the story of Rochester's mad wife Bertha Mason. Wide Sargasso Sea is such a novel written by the formerly colonized people who attempt to “articulate their identity and reclaim their past in the face of that past's inevitable otherness” (Ciolkowski 344). It tends to correct the imagined image that the colonizer imposed on them and in the meanwhile resists and even subverts the colonizing authority. This paper studies how Jean Rhys's postcolonial text, Wide Sargasso Sea, reveals the issues of racial conflict and gender oppression under the discourse of Eurocentrism, and challenges the colonizing authority by the subversive power of black language.

    Read More

  • Subtle Criticism in Aphra Behn's Oroonoko

    1363 Words  | 3 Pages

    In reading Oroonoko it might be easy to miss the criticism offered against the European culture. Upon studying the novel however, this criticism which had been presented subtly becomes quite clear. An important note is that the author and the narrator are not in fact the same. Although the author is out to provide a criticism of European culture and values, she is reluctant to let it come through the narrator. This critique comes through mainly in less direct forms, through her non-European characters, most often Oroonoko, and through comparisons between cultures and the characters encountered in each.

    Read More

  • Deconstructing ‘Self’ and ‘Other’ with reference to Joseph Conrad’s ‘Heart of Darkness’

    2178 Words  | 5 Pages

    The word ‘Deconstruction’ (Derrida 34) introduced by French philosopher Jacques Derrida to demonstrate that any text is not a discrete whole but contains several irreconcilable and contradictory meanings; that any text therefore has more than one interpretation; that the text itself links these interpretations inextricably; that the incompatibility of these interpretations is irreducible; and thus that an interpretative reading cannot go beyond a certain point. In psychological terms, the Other is but the undiscovered territory in the Self. In the colonial enterprise, this territory of the unconscious is displaced onto another people who both allures and terrify. The colonizer, fearing to succumb to the Other, attempts to contain it- through subordination, suppression, or conversion. These strategies of containment are designed to preserve the opposition and inequality between Self and Other that justifies the imperialist enterprise. The central trope of imperialism is what Abdul R. Janmohamed terms “Manchean allegory” (Hena 13) that converts racial difference “into moral and even metaphysical difference”. (13) This allegory characterizes the relationship dominant and subordinate culture as one of the ineradicable opposition. Although the opposing terms of the allegory change- good and evil, civilization and savagery, intelligence and emotion, rationality and sensuality- they are always predicated upon the assumption of the superiority of the outside evaluator and the inferiority of the native being observed. Colonialist literature, as byproduct of the imperialist enterprise, necessarily re-inscribes the Manichean allegory either to conform or to interrogate it in an effort to move beyond its limits. As a result, colonialist texts...

    Read More

  • Literary Analysis Of Oroonoko: Or, The Royal Slave '

    1273 Words  | 3 Pages

    It is believed that Oroonoko was the first English novel and people for hundreds of years have tried to put it in a genre, but both are difficult to prove. Oroonoko exists as one of the early English novels of it’s kind that carry a linear plot and adheres to a biographical model. Oroonoko is also the first english novel that expresses great sympathy for Black Africans in a compassionate way. One might parallel this novel with Othello by William Shakespeare. The content that exists in both stories talk about the nature of kingship as it is like the nature of people’s skin color or race. Oroonoko is a prince of Coramantien, Africa. The critical response of the novel has been washed by the Black Africans and their struggle in slavery and for women’s equality. This novel argues love and freedom as weapons of anti-colonialism versus slavery. Oroonoko is an anti-slavery novel which Aphra Behn establishes examples that future women novelists will write about and fight against a terrible thing, such as slavery. Oroonoko is know for it’s fictitiousness. It was said that, “Oroonoko is a fictionalization of a real love experience she practiced during what she calls, a family visit to Suriname” (Arab World Books). She has built new realm for critics and criticism, ultimately giving her a reputation as one of the great writers. She was a master in narration and gave her weight to convince the readers during the late 1600s that she had been

    Read More

  • tempcolon The Theme of Colonization in The Tempest

    1980 Words  | 4 Pages

    Brown, Paul.  "This thing of darkness I acknowledge mine: The Tempest and the discourse of colonialism."  New York: Collimore and Sinfield, 1985.  pp. 48-71.

    Read More

  • A Feminist and Post-Colonial Analysis of Anowa by Ama Ataa Aidoo

    1257 Words  | 3 Pages

    Having done the above analysis on my favourite text, “Anowa” by Ama Ataa Aidoo, I realise that my like for the text have heightened because the analysis of Anowa has given me a deeper understanding of Africa’s colonialism. I now know what actually led to our colonialisation (the betrayal) and how it began(the bond of 1844) through the personal lives of Anowa and Kofi.

    Read More

More about Oroonoko, by Aphra Behn

Open Document