Scholars International Journal of Linguistics and Literature

Abbreviated Key Title: SchInt J Linguist Lit

ISSN 2616-8677 (Print)|ISSN 2617-3468(Online)
Scholars Middle East Publishers, Dubai, United Arab Emirates
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Review Article

Mothering the English Novel: Aphra Behn and the Anti-Racist Themes of
Oroonoko
Dr. Essam El Din Aref Fattouh*
Professor, English Department, Faculty of Arts, University of Alexandria, Port Said Street, Shatby, Alexandria , Qism Bab Sharqi, Alexandria
Governorate, Egypt
*Corresponding author: Dr. Essam el Din Aref Fattouh | Received: 12.05.2019| Accepted: 25.05.2019| Published: 30.05.2019
DOI:10.21276/sijll.2019.2.3.2

Abstract

AphraBehn wrote the first novel in the English language. She may justly be called, ‘Mother of the English Novel’.
Behn’s Oroonoko [2], predates Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe by thirteen years. Although her highly original work of
fiction has sometimes been dismissed as a ‘romance’, similar to the proto-fiction that appeared in the previous century,
her work in fact marks a wholly new departure in English literature. It bears the hallmarks – the narration of events as
recalled and filtered through the eyes of its characters; the interest in exact narrative detail; the claim that the tale is a true
story, and based on eye-witness accounts – that thereafter would define the novel proper. Oroonoko is now generally
agreed to draw on the author’s first-hand experience, albeit highly fictionalised, of a period spent in the Dutch colony of
Surinam, in South America. Behn’s novel is remarkable in the period when it was written, for the respect with which its
narrator describes the customs of indigenous peoples, and the dignity and courage of native-born Africans, the novel’s
heroes. In her tale of the rebellion and tragic fate of a noble and heroic African prince, and of his wife Imoinda, Behn not
only wrote the first English novel, but – nearly two centuries before Uncle Tom’s Cabin – the first work of fiction to
denounce the institution of slavery.
Keywords: Aphra Behn, Oroonoko, 17th Century Literature, women’s writing, Restoration women, anti-slavery
literature, colonialism.
Copyright @ 2019: This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution license which permits unrestricted
use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium for non-commercial use (NonCommercial, or CC-BY-NC) provided the original author and source
are credited.

INTRODUCTION Even though Robinson Crusoe was not

‘All women together ought to let flowers fall published until over thirteen years after Behn’s novel,
upon the tomb of Aphra Behn, for it was she who the title of ‘Father of the English novel’ is usually
earned them the right to speak their minds’ [1]. So said accorded to Behn’s younger contemporary, Daniel
Virginia Woolf, a gifted, outspoken and highly original Defoe. Yet, it is Oroonoko that is the first work in
writer of the twentieth century, in acknowledging her English to offer a coherent fictional world, with
debt to a boldly independent forebear of the credible, rounded characters interacting in settings
seventeenth, who first gave the modern novel form to evoked by careful descriptive detail – with everything,
the English language. in short, that readers came to expect of the new genre.
Oroonoko [2] is not only the first novel by a The very term ‘novel’ means, of course,
woman, but the first novel – in the modern sense of the something new – a departure from earlier traditions of
word – ever published. Its author was a professional fable and romance, where idyllic settings and fantastic
writer, a poet and a playwright, who earned her living events predominate, and the events described take
by her pen. precedence over any attempt to depict character. A
glance at Philip Sidney’s prose romance, Arcadia, of
1 A Room of One’s Own. London: Hogarth Press, 1929. 1580, or even a work like Thomas Nashe’s The
Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1992, p. 82. Woolf’s Unfortunate Traveller [3], will immediately show the
difference between such romances and tales, and
feminist text, a call for the recognition and appreciation
anything we might recognise as the novel proper today
of the work of female writers, was a published version – beginning with Behn’s Oroonoko.
of lectures she gave to the students of women’s colleges
at Cambridge, in 1928.

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Historical Context Aphra Behn’s place in this glittering but

The novel, as such, came into being with the morally dubious world was never fully secure. When
evolution of a new class of readers. The development of she came to the attention of Charles and his circle, she
the printing press made possible the wide distribution of was already in her twenties, having lived through all the
written works of all kinds. Religious reforms, that made years of the Civil War and the Commonwealth. From a
people eager to read the Bible and other religious texts humble social background – she was the daughter of a
in their native languages, where before such texts were barber-surgeon and a wet-nurse – the ambitious young
available only to those who read Greek and Latin, in woman was a parvenu in the glittering, snobbish world
turn encouraged people of the middle classes – artisans, of the aristocracy. She had to make her own way there,
shopkeepers, and traders – to become literate, and to earning a living by her wits. She won acceptance
educate their families. In England, the hunger for the among the aristocracy by the exercise of her
printed word was given a further impetus by the furious intelligence, her good looks, her charm – and her
political campaigning and polemical writing that took literary talent. A professional writer, she supported
place during the nine years of civil war between Puritan herself by the work of her pen, with little other means
supporters of Parliament, and champions of King of subsistence. While in her twenties, she may have
Charles I, that ended in 1651. After the execution of the done a little spying work overseas for Charles II, but he
King in 1649, a Puritan republic or ‘Commonwealth’ treated her ungratefully, and soon dispensed with her
was established under the rule of Oliver Cromwell, that services. There would be times of penury, and even the
lasted for a decade. odd spell in a debtor’s prison.

After Cromwell died, when Charles I’s son Her literary accomplishments were recognised
was recalled from exile in France, and crowned Charles by the most gifted fellow-writers of the day. The
II, a now widely literate public became hungry for types brilliant, if dissolute, Earl of Rochester was one of the
of literature other than religious sermons and political first to praise her work and to encourage her to develop
pamphlets. People wanted entertainment. The theatres, her creative talent (p. 196) [4]. The poet-playwright
closed and banned during the Commonwealth, were re- John Dryden admired her verse, as well as her abilities
opened, with a new style of play, the so-called comedy as a dramatist (p. 262) [4]. She became known as the
of manners. Witty, satirical poetry circulated among a leading playwright of the early Restoration, with
highly cultivated upper class. For the sons and sixteen of her plays performed in London between 1670
daughters of the middle classes, there would soon be a and 1687. Queen Catherine is said to have taken a
new genre – the novel form, as pioneered by leading role in one of these productions. Several of the
AphraBehn, and carried on in the eighteenth century by plays have been successfully revived on the London
Defoe, Eliza Haywood, and Frances Burney; by stage in recent years2. In 1999, the Royal Shakespeare
Richardson, Fielding and Sterne. Company staged a new production of Oroonoko –
directed by Gregory Doran, and very freely adapted
Behn’s Oroonoko, while it certainly does not from Behn’s original text, by the Nigerian playwright,
belong to the category of earlier tales and romances, to BiyiBandele3 [5, 6].
which it is often dismissively assigned, also differs
markedly from the works of sentimental fiction, Behn’s novel Oroonoko, published in the last
produced mainly for a female readership, that began year of her life, when she was in her late forties, and
appearing in the early eighteenth century, a few decades loosely based on experiences as a traveller in South
after Behn’s death. These stories, with their focus on America in her youth, while it tells an exciting story,
seduction, love and marriage, could hardly differ more may be seen as her most serious and socially engaged
in sensibility from the robust attitudes exhibited in work, and the product of her maturity as a writer [2].
Behn’s works. In fact, Behn was frequently skeptical of
ideas of ‘true love’, believing that they limited a
woman’s freedom. She actually belongs to a very
different context. As a prolific author of plays, poetry 2 Including The Lucky Chance, at the Royal Court, in
and translations, as well as of fiction, her closest 1984; The Rover, by the Royal Shakespeare Company
affinities are with an elite circle of literary ‘wits’ at the in 1986, and again by RADA, in 2015; and The Widow
court of Charles II. It was a world of bohemians and Ranter, in October 2018.
rakes, where men and women freely took lovers, and 3 See Anne Widmayer’s somewhat ambivalent, and not
where the King himself had at least twelve children by altogether favourable, critique of Bandele’s production,
different mistresses. It was a cynical, corrupt in her article, ‘The Politics of Adapting
environment – far more corrupt than the court had ever Behn's Oroonoko’. In Comparative Drama, Vol. 37,
been in the years before the Civil War – a world in No. 2, Summer 2003, pp. 189-223. A far more
which people made use of one another for whatever appreciative assessment appears in an anonymous
they could gain from a relationship, casting the other review of the production in the Telegraph newspaper,
person aside, once they no longer proved useful. where it is praised for ‘dramatic strength and physical
energy’. ‘Powerful Tale of slavery takes RSC into rich
new territory’. The Telegraph, January 26, 1999.

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Analysis the hero himself’. She has no need, this (fictional)

Oroonoko is unique in its day, not only in narrator says, to embellish her tale with invented
being the first English novel, but in taking a black man imaginary details, ‘there being enough of reality to
and a slave – albeit a slave of royal descent – as its support it, and to render it diverting, without the
hero. The setting, too, is remarkable, being a detailed addition of invention’ (p. 147) [2].
depiction of the two worlds of the West Africa of
Oroonoko’s birth, and that of Surinam, on the north- The novel, with the figure of a royal ‘noble
eastern coast of South America, which at that time was savage’ at its centre, offers an implicit challenge to an
under the control of the English. entire literature, dating from the late fifteenth century,
that dealt with ‘exotic’ peoples – and Africans in
If one believes Behn’s contemporary, Charles particular – as primitive and savage – monstrous, even.
Gilden, who wrote a biography of her, she composed In her character of Oroonoko, Behn gives us a dignified
Oroonoko even while company were present, and figure – a man of royal blood, fluent in several
completed the (fairly short) novel at a single sitting. languages; curious about different cultures; portrayed as
However that may be, Behn gives us a dramatic and having a keen sense of honour – superior to that of the
compelling story. white people who lie to and betray him. In education
and manners, we are told, he is the equal of any prince
For many years, controversy existed about of Europe:
whether Behn herself had ever been in Surinam, or
whether she wrote about the place only from hearsay4 His discourse was admirable upon almost any
[7, 8, 9]. It is now generally agreed however, that she subject: and whoever had heard him speak,
did spend time in the British colony there. Her would have been convinced of their errors, that
biographer Janet Todd suggests that possibly she was all fine wit is confined to the white men,
sent there when in her twenties, as a spy and agent for especially to those of Christendom; and would
the British Crown 5 (pp:32-35) [4, 10]. Details in the have confessed that Oroonoko was as capable
novel itself suggest direct experience of the place – not even of reigning well, and of governing as
merely descriptions of the plants and animals, that wisely, had as great a soul, as politick maxims,
could have been found in the narratives of travellers, and was as sensible of power, as any prince
but phrases in the language of the indigenous people of civilized in the most refined schools of
Surinam, and descriptions of their food and furniture. humanity and learning, or the most illustrious
courts (p. 154) [2].
In a gesture that would become standard in the
early novel – one much imitated by Defoe – the female The society Oronooko comes from, is depicted
narrator of Oroonoko claims to be giving us, not a work as more consistent in its sexual morality, than that of
of fiction, but merely a careful record of actual events, Western Europe. While the prince remains devoted to a
to which ‘I was myself an eye-witness’; or that she single woman, his beloved Imoinda, others in his world
heard ‘from the mouth of the chief actor in this history, practise polygamy. The men ‘take to themselves as
many as they can maintain’. What they do not do, the
narrator observes, is to commit the ‘crime and sin’ of
4 See, for example, an early twentieth-century abandoning a former wife or concubine, ‘to want,
commentator, Ernest Bernbaum, in his essay, ‘Mrs. shame and misery’. Such inhumane behaviour is only to
Behn's Oroonoko. In Anniversary Papers by Colleagues be found ‘in Christian countries, where they prefer the
and Pupils of George Lyman Kittredge. Boston: Ginn, bare name of religion; and, without vertue or morality,
1913, pp. 419–34. For Bernbaum, Behn drew most of think that sufficient’ (p. 156) [2].
her information from the tales and travel narratives of
others. Katharine Rogers considers Bernbaum’s attempt The indigenous people of Surinam are also
to prove Behn’s lack of ‘authenticity’ as a misogynist respectfully portrayed. They are helpful to one another,
attempt to discredit the work of a female author, ‘in and to the settlers. Their ethical codes are shown as
accordance with the general tendency of male- different, but also possibly superior, to those of the
dominated criticism at the time to sneer at pioneering Europeans. Their nakedness is not represented as an
women writers’. See Rogers’ ‘Fact and Fiction in indication of backwardness or savagery, but as a normal
Aphra Behn's Oroonoko’, in Studies in the Novel, Vol. and natural aspect of life in a hot climate. As described,
20, No. 1, Spring 1988, pp. 1–15. it evokes an image of the ideal human state before
5 Todd, pp. 32-35. Writing fifty years earlier, H.A. man’s fall into sin, and expulsion from the Garden of
Hargreaves noted, in addition, that Behn’s skilful Eden:
deployment of first-person narrative was also what They are extreme modest and bashful, very
‘captured the fancy of the reading public’ down the shy, and nice of being touched. And though
generations. ‘New Evidence of the Realism of Mrs. they are all thus naked, if one lives for ever
Behn's Oroonoko’, in the Bulletin of the New York among them there is not to be seen an undecent
Public Library, Vol. 74, January-December, 1970, pp. action or glance: and being continually used to
437–44.

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see one another so unadorned, so like our first the filtering of the narrative through the distinctive view
parents before the Fall, it seems as if they had and perspective of a particular narrator.
no wishes, there being nothing to heighten
curiosity; but all you can see, you see at once, It has been argued that the character of
and where there is no novelty, there can be no Oroonoko belongs to the world of idyll and fable,
curiosity (p. 150) [2]. because it is too idealised to be credible. This is to
overlook the complexity of Behn’s fictional framework,
The morals of supposedly more ‘primitive’ in which the male hero is viewed wholly through the
people are favourably contrasted with those of white eyes of the female character who tells his story. It is this
Europeans. The natives of Surinam are shocked when narrator’s idealising view of him, with a respect and
the English Governor, having made an agreement to admiration that borders on infatuation, that is the only
meet with them, fails to keep the appointment. When he perspective the reader is ever allowed to see. The
breaks his promise in this way, they do not hesitate to narrator must know that a mutual love between herself
call him a liar (p. 150) [2]. and Oroonoko is impossible. But she is free to celebrate
her near-worshipful attitude to him in words that, by the
The duplicity of the settlers towards Africans time she comes to tell her tale, she knows he will never
in general, and towards Oroonoko in particular, is read; and to express her feelings for him, without
represented as much worse than the Governor’s failure running any risk of commitment.
to keep an appointment. The first betrayal occurs in
Africa, when Oroonoko is shanghaied aboard an This narrator’s role is at times an ambivalent
English ship, and carried off from his native home. one. On the one hand, she admires Oroonoko – his
When he asks the ship’s captain at least to free him nobility and generosity, his courage and dignity. On the
from his chains and allow him to walk about on deck, other, she acquiesces in the role assigned to her by the
giving his word of honour that he will not attempt to white settlers, of keeping the prince – renamed ‘Caesar’
rebel or escape, the captain replies that he cannot after he has been carried off from West Africa and
‘resolve to trust a heathen’ – a man without faith in the enslaved in Surinam – under surveillance. She
God of the Christians. Oroonoko has a ready answer. If acquiesces in the decision of Oroonoko’s new master to
someone swears by God, as the Christians do, no one, change his name: ‘For the future therefore I must call
he says will ever know whether God punishes him for Oroonoko Caesar; since by that name only he was
breaking his word. If he swears by his honour, however, known in our western world, and by that name he was
everyone can soon witness whether the oath was kept. received on shore at Parham House, where he was
In that case, the oath-breaker ‘suffers every moment the destin'd a slave’ (p. 186) [2].
scorn and contempt of the honester world, and dies
every day ignominiously in his fame, which is more Although not required to work like other
valuable than life’. How could anyone imagine, slaves, in recognition of his royal birth, the prince frets
Oroonokoadds, that ‘he who will violate his honour at captivity, and demands to know when the whites will
could ever be expected to keep his word to God’? honour their promise to set him free: ‘He was every day
(p.181) [2]. The captain unchains Oroonoko, not treating with Trefry [the master] … offer'd either gold,
because he is convinced by the prince’s argument, but or a vast quantity of slaves, which should be paid before
because he hopes Oroonoko will persuade the other they let him go, provided he could have any security
captured Africans to break their fast to the death, and that he should go when his ransom was paid.’ Trefry
save him from losing so valuable a cargo. and the other settlers give Oroonoko constant
assurances, that serve only to make him more
As previously mentioned, Behn’s Oroonoko suspicious of their true intentions:
has often been denied the status of a fully-fledged They fed him from day to day with promises,
novel. This is to dismiss the obvious novelistic features and delay'd him till the Lord- Governour
of Oroonoko, that later writers would build on. There is should come; so that he began to suspect them
the keen sense of actual historical context, with the
fragile tenure of the English settlers on the lands in
Surinam, where they brutally exploit the captured nicknamed ‘The Black Boy’.) Todd views Oroonoko,
Africans, and anticipation of the relinquishing of the then, less as a work of fiction in its own right, than as a
territory to the control of the Dutch. There is the device, political fable, a message of warning addressed to the
previously alluded to, of claiming that the fiction is a King, to beware of the threats to his rule posed by
true history of actual events – a device that later writers treacherous enemies. See Todd, pp. 436-7. To make the
would adopt enthusiastically6 [4, 11]. Above all, there is argument, however, she has to place greater weight on
it, then the slender narrative will credibly bear.Other
critics see parallels with classical history and legend –
6 Todd has even argued that the character of with the fates of Achilles, and of Julius Caesar. See,
Oroonoko is intended as a compliment to James II, who Hoegberg, David E: ‘Caesar's Toils: Allusion and
succeeded to the English throne after the death of Rebellion in Oroonoko’. In Eighteenth-Century Fiction,
Charles II, his father. (James was sometimes Vol. 7, No. 3, April, 1995, pp. 239–58.

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of falsehood, and that they would delay him till The fame of Oroonoko was gone before him,
the time of his wife's delivery and make a slave and all people were in admiration of his
of that too: for all the breed is theirs to whom beauty. Besides, he had a rich habit on, in
the parents belong. [2] which he was taken, so different from the rest,
and which the captain could not strip him of,
Like the rest, the narrator comes to fear that because he was forced to surprise his person in
Oroonoko might try to stir up a rebellion among the the minute he sold him. [2]
other slaves. The role assigned her, is to entertain and
reassure him: Oroonoko dislikes being exposed to the staring
I was obliged, by some persons who fear'd a of the crowds who turn out to see him, wearing his
mutiny (which is very fatal sometimes in those splendid robes, and asks his new master to clothe him in
colonies that abound so with slaves, that they ‘something more befitting a slave’. In spite of the
exceed the whites in vast numbers) to change in dress, ‘he shone through all’. The rough,
discourse with Caesar, and to give him all the simple clothing, the narrator tells us
satisfaction I possibly could: They knew he Could not conceal the graces of his looks and
and Clemene [Imoinda, Oronooko’s wife] mien; and he had no less admirers than when
were scarce an hour in a day from my he had his dazzling habit on: The royal youth
lodgings; that they eat with me, and that I appeared in spite of the slave, and people could
oblig'd 'em in all things I was capable of. I not help treating him after a different manner,
entertained them with the loves of the Romans, without designing it. As soon as they
and great men, which charmed him to my approached him, they venerated and esteemed
company; and her, with teaching her all the him; his eyes insensibly commanded respect,
pretty works that I was mistress of, and telling and his behaviour insinuated it into every soul.
her stories of nuns, and endeavouring to bring So that there was nothing talked of but this
her to the knowledge of the true God (p. 191- young and gallant slave, even by those who yet
2) [2]. knew not that he was a prince (p. 185) [2].

For all her hospitality towards Oronooko and It is incorrect, however, to assume that the
his wife Clemene / Imoinda, the narrator willingly takes author is unaware of the brutality meted out to the
on the role of Oroonoko’s keeper: ordinary African slaves in Surinam. In calling on them
I neither thought it convenient to trust him to take back their freedom for themselves, Oroonoko
much out of our view, nor did the country who addresses them:
fear'd him; but with one accord it was advis'd Caesar, having singled out these men from the
to treat him fairly, and oblige him to remain women and children, made an harangue to 'em,
within such a compass, and that he should be of the miseries and ignominies of slavery;
permitted, as seldom as could be, to go up to counting up all their toils and sufferings, under
the plantations of the negroes; or, if he did, to such loads, burdens and drudgeries, as were
be accompany'd by some that should be rather fitter for beasts than men; senseless brutes,
in appearance attendants than spies (p. 194) than human souls. He told 'em, it was not for
[2]. days, months or years, but for eternity; there
was no end to be of their misfortunes: They
Behn would have known that the settlers’ fear suffered not like men, who might find a glory
of a slave revolt was no mere paranoid fantasy. In 1665 and fortitude in oppression; but like dogs, that
– roughly the time at which Behn herself is likely to loved the whip and bell, and fawned the more
have been involved with events in Surinam as an agent they were beaten. [2]
for the English King – the English Deputy Governor,
William Byam, bore witness to the dangers of However blameless, and whether they work or
insurgency. Byam – who appears as a singularly not, they are forced to toil under ‘the infamous whip’.
unpleasant character in Behn’s novel – bore testimony
to what he termed the ‘insolencies of our Negroes, Oroonoko, it should be noted, has himself sold
killing our stock, breaking open houses … and some his countrymen into slavery in former days. In his early
flying into the woods in rebellion’ (p. 341) [8]. bargaining with the master, Trefry, he is quite prepared
to offer, as we have seen, ‘a vast quantity of slaves’ to
Behn notoriously entertained an exaggerated be offered to Trefry as the price of his freedom. Are we,
reverence for royalty – not least for the Stuart kings perhaps, being asked to understand that Oroonoko has
who governed England after the Restoration – but also
for the heroes of her imagination. In Oroonoko, her
fictional narrator expresses herself lost in admiration for
the princely Oroonoko, as he is brought upriver into the
heartland of Surinam:

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gained a new awareness of the slave’s plight, by his and published the following year. If Oroonoko is to be
experiences in Surinam? 7. understood as an anti-slavery polemic, however,
Southerne’s work must be seen as a travesty of Behn’s
However we reconcile this seeming original intentions. Imoinda becomes a white heroine,
contradiction, Behn puts into the mouth of Oroonoko – rather than a beautiful black African10 [15, 16].
or rather, into the words of her narrator, who is not
present when he makes this speech, but rather gives us Many of Behn’s works continued to be read
an imaginary reconstruction of it, after the event – her and enjoyed throughout the best part of the eighteenth
acknowledgement of the brutal exploitation to which and early nineteenth centuries. It was only with the
the African slaves were subjected in the colonial prudish attitudes of the late Victorian era, when Behn’s
plantations. It is characteristic of her, that she considers writings – particularly her admittedly sometimes bawdy
not only the slave’s physical suffering, but the indignity verse, but also her plays – came to be regarded as
and loss of self-respect: ‘That they had lost the divine unsuitable for family reading, that her fame suffered an
quality of men, and were become insensible asses, fit eclipse. In the early decades of the twentieth, however –
only to bear’8 [2, 12]. at least partly thanks to the championship of her sister
author, Virginia Woolf, another pioneer, her fame
When Oroonoko, with his beloved Imoinda, enjoyed a revival. Behn’s works – Oroonoko in
who is still pregnant with his child, takes flight from the particular – are widely read and studied today.
colony, taking all the other slaves with him, the settlers
are terrified, and all expect to be slaughtered. There is a At the close of the novel, the narrator seems to
definite question mark, however, over whether drop her mask. We hear the voice of the author,
Oroonoko does harbour thoughts of revenge. His goal, assuring us that Oroonoko and his bride will, thanks to
we are told, is to get away from the colony and found a her celebration of this tragic couple, never be forgotten:
new settlement, where he and Imoinda can live with I hope, the reputation of my pen is
their child in freedom. It is an aspiration that can only considerable enough to make his glorious
end in tragedy, as Behn’s narrator recounts and laments name to survive to all ages, with that of the
the hero’s gruesome end. brave, the beautiful, and the constant Imoinda
(p. 224) [2].
It is Oroonoko, I would argue, rather than
Harriet Beecher Stowe’s nineteenth-century protest It seems she did not hope in vain.
novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, that should be seen as the
first anti-slavery fiction in the English language. There
was recognition of this in continental Europe, where a
REFERENCES
French translation appeared in 1745, 44 years before the 1. Woolf, Virginia. (1929, 1992) A Room of One’s
French Revolution9 [13, 14]. Own. Harmondsworth: Penguin.
2. Behn, Aphra. (1688, 1967) Oroonoko, or The
Royal Slave: A True History. Reprod. in Philip
CONCLUSION
Behn’s novel continued to be successful, both Henderson (ed.), Shorter Novels: Seventeenth
as a widely-read novel, and in the form of a play by Century. (pp. 145-224) London: Dent.
Thomas Southerne, an adaptation first staged in 1695, 3. Nashe, T. (1594, 1972). The Unfortunate Traveller.
London: Penguin Classics.
7 Biyi Bandele’s script for the Royal
Shakespeare Company, alluded to above, conveniently 4. Todd, Janet. (2017) Aphra Behn: A Secret Life.
omits this detail in Behn’s text. London: Fentum Press.
8 Behn may have been aware of the polemic in 5. Widmayer, Anne F. (2003) ‘The Politics of
the London press of 1667, by George Warren. Warren Adapting Behn's Oroonoko’. Comparative Drama.
writes that slaves in Surinam ‘are sold like dogs, and no
37(2), 189-223.
better esteemed but for their Work sake, which they
perform all the Week with the severest usages for the 6. Macdonald, Joyce Green. (1999) ‘Powerful Tale of
slightest fault.’ Quoted in Moira Ferguson, ‘Oroonoko: slavery takes RSC into rich new territory’. The
Birth of a Paradigm’, New Literary History, Vol. 23, Telegraph, January 26, 1999.
No. 2, Spring 1992, pp. 339-59
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Behn.Amsterdam, 1745. Ernest Baker, in his 10 See Paula R. Backscheider (Ed.), Dictionary of
Literary Biography, vol. 80. Detroit: Gale, 1989. The
introduction to Behn’s works, written in 1905, concurs,
implications of this drastic change are explored in detail
calling Oroonoko ‘the first emancipation novel’. See in a thought-provoking essay by Joyce Green
Baker’s Introduction to The Novels of Mrs. Aphra Behn. Macdonald – 'Race, Women, and the Sentimental in
London:Routledge 1905, pp. vii–xxi. Thomas Southerne'sOroonoko’: Criticism, Vol. 40, No.
4, Fall, 1998, pp. 555-70.

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© 2019 |Published by Scholars Middle East Publishers, Dubai, United Arab Emirates 74