Here's one of the first novels by Aphra Behn, one of the first women in England to make her living by writing, a pretty rare thing even today. Previously, she had been a well-known and successful playwright, so it's a little surprising to find that there's very little dialogue here. Only goes to show that Behn knew what she was about, whatever style she wrote in.
The novel has to do with an African man named, of course, Oroonoko, an exceptionally noble-looking and competent soldier. Everyone assumes that, as the grandson of the king, he will assume the throne one day. Unfortunately for those ambitions, he falls in love with Imoinda, the daughter of a man who saves Oroonoko's life in battle. Which would be fine, except that the king, hearing of how beautiful she is, takes her for himself before he even gets a look at her, and when he finds that the two of them are still in love (as they would be, being married), sells her into slavery. Oroonoko and several of his men find themselves enslaved afterwards by the betrayal of a European sea captain and sold to a plantation in South America. He finds Imoinda there and they take up their relationship again. When she gets pregnant, the two of them quickly realize that their child will be born into slavery. In an attempt to avoid this, and getting impatient at the governor's failure to keep his promise to free them, Oroonoko leads a large group of fellow slaves toward the sea coast, where they intend to steal a ship and sale home. This does not end well.
The narrative here is intriguing. Our narrator presents herself as the daughter of man who was to be the military leader of the South American colony where Oroonoko winds up, but he was lost at sea, so the narrator lives there alone and meets Oroonoko upon his arrival. She learns of his history in Africa and witnesses his doings in the colony firsthand, and so can tell the story of his whole life. She has a habit, disturbing to us today, of talking about Oroonoko's splendor of mind and body by comparing it favorably to white European appearance and behavior. You know the kind of thing – he was so handsome and noble of bearing that he was like a white man. Wow.
Even the main character's name partakes of this attitude; like the names of Africans in other colonial-era fictions, it's not at all clear (to me, at any rate) whether "Oroonoko," "Imoinda," or other alleged African names presented here are genuine names to be found on that continent, but it scarcely matters, because the minute Oroonoko arrives in South America he gets an Anglicized name. In this case the name is "Caesar," which might be considered a compliment of sorts in that he gets the name because he looks so regal, but a little thought tells us right away that the mere changing of his name is a significant insult.
As a matter of fact, the narrative at least has the grace to point out for itself how foolish that kind of black-to-white comparison can be, but it's still pretty jarring. In addition, whatever Behn's own biases might have been, she was also fair enough to judge her characters on their merits rather than their color, and it's interesting to note that most of the Africans are far more honorable than most of the white folks, keeping their promises however much doing so puts them at a disadvantage while the white Europeans do exactly the opposite. Not bad for a work published in 1688.
So, what with the long descriptive passages, lack of dialogue, and noticeably prejudiced point of view, "Oroonoko" probably would receive a good deal of red ink if a creative writing student turned it in today. But then again, that would probably be true of most work published before the 19th century, and a good bit published afterwards. Bearing that in mind, "Oroonoko" is a good story, at the very least. It's full of adventure, suspense, romance, and intrigue. We would probably consider its language archaic today, but not so much so that it's difficult to understand. And it does show one rather amusing tic; the narrator frequently uses "'em" instead of "them," as in a description where Oroonoko confronts a group of his enemies and the narrator says that he "spoke to 'em." I assume that the English spoke like that at the time and that this is a direct transliteration, but I don't remember seeing it elsewhere.
Aphra Behn died a few months after this novel's publication. Subsequent writers owe her a debt for her professionalism and her ability to look past the prejudices of her day.
Benshlomo says, Good writers can see both the telling details and the big picture.
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