Bloodshed and Brilliance: Examining Violence in Aphra Behn's Oroonoko By Margaux Shearer

A Senior Thesis Lehigh University English Department May 2023

Aphra Behn’s novel Oroonoko (1688) occupies a prominent place in literary history, and for fifty years scholars have devoted countless pages of commentary and analysis to unlock its rich and complex themes. Born in England in 1640, Behn was a trailblazing writer and poet who is now recognized as the first Englishwoman to sustain a livelihood solely through her writing. Her literary works engaged with issues of gender and sexuality, and she was renowned for her fearless, boundary-pushing style. Additionally, Behn was a spy for King Charles II during the Second Anglo-Dutch War and traveled to Suriname, a visit that may have inspired the accounts depicted in Oroonoko. Written in 1688, the novel recounts the tale of a regal African prince who undergoes enslavement and is transported to a plantation in Suriname. The narrative chronicles his love affair with Imoinda, an enslaved woman whom he had loved in Africa, and their failed attempt at escape, which resulted in cruel retribution. The story reaches a dramatic culmination when Oroonoko leads a revolt against the colonists, only to meet a tragically violent fate at the hands of his captors.

As is the case with many other works from earlier centuries, the novel is often interpreted through the lens of contemporary concerns—gender, race, and class being the foremost among them. Margaret Ferguson’s account of the relations between these widely discussed categories became very influential, and even critics, such as Derek Hughes, who counter her argument, still try to analyze the intricate racial discourse within the conventions of the novel’s time. YetOroonoko, a tale of an African prince reduced to slavery by colonial forces and his ultimate rebellion, explores themes that transcend the limitations of our modern analytical categories. Hiding in plain sight in Oroonoko is a world of sanguinary violence, one that critics have too often overlooked. The pages of Aphra Behn’s fiction are saturated with the blood of brutally

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violent actions, yet critics repeatedly ignore these vicious instances and instead focus on the blackness of Oroonoko and the marginalized position of the seventeenth-century woman author.

Violence is everywhere; it permeates the bloodshed of dismembering tribal rituals and soaks the arrowhead that ultimately led to Oroonoko’s promotion as general. Acts of brutality are committed by many hands. Both the contemptible English officials and the beloved Oroonoko perform similar atrocities. Colonizers harshly practice the dehumanizing institution of slavery where the oppression and mistreatment of slaves is rampant. Captured individuals are subject to physical abuse and forced to live and work under inhumane conditions and, in some cases, are mercilessly whipped until death. But Oroonoko also commits violent acts. Although the text aligns these acts with his quest for justice and freedom, it is notable that he nevertheless generates a horrific amount of bloodshed. In addition to slaying enemies in war prior to his enslavement, Oroonoko rids a tiger of its life, murders his wife, and also kills several Englishmen once he is under the control of their systemic oppression.

Yet it is interesting to notice how the novel justifies some of these moments and denounces others. It seems to assess these gruesome acts according to whom the aggressor is. Aphra Behn strategically heroizes Oroonoko, masking the violence he inflicts with illustrations of his nobility and triumphing honor; the blood shed by Oroonoko seems to glisten with gold. The violence performed by the corrupt English colonizers, on the other hand, is depicted as brutal and unwarranted. Why does the novel justify the royal slave’s violence by insisting that it establishes his heroic nobility and “real greatness of soul”? I argue below that Behn shapes the narrative in this way, painting the killing of such an honorable man in the end as atrociously unethical in order to establish for her own writing a place in literature’s history. She needs a spectacular death.

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The boundary between rational and irrational, savagery and civilization, noble and barbaric is persistently blurred within Aphra Behn’s novel. However, an examination of the novel’s moments of violence unravels the tactics Behn uses to justify some of it, ultimately exposing how Behn’s admiration for Oroonoko, the royal slave on whom her novel is centered, exists alongside another urge: to viciously dehumanize and eliminate Oroonoko in order to uplift her own writing. To foreground this claim, it is essential to analyze the many battles, hunts, and betrayals that are soaked in violence. A primary instance of brutality can be observed through the war endeavors, most prominently victories, of Oroonoko who seems more glorified with every kill he gains. This not only emphasizes how deeply embedded his character is within violence, but it additionally offers insight into how attributes of honor and nobility are paralleled with the bloodshed, justifying killings and captures by treating them as instances of heroic courage. Oroonoko’s actions compared alongside similar behaviors of the corrupt English officials prove that, in this novel, violent actions do not determine one’s moral standing: what matters is who Behn places behind the arrow.

It would seem that, when the novel transitions from the “freedom” of the African battlefield and into enslavement in the South American jungle, the subjugated Oroonoko would have no opportunity to commit acts of violence. But the novel does depict Oroonoko killing a tiger that has long tormented the neighboring village. Despite the numerous attempts to assassinate the animal, only the arrow shot by Oroonoko can end the tiger’s life; the mighty war hero is the only match for the mighty beast of the jungle. Concluding with the gruesome dismembering of Oroonoko, Behn exposes how her use of violence, especially the horrors committed against the admirable royal slave, solidifies her novel a place in literary history. Just

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as the English colonizers need the spectacular display of violence against Oroonoko to regain authoritative dominance, Behn needs it to bring renown to her own novel.

Revisiting the Violence in Oroonoko: Moving Beyond the Modern Lens The violence within Oroonoko has long been overshadowed by scholarly analysis

focused on gender and race. Despite the extreme amount of brutality embedded within the text, critics continue to approach the novel through a modern day lens that ignores the novel’s depiction of violence. Margaret Ferguson’s “Juggling the Categories of Race, Class and Gender: Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko,” for instance, analyzes the relations between gender, race, and class in the text. Ferguson’s analysis, which has become perhaps the most influential recent account of Behn’s text, does not reduce any of these categories to another but rather shows how the novel links them. Ferguson acknowledges that these three terms “had demonstrably different dominant meanings in Renaissance English than they do today” (Ferguson 4) and how they are historically conditional and relational, not foundational or essential; race, gender, and class change according to different moments in the text. Ultimately her essay concludes that Oroonoko “draws relations of sameness and difference among a black African slave, a white English woman, and a group of native Americans” (Ferguson 167), ultimately fabricating an “unstable triangular model.” The intertwined characteristics of these categories expose that Behn’s novel is more than just Old World versus New World; it is indeed far more complex in terms of race, gender, and social class relations, and as a result, it complicates the ethics of the “Conquest of America.”

Ferguson’s essay has had an enormous influence. Some critics contend that Ferguson’s focus on race distorts the text, but even these correctives remain focused on racial discourse within the novel. In “Blackness in Gobineau and Behn: Oroonoko and Racial Pseudo-Science,”

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for instance, Derek Hughes argues that, although prejudices and attempts at denying full humanity to marginalized groups existed during the writing of Oroonoko, a pseudo-science of racial differentiation and hierarchy (such as Ferguson’s analysis relies on) did not exist when Oroonoko was written. Yet Hughes, just like Margaret Ferguson, declares that race and class should be analyzed in tandem because “in periods of high racism they were deeply linked” (Hughes 206). Over time, the development of racial theory led to an increase in anxiety, primarily focused on “that the world would end, not as the consummation of a divine plan, but as a result of arbitrary, impersonal and material forces, such as global cooling, plague or geological catastrophe. To this fearful catalogue Gobinea adds racial interbreeding” (Hughes 207). The implications of this are that racial interbreeding is a natural occurrence yielding dangerous outcomes; race is a determining force in history. Nevertheless, this way of thinking cannot be applied to the novel because it was not circulating until after the publication of Oroonoko.

Hughes often insists that other critics have misunderstood the novel because they have imposed modern categories on it. He rebukes readings in which a contemporary lens “is simply imposed on the text by the modern critic. It is not, in fact, there at all” (Hughes 5). But he, too, tends to focus on race and gender. Hughes’s earlier article, “Race, Gender, and Scholarly Practice: Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko,” examines the ways in which Behn’s use of gender has influenced the reception of her work, and argues that limited interpretation of Oroonoko has been, in part, a result of Behn’s marginalization as a female writer. Ultimately, his article presses that a more critical and refined approach to the novel can help navigate the complex ways in which race, gender, and power intersect in colonial contexts. Despite his concerns about other critics, Hughes continues to offer an account (he thinks a “better” account) that engages with the categories of race and gender on which nearly all recent critics focus.

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Elliott Visconsi similarly focuses on the racial conventions of the time period. His “A Degenerate Race: English Barbarism in Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko and The Widow Ranter” examines English degeneracy and corruption. Visconsi argues that Behn uses the figure of the “barbarian” to critique English colonialism and its impact on the English themselves, as well as on the colonized peoples. Through her depiction of the English settlers in America, Behn exposes their greed, corruption, and lack of morality; both Oroonoko and The Widow Ranter “exploit English anxieties about the nation’s racial incapacity to live in a peaceful, civil society—in current parlance we might say Behn sees the English people as possessing a collective genetic predisposition towards violence, greed, and restless disobedience” (Visconsi 673). Visconsi suggests that Behn’s works contribute to a broader cultural critique of colonialism in the late seventeenth century, and that they demonstrate the potential for literature to engage with political and social issues.

Recent scholarly discourse about Aphra Behn’s work cannot stay away from discussions of race and gender. Vincent Carretta’s “Representations of Race, Status, and Slavery in Behn’s Oroonoko and Equiano’s Interesting Narrative” along with Laura Doyle’s “Entering Atlantic History: Oroonoko, Revolution and Race” adhere to evaluating the narrative of race and slavery woven throughout Behn’s texts. Sara Eaton’s “‘A Well-Born Race’: Aphra Behn’s The Widow Ranter; or, The History of Bacon in Virginia and the Place of Proximity” delves into the gendered power dynamics and social structures at play in colonial culture, while Joyce MacDonald’s “Gender, Family, and Race in Aphra Behn’s Abdelazer” highlights familial relationships and racial divides within the patriarchal norms of Behn’s work. A list of titles suggests the repetitive focus on ample recent critical work on Oroonoko: Thomas Bonnici’s “The Ambiguous Representation of Race and Class in Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko,” Cathy N. Davidson’s

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“Subjects and Citizens: Nation, Race, and Gender from Oroonoko to Anita Hill,” Yao-Hsi Shih’s “Fancy, Gender and Race in Aphra Behn’s The Dumb Virgin and The Unfortunate Bride.”

So much discourse about Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko has focused on the text’s portrayal of race and gender that critics have overlooked the implications of the substantial amount of violence throughout the novel. Amidst bloody war victories, murderous animal hunts, and dismembering tribal rituals, bloodshed continues to stain the trail of Oroonoko’s character. However, it is interesting to notice how the narrator justifies and glorifies Oroonoko’s acts of brutality (and only his violence), ultimately perpetuating a narrative that valorizes violence in the name of the royal slave’s virtue. The brutality of Oroonoko’s character, in effect, is obscured by the honor with which the narrator covers him. Indeed, the narrator seems to use this violence to establish his integrity.

Violence as Virtue: The Glorification of Oroonoko’s Brutality The beginning of the narrative outlines Oroonoko’s character as a gallant war hero whose

violent aggression amplifies his glorification, ultimately making his propensity for brutality a defining aspect for him. Violence permeates the text; even his assumption of the war general position was secured by violence: “He [Oroonoko] had scarce arrived at his seventeenth year, when, fighting by his side, the general was killed with an arrow in his eye, which the Prince Oroonoko ... very narrowly avoided; nor had he, if the general, who saw the arrow shot and perceiving it aimed at the prince, had not bowed his head between, on purpose to receive it in his own body, rather than it should touch that of the prince, and so saved him” (Behn 14). After he assumed the position of general, the narrator recounts that “he learned so much humanity, or, to give his accomplishments a juster name, where it was he got that real greatness of soul, those

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refined notions of true honour, that absolute generosity, and that softness that was capable of the highest passions of love and gallantry, whose objects were almost continually fighting men, or those mangled or dead, who heard no sounds but those of war and groans” (Behn 14). Oroonoko is continuously showered with honorable attributes that obscure his violent acts; his “real greatness of soul” and “so much humanity” are linked to his acts of “continually fighting men.” Alongside an extraordinary amount of glory granted to his character is an immense quantity of suffering he causes, a dynamic that follows Oroonoko throughout the text.

Illustrating a battle scene, for instance, the narrator depicts Oroonoko as “He flew into the thickest of those that were pursuing his men, and being animated with despair, he fought as if he came on purpose to die, and did such things that will not be believed that human strength could perform, and such as soon inspired all the rest with new courage and new order” (Behn 35). Oroonoko possesses a superhuman strength, but instead of engendering fear within the narrator, she construes this violent strength as resembling “mighty actions” (Behn 14) and assures readers that this violent man has “nothing of barbarity in his nature” (Behn 15). Jamoan, the opposing force’s military leader, was propelling his army forward when “Oroonoko having the good fortune to single out Jamoan, he took him prisoner with his own hand, having wounded him almost to death” (Behn 35). In addition to imprisoning their leader, the entirety of Jamoan’s army “all fled or were left dead upon the place” (Behn 35). It is important to note that, despite Oroonoko’s brutal slaughtering of his enemies, “Jamoan afterwards became very dear to him [Oroonoko], being a man very gallant and of excellent graces and fine parts...so great an affection he took for Oroonoko; and by a thousand tales and adventures of love and gallantry, flattered his disease of melancholy and languishment, which I have often heard him say had certainly killed him” (Behn 35). It is the same “highest passions of love and gallantry” of

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Oroonoko that Jamoan possesses, and because of this, he has the capacity to look beyond the mass murder of his comrades and foster a devotion for the noble prince. Even though Oroonoko “took him prisoner with his own hand,” Jamoan was cured from “his disease of melancholy and languishment” by that same holy touch. Jamoan’s ability to treat Oroonoko’s violence as noble models what the narrator expects the reader to do. The continuous bloodshed surrounding Oroonoko causes consequent glorification of his honor and therefore justification of his actions: “Oroonoko was no sooner returned from this last conquest, and received at court with all the joy and magnificence that could be expressed to a young victor who was not only returned triumphant but beloved like a deity” (Behn 36).

The novel acclaims Oroonoko’s violence not only in his war victories. Even in lighter moments, away from the theater of war, the text celebrates his brutality. While in Surinam Oroonoko encountered and killed a tiger “which had long infested that part, and borne away abundance of sheep and oxen and other things that were for the support of those to whom they belonged” (Behn 53). Despite the fact that an “abundance of people assailed this beast, some affirming they had shot her with several bullets quite through the body at several times and some swearing they shot her through the very heart” (Behn 53), only Oroonoko is capable of killing the tiger. The narrator illustrates the scene with Oroonoko “going softly to one side of her, and hiding his person behind certain herbage that grew high and thick, he took so good aim that, as he intended, he shot her just into the eye; and the arrow was sent with so good a will and so sure a hand that it stuck in her brain and made her caper and become mad for a moment or two, but being seconded by another arrow, he fell dead upon the prey” (Behn 54). The highly esteemed character of Oroonoko is reflected in his arrow, which is shot “with so good a will and so sure a hand”; only a man as worthy as him would be able to justify the death of the revered beast of the

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jungle. Importantly, the novel ties Oroonoko to the surrounding environment which further supports the vindication of the tiger’s killing. Rather than contrasting with the surrounding herbage, Oroonoko was able to camouflage with the environment; instead of using a firearm, such as the ones that many swore to have “shot her through the very heart” with, Oroonoko uses a single arrow. He is the inherently appropriate opponent for the tiger and therefore only his violence can accomplish the killing. The narrator ensures that “nothing can receive a wound in the heart and live; but when the heart of this courageous animal was taken out, there were seven bullets of lead in it, and the wounds seamed up with great scars, and she lived with the bullets a great while, for it was long since they were shot” (Behn 54). Despite the previous wounds to the tiger’s heart, Oroonoko’s singular arrow was able to accomplish something that seven other bullets could not. The difference lies in the person behind the attempt, and only Oroonoko’s “noble and heroic courage” (Behn 32) could ensure the tiger’s death. It is said that after this occurrence, “This heart the conqueror brought up to us, and it was a very great curiosity which all the country came to see, and which gave Caesar occasion of many fine discourses, of accidents in war and strange escapes” (Behn 54-55). Not only did this violent act of Oroonoko’s receive glorification, but it also led to conversations of gruesome tales from “accidents in war,” ultimately perpetuating the association of extreme violence with his character.

The text’s discussion of slavery, a particularly violent form of dehumanization, also follows this pattern of justifying violence when Oroonoko engages in it but criticizes it when it is used against him. Even the violence of enslavement, that is, is acceptable when it is Oroonoko who does it. Once arrived at the English colony of Surinam, with every moment spent in slavery Oroonoko became “more impatient of liberty, and he was every day treating with Trefry for his and Clemene’s liberty; and offered either gold, or a vast quantity of slaves, which should be paid

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before they let him go...” (Behn 48). Because it is the freedom of Oroonoko being sought after, all that he offers in return for it is defendable in his eyes, even trading in a large number of slaves. Comparatively, in a motivational oration to his fellow enslaved men, Oroonoko declares “And why, said he, my dear friends and fellow-sufferers, should we be slaves to an unknown people? Have they vanquished us nobly in fight? Have they won us in honourable battle? And are we by the chance of war become their slaves? This would not anger a noble heart, this would not animate a soldier’s soul. 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 runagades that have abandoned their own countries for raping, murders, theft and villainies” (Behn 62). Oroonoko preaches against the degrading and inhumane treatment they endure as slaves, yet his proposition to trade his freedom for the gift of others as slaves is explained with perfect reason. Several times throughout the novel it is said of Oroonoko and his homeland that “unless they take slaves in war, they have no other attendants” (Behn 12), therefore suggesting that capturing slaves can only be justified through “honourable battle” (Behn 62). Does losing a battle justify a life of dehumanization? The narrator highlights Oroonoko’s morals as being so noble and glorified that he is able to dictate to whom such an atrocious institution like slavery is acceptable; his honorable attributes camouflage his application of slavery, the same slavery that the owners in Surinam are reprimanded for, calling it “the sport of women, fools, and cowards” that belongs to those who “abandoned their own countries for raping, murders, theft and villainies.” Oroonoko’s rationale suggests that being sold like animals for the entertainment and benefit of others is beneath the dignity of a noble and courageous warrior, but his honor and good morals make his giving of slaves acceptable.

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The narrator is even willing to justify the particularly grotesque violence that Oroonoko imposes on his own wife. Unable to escape yet refusing to remain enslaved or to permit his children to be enslaved, Oroonoko concluded that he must take his wife’s life. He then planned “not only to kill Byam, but all those he thought had enraged him, pleasing his great heart with the fancied slaughter he should make over the whole face of the plantation” (Behn 71). The diction used by the narrator depicts these malicious actions by Oroonoko in a less violent light: the “slaughter” that Oroonoko wishes to undertake is covered up by the motives of his “great heart.” Additionally, when he shares the plan with his wife,

He found the heroic wife faster pleading for death than he was to propose it when she found his fixed resolution, and, on her knees, besought him not to leave her a prey to his enemies. He (grieved to death) yet pleased at her noble resolution, took her up, and embracing her with all the passion and languishment of a dying lover, drew his knife to kill this treasure of his soul, this pleasure of his eyes. While tears trickled down his cheeks, hers were smiling with joy she should die by so noble a hand and be sent in her own country (for that is their notion of the next world) by him she so tenderly loved and so truly adored in this; for wives have a respect for their husbands equal to what any other people pay a deity. (Behn 71)

The narrator justifies Oroonoko’s violent plan by showing that Imoinda is overjoyed with carrying it out; not only does she agree, but she is on her knees imploring him to complete the action. Because she concurs with Oroonoko, the man who is continuously illustrated in an honorable and glorified light, her verdict is described as a “noble resolution.” It is truly a gift for her to “die by so noble a hand,” and this killing glorifies Oroonoko further by depicting him as the savior who frees Imoinda from slavery and sends her to the “next world.” As if this act does

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not highlight Oroonoko’s nobility enough, the narrator includes that for their culture it is customary for the wives to worship their husband as one would a deity, which likens Oroonoko to a god: he can identify and act on the best outcomes that are not as apparent to humans.

As was the case with the novel’s earlier descriptions of Oroonoko’s violence, in this passage the narrator continues to obscure the bloody actions with words of beauty, nobility, and reason. The contrasting diction between the violent “fatal stroke, first cutting her throat, and then severing her yet smiling face” (Behn 72) is paralleled against the beauty of “the eternal leave-taking of two such lovers, so greatly born, so sensible, so beautiful, so young and so fond” (Behn 72). Rather than illustrating the immense amount of blood resulting from such violence, the narrator emphasizes how “he laid the body decently on leaves and flowers, of which he made a bed, and concealed it under the same coverlid of Nature, only her face he left yet bare to look on” (Behn 72). The avoidance of staining Oroonoko’s hands with bloodshed is astounding as the narrator recounts earlier that “Nature is the most harmless, inoffensive and virtuous mistress. It is she alone, if she were permitted, that better instructs the world than all the inventions of man” (Behn 11). The bed of nature in which Oroonoko places his wife’s dead body purifies the stains of his crime with its inherently “harmless, inoffensive and virtuous” touch.

The Lion in Chains: A Critique of Violence against Oroonoko The violence Oroonoko commits is repeatedly masked by the narrator emphasizing his

attributes of honor and nobility. However the violence against the “royal slave” is depicted critically. The novel never justifies this violence, depicting it as unacceptable and its source being found in corruption or barbarity. The majority of brutality committed against Oroonoko

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takes place after his capture and relocation to the English colony of Surinam where the narrator unequivocally condemns and criticizes the brutality.

An early demonstration of violence perpetrated against Oroonoko occurs during his initial capture aboard a slave ship visiting his home in West Africa. Before enslaving Oroonoko, the Captain lured him onto the ship with bountiful drinks and distractions “so that the captain, who had well laid his design before, gave the word and seized on all his guests, they clapping great irons suddenly on the prince when he was leaped down in the hold to view that part of the vessel, and locking him fast down, secured him” (Behn 37). Prior to this, the narrator describes that Oroonoko “was very merry, and in great admiration of the ship, for he had never been in one before, so that he was curious of beholding every place where he decently might descend” (Behn 37). The innocence of Oroonoko is harshly contrasted with the sudden force of iron chains; a curious sharing of knowledge and exploration is quickly turned into deception and imprisonment. Oroonoko is ultimately “betrayed to slavery” (Behn 37) and the same deceiving “treachery was used to all the rest” (Behn 37). In addition to the actions used against Oroonoko and his men being condemned, the atmosphere in which it happens is even criticized: “they set all hands to work to hoist sail; and with as treacherous and fair a wind they made from the shore with this innocent and glorious prize, who thought of nothing less than such an entertainment” (Behn 37). A clear contrast is made between the innocence and glory of Oroonoko and the immoral captors. Even the wind which carries the ship away is “treacherous,” reflecting the manner in which Oroonoko and his men were seized. The narrator mentions that “Some have commended this act as brave in the captain; but I will spare my sense of it, and leave it to my reader to judge as he pleases” (Behn 38). Rather than assert a direct opinion on the situation, such as declaring Oroonoko to have “nothing of barbarity in his nature” (Behn 15), the narrator

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indirectly leads the reader to view the scene as immoral through her careful descriptions of the circumstances. The narrator denounces, if subtly, the violence perpetrated against the royal slave. The narrator’s calculated diction repeatedly criticizes the violence used against Oroonoko

as he attempts to free himself from the situation. The text recounts that “It may be easily guessed in what manner the prince resented this indignity, who may be best resembled to a lion taken in a toil; so he raged, so he struggled for liberty, but all in vain” (Behn 38). Instead of using his name, his noble title of “prince” further highlights the indignity of the capture. His heroic struggle for freedom, compared to that of a royal “lion,” is nevertheless hopeless because “they had so wisely managed his fetters that he could not use a hand in his defence to quit himself of a life that would by no means endure slavery, nor could he move from the place where he was tied to any solid part of the ship against which he might have beat his head and have finished his disgrace that way... ” (Behn 38). The violent situation into which Oroonoko has been forced is portrayed as so atrocious that ending his life would be a better option to endure. The narrator paints Oroonoko’s suffering to elicit sympathy for him and to demonize his captors; he is incapable of defending himself against the atrocities of the abuse and has lost his ability to freely maneuver without the constraint of the imposing chains.

Another striking example of how the novel tends to condemn any violence except the violence that Oroonoko commits occurs when the narrator observes the Native war rituals. On a visit to a neighboring tribe, the narrator relates the calculated formality which explains their deranged appearances: when any war was waging, two men chosen out by some old captain, whose fighting was past and who could only teach the theory of war, “these two men were to stand in competition for the generalship, or Great War Captain, and being brought before the old judges, now past labour, they are asked, what they dare do to show they are worthy to lead an

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army? When he, who is first asked making no reply, cuts off his nose and throws it contemptibly, on the ground, and the other does something to himself that he thinks surpasses him, and perhaps deprives himself of lips and an eye” (Behn 59). After explaining the torturous ritual, the narrator recounts that some men were missing “their noses, some their lips, some both noses and lips, some their ears, and others cut through each cheek, with long slashes, through which their teeth appeared; they had several other formidable wounds and scars, or rather dismemberings” (Behn 59). In addition to describing the markings as a horrible sight, the narrator concludes that “so frightful a vision it was to see them no fancy can create; no such dreams can represent so dreadful a spectacle. For my part I took them for hobgoblins, or fiends, rather than men” (Behn 59). The Native’s violent war custom deems them as horrific monsters, ones that cannot even be imagined in the worldly realm. Although “it is by a passive valour they show and prove their activity” (Behn 59), this sort of courage was “too brutal to be applauded by our black hero” (Behn 59). The valor of the Native war rituals does not have any impact on their actions; their brutality is emphasized and they are portrayed as men driven by brutal and irrational rituals. Yet when Oroonoko performs almost the same things, the text seems to excuse him. Later in the narrative Oroonoko “cut a piece of flesh from his own throat...he ripped up his own belly, and took his bowels and pulled them out with what strength he could” (Behn 74). The actions of the enslaved prince mirror the same bloody dismemberments performed by the Natives, yet the narrator evaluates the scenes differently depending on who the violence originates from.

The narrator also castigates the violent atrocities performed by the English colonizers under slavery—even though she protected Oroonoko from similar charges. She repeatedly mentions how the institution strips the captured men and women of their humanity. While describing the dehumanization tactics experienced, Oroonoko “made a harangue to them of the

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miseries and ignominies of slavery; counting up all their toils and sufferings under such loads, burdens and drudgeries as were fitter for beasts than men; senseless brutes, than human souls” (Behn 61). The violence perpetrated against the enslaved peoples proved that “there was no end to be of their misfortunes. They suffered not like men who might find a glory and fortitude in oppression, but like dogs that loved the whip and bell, and fawned the more they were beaten” (Behn 61). So much brutality was inflicted upon them that “they had lost the divine quality of men and were become insensible asses, fit only to bear. Nay worse, an ass, or dog, or horse having done his duty, could lie down in retreat, and rise to work again, and while he did his duty, endured no stripes; but men, villainous, senseless men such as they, toiled on all the tedious week” (Behn 61). The violence of slavery is not only debilitating to those shackled within the institution, but it strips them of their autonomy and humanity. Even work animals endured much less brutality in comparison because for Oroonoko and fellow slaves, “whether they worked or not, whether they were faulty or meriting, they promiscuously, the innocent with the guilty, suffered the infamous whip, the sordid tripes, from their fellow-slaves till their blood trickled from all parts of their body, blood whose every drop ought to be revenged with a life of some of those tyrants that impose it” (Behn 62). Repeatedly the narrator’s language emphasizes the violence of enslavement: miseries, ignominies, sufferings, drudgeries, senseless brutes, oppression, and villainous. It is nearly impossible to leave the passage with anything but feelings of condemnation and distaste for the cruelties imposed by the colonist’s violence.

The End of Oroonoko and the Origins of Behn’s Fame Arguably the most violent occurrence in the novel—or at least the one that the novel

depicts as the most unacceptably violent—transpires in the end with the vivid description of the

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colonist’s dismemberment of Oroonoko, an image that sticks in readers’ minds following the closing of the novel. In the final moments of the text, Oroonoko is bound to a stake and tortured by his former friends and allies of the council. His captors proceed to sever his limbs and tongue, gouge out his eyes, and burn him alive, all while—the narrator assures us—he maintains his dignity and composure. This torturous behavior presented by Banister and other colonizers resembles the “spectacular” punishments described in Michael Foucault’s book Discipline and Punish. In an attempt to reevaluate the penal institutions of the West, Foucault argues that “torture is a technique; it is not an extreme expression of lawless rage... it must produce a certain degree of pain” (Foucault 33). Brutal dismemberments, such as the one at the end of Behn’s novel, were not random but rather demonstrated the regulation of pain according to detailed rules: “Torture correlates the type of corporal effect, the quality, intensity, duration of pain, with the gravity of the crime, the person of the criminal, the rank of his victims. There is a legal code of pain” (Foucault 34). Ultimately, torture forms part of a ritual that is meant to “brand the victim with infamy” (Foucault 34). Similar to how many “stood by to see the execution” of Oroonoko (Behn 76), Foucault states that “from the point of view of the law that imposes it, public torture and execution must be spectacular, it must be seen by all almost as its triumph...it is the very ceremonial of justice being expressed in all its force” (Foucault 34).

Justice in the seventeenth century, Foucault shows, was the absolute privilege of the prosecution and “the magistrate constituted, in solitary omnipotence, a truth by which he invested the accused” (Foucault 35). The perpetrators of Oroonoko’s violence perform the torture according to “an arithmetic modulated by casuistry, whose function is to define how a legal proof is to be constructed” (Foucault 37); the brutality used against Oroonoko is warranted on a foundation of clever yet unsound reasoning, a carefully measured logic modeled by the

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magistrate to control moments of spectacular punishment. Torture “occupied a strict place in a complex penal mechanism” (Foucault 39) and therefore the dismemberment of Oroonoko was viewed as a “strict judicial game” (Foucault 40) that established the absolute privilege of the magistrate. Behn’s narrative notes that following the dismemberment, “they cut Caesar in quarters, and sent them to several of the chief plantations” (Behn 76) which directly mirrors how “the infinitesimal destruction of the body is linked here with the spectacle: each piece is placed on display” (Foucault 51).

The ending of the novel resembles the spectacular violence carried out as a coded form of torture in the seventeenth century. The narrator presents the situation with the governor “having communicated his design to one Banister, a wild Irishman and one of the council, a fellow of absolute barbarity, and fit to execute any villainy but was rich. He came up to Parham, and forcibly took Caesar, and had him carried to the same post where he was whipped, and causing him to be tied to it, and a great fire made before him, he told him, he should die like a dog as he was” (Behn 75-76). The diction used to describe Banister connects his character with unwarranted malice. Only a man wild and barbarous would be capable of dehumanizing Oroonoko, who had been idolized by his followers, who cried “Live, O King! Long live, O King! And kissing his feet, paid him even divine homage” (Behn 44). The narrator portrays the killing of the beloved prince turned slave as the most violent instance in this blood soaked novel: “the executioner came and first cut off his members and threw them into the fire. After that, with an ill-favoured knife, they cut his ears and his nose, and burned them; he still smoked on, as if nothing had touched him. Then they hacked off one of his arms, and still he bore up, and held his pipe. But at the cutting off the other arm, his head sunk, and his pipe dropped, and he gave up the ghost without a groan or reproach” (Behn 76).

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However, despite the calculated measurements of spectacular violence described by Foucault, the punishment inflicted on Oroonoko does not lead him to be “branded with infamy.” The text ensures that Oroonoko retains his honor and, instead “brands” his torturers “with infamy.” During this atrocious display of violence, Oroonoko continues to act with the honor and nobility that he displays throughout the entire text. Banister is depicted murdering a glorious man, yet rather than rebel Oronooko “assured them they need not tie him, for he would stand fixed like a rock, and endure death so as should encourage them to die” (Behn 76). Oroonoko does not beg for his life or revolt in anger; honor and courage dictate his actions up until his last moments. As if to emphasize his composure in the face of torture and death, “He had learned to take tobacco, and when he was assured he should die, he desired they would give him a pipe in his mouth, ready lighted which they did” (Behn 76). Despite incomprehensible and excessive violence inflicted on Oroonoko, he endures all without ever emotionally breaking. He preserves his intrinsic characteristics of nobility and honor as his limbs are sliced off with an “ill-favoured knife” and thrown in a fire before him. In addition to continuing to smoke the tobacco pipe, Oroonoko refrains from “groan or reproach” which underscores the idea that his stoicism and strength overpowers and outlasts his physical being. The diction is saturated with violence: hacked off, cutting off, sunk, burned, ghost. But these bloody terms can be compared with Oroonoko’s composure: “he still smoked on, as if nothing had touched him,” “he bore up, and held his pipe.” Importantly, Banister was not able to rob his victim of his personhood, as Foucault’s account would suggest, but rather it was Oroonoko who “gave up the ghost.” Although the royal slave is literally being taken apart piece by piece, the narrator never permits Oroonoko to lose power over his own character and sense of self. He is still in control. The passage ultimately emphasizes his everlasting “noble and heroic courage” (Behn 32).

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The immoral and inexcusably gruesome violence perpetrated against Oroonoko makes us wonder about the narrator’s motives for creating this end for a character who has displayed such stoicism and nobility throughout the text. Perhaps she did so because her novel depicted only “the truth.” But no matter how many times the narrator claims that “I was myself an eye-witness to a great part of what you will find here set down” (Behn 9) and “what I could not be witness of I received from the mouth of the chief actor in this history” (Behn 9), the tale of Oroonoko is fiction. Everything from the minute details of tribal headdresses, war stories, and the hunting of tigers is deduced not from concrete history, but rather from Aphra Behn’s creative pen. It is the narrator’s decision to have Oroonoko, the character whom the narrator repeatedly glorifies, torn to pieces in the end. Joanna Lipking’s “Confusing Matters: searching the Backgrounds ofOroonoko” analyzes the fictitious foundation of the novel, scrutinizing various elements including its depiction of African culture, the portrayal of European characters, and treatment of slavery and violence. The hybrid nature of the text is formed by the collaboration of “the stylized ‘romantic’ Africa” and “the more ‘realistic’ colony of Surinam” (Lipking 259), both of which were formed by the fact that “Behn used sources, that she followed received opinion, and that she was present in Surinam, that she was closely attentive to actual circumstances and falsified them boldly” (Lipking 261). Throughout her work “reality seems tinged with the idealizings of romance” (Lipking 264), and specifically regarding Behn’s tragic ending, “History records slaves who met gruesome deaths defiantly and nobly, but none who offered to stand untied unless they were whipped” (Lipking 278). Lipking suggests that, as an “experienced professional writer, Behn could have known that she was tapping a vein of exciting, sometimes alarming reportage new to a sustained story format” (Lipking 271). Lipking finds no evidence of a “real” prince named Oroonoko to whose story Behn’s narrative needs to remain “faithful.” Recognizing the

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fictitious foundation of Oroonoko and other pieces by Behn forces us to ask why she decided to conclude her narratives with such a horrific display of bloodshed.

It is essential to recognize the narrator’s place in the text in relation to such violence. Much scholarship has examined the ways in which the narrator’s identification is fluid throughout the entirety of the novel. As we have seen, Margaret Ferguson capitalizes on this aspect in her essay “Juggling the Categories of Race, Class and Gender: Aphra Behn’sOroonoko” by stating that the interplay of race and class is evinced through Behn’s privileged social standing as a white colonizing Englishwoman. By shifting the use of the first-person pronouns “I” and “we” throughout Oroonoko, the narrator fluidly transitions between aligning herself with different groups. At times “we” is applied to reference the marginalized role of women in society, while at other junctures the narrator’s “we” joins her to the dominant English colonizers who staunchly oppose the “other.” Ferguson states that “we can conveniently trace some of the contradictions in the narrator’s social identity, with its multiple ‘subject positions’ created in part by competing allegiances according to race, class, and gender” (Ferguson 165). However, Ferguson fails to mention all the identities the narrator aligns herself with. The cruel and violent ending that Behn scripted for her beloved Oroonoko aligns the narrator with the people whom the text demeans the most: the rabble. Behn the writer needs Oroonoko’s violent end just as much as the rabble does.

Behn’s interest in the literary effects of ending narratives with spectacular violence is evident in other works she wrote at the same time as Oroonoko. Similar to this work of prose fiction, Aphra Behn’s final play The Widow Ranter performed posthumously in 1689 ends with a spectacular display of violence. This Restoration comedy set in colonial Virginia during the English Civil War reimagines the story of Bacon’s Rebellion, and when focusing on the

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characters of Nathaniel Bacon and the Native American Queen Semernia, this play proves to be closely linked to Oroonoko. The Widow Ranter has close character ties with those observed in Aphra Behn’s novel concerning the royal slave. The antics of the Council members are repeatedly depicted as inhumane and unprofessional, whereas Nathaniel Bacon stands out as a herculean hero amongst an immoral society. Even though the colonizers of Virginia recognize that Bacon is a courageous hero and “the people worship him” (I.ii 71), they continue to devise a plan to lure Bacon in with a promise of commission for his valor and have “men in Ambush ... seize him, and hang him upon the next Tree” (I.ii 98-100). Following the classic heroic narrative, Bacon “fought like a fury” (II.iiii 25-27) against the ambush and his army of followers returned as a riot against the Council. Although seen as an outsider who rebels against the law, Bacon exemplifies the same heroism as Oroonoko by exclaiming “Shou’d I stand by and see my Country ruin’d, my King dishonour’d, and his Subjects Murder’d, hear the sad Crys of widows and of Orphans?” (II.iiii 89-91).

Despite the conflict between the Council and this play’s hero, the most prominent linkage to Oroonoko’s violent ending rests in Bacon’s unattainable love for the Native American Queen. In the final act of the play, Bacon and his followers attack a neighboring Native American village belonging to Queen Semernia, and after getting caught in the crossfire of battle, Bacon’s love interest suffers a bloody death that leaves the play on a tragic note. While holding his beloved’s corpse, Bacon exclaims “Thou almost makes me wish to Live again, If I cou’d live now Fair Semernia’s Dead, — But oh — the baneful Drug is just and kind And hastens me away... farewel — a long farewel” (Behn V.iv 35-38, 42). The scene resembles Imoinda’s death, when Oroonoko “found she was dead and past all retrieve, never more to bless him with her eyes and soft language, his grief swelled up to rage; he tore, he raved, he roared like some monster of the

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wood” (Behn 72). Both men are indubitably overcome with sorrow by the violent ending of their loves, and the mirroring gruesome deaths appear as a repeated ending used by Aphra Behn. Both The Widow Ranter and Oroonoko glorify the honor and nobility of Nathaniel Bacon and Oroonoko, and both men end with tragic deaths that, in Oroonoko, the narrator cannot or does not prevent. After Oroonoko’s dismemberment, the narrator exemplifies that “so rude and wild were the rabble, and so inhuman were the justices who stood by to see the execution” (Behn 76), yet she was standing right there alongside them.

Behn does not just end her novel with this extreme violence because “it happened”: she needs the violent execution of such a beloved hero to bring fame to her work. Although at times the narrator’s identity slips according to desired groups, the ending violence of Oroonoko proves that the narrator is actually strongly associated with the people she likes least. Just as the rabble feeds off of the horrific bloodshed, so does the fame of Aphra Behn’s pen. All of the grandeur showered over the royal slave’s character builds him up as a deity; glorified by the masses and abhorred by their leaders, a character as great as Oroonoko had to be murdered by an equitably and adversely atrocious death. It is because of this intensified immoral act that Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko has been crowned as a prolific piece of Restoration era literature and continues to be a popular text of modern day scholarly discourse.

Aphra Behn’s literary masterpiece chronicles the tragic and captivating tale of the noble Oroonoko who becomes ensnared in the cruel and inhumane clutches of the transatlantic slave trade. Although the novel is embedded with a copious amount of themes surrounding race, gender, and class, Behn creates a vivid and compelling portrayal of a world rife with violence. Although brutality touches nearly every character in the novel, the narrator protects her beloved noble African prince from being criticized for the violence that he commits. The honor with

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which Oroonoko is laced with obscures the bloodshed he inflicts: his war killings are glorified as if he is a deity, only his arrow has the power to take a tiger's life, the murder of his wife is purified with his touch, and the horrific institution of slavery is justified through his words. With every piece of glorification directed at Oroonoko is an equal condemnation of the violence directed against him. The narrator’s unflinching depiction of the oppressive and dehumanizing treatment of slaves by their colonial masters is poignant throughout, and the ending dismemberment of Oroonoko leaves a suffocatingly abhorrent effect on the reader. The lingering presence of bloodshed throughout the text serves as a stark reminder of the harsh realities of spectacular violence prioritized during the seventeenth century as described by Michael Foucault, and the popularity of such brutality proves how this type of ending brings a text of the time immense popularity. Aphra Behn’s creative pen constructed a novel promised with truth and driven by a hunger for success. Through calculated storytelling, the narrator successfully rid herself of the blame for Oroonoko’s bloody end and instead scapegoated the violence onto the rabble whom she consistently condemned. The prolific tale continues to misdirect modern scholarly discussion away from the sanguinary world in which Behn’s writing dwelled. Without the incessant violence, Oroonoko would not be as glorified and therefore Behn’s writing would not be placed on the literary pedestal it currently sits on.

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Works Consulted

Behn, Aphra. Oroonoko. 1688. Behn, Aphra. The Lucky Chance. 1686. Behn, Aphra. The Rover. 1677. Behn, Aphra. The Widdow Ranter. 1689. Bonnici, Thomas. “The Ambiguous Representation of Race and Class in Aphra Behn’s

Oroonoko (1688).” Estudos Anglo-Americanos, vol. 27–28, 2003, pp. 169–85. Carretta, Vincent. “Representations of Race, Status, and Slavery in Behn’s Oroonoko and

Equiano’s Interesting Narrative.” Approaches to Teaching Behn’s Oroonoko, edited by Cynthia Richards and Mary Ann O’Donnell, Modern Language Association of America, 2014, pp. 167–73.

Davidson, Cathy N., and Michael Moon. “Subjects and Citizens: Nation, Race, and Gender from Oroonoko to Anita Hill.” American Literature: A Journal of Literary History, Criticism,

and Bibliography, vol. 65, no. 3, Sept. 1993, pp. 413–630. Doyle, Laura. “Entering Atlantic History: Oroonoko, Revolution and Race.” Approaches to

Teaching Behn’s Oroonoko, edited by Cynthia Richards and Mary Ann O’Donnell, Modern Language Association of America, 2014, pp. 78–84.

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27 Eaton, Sara. “‘A Well-Born Race’: Aphra Behn’s The Widow Ranter; or, The History of Bacon

in Virginia and the Place of Proximity.” Indography: Writing the “Indian” in Early Modern England, edited by Jonathan Gil Harris and Jyotsna Singh, Palgrave Macmillan (London), 2012, pp. 235–48.

Ferguson, Margaret. “Juggling the Categories of Race, Class, and Gender: Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko.” Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature, vol. 10, no. 2, 1991, pp. 261-277.

Frohock, Richard. "Violence and Awe: The Foundations of Government in Aphra Behn's New

World Settings." SEL: Studies in English Literature 1500-1900, vol. 36, no. 2, 1996, pp. 265-281.

Hughes, Derek. “Race, Gender, and Scholarly Practice: Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko.” The Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation, vol. 43, no. 3, 2002, pp. 183-200.

Hughes, Derek. "Blackness in Gobineau and Behn: Oroonoko and Racial Pseudo-Science." Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies, vol. 12, no. 1, 2012, pp. 99-119.

Hughes, Derek. "The Masked Woman Revealed; or, the prostitute and the playwright in Aphra Behn criticism." Women's Writing, vol. 7, no. 3, 2000, pp. 377-391.

Lipking, Joanna. “Confusing Matters: Searching the Backgrounds of Oroonoko.” Aphra Behn Studies, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2009.

28 Lipking, Joanna. “‘Others’, slaves, and colonists in Oroonoko.” The Cambridge Companion to

Aphra Behn, edited by Derek Hughes and Janet Todd, Cambridge University Press, 2006, pp. 63-76.

MacDonald, Joyce Green. “Gender, Family, and Race in Aphra Behn’s Abdelazer.” Aphra Behn (1640-1689): Identity, Alterity, Ambiguity, edited by Mary Ann O’Donnell et al., Éditions

L’Harmattan, 2000, pp. 67–73. Pearson, Jacqueline. “Gender and Narrative in the Fiction of Aphra Behn.” Studies in the

Literary Imagination, vol. 24, no. 1, 1991, pp. 33-48. Shih, Yao-Hsi J. “Fancy, Gender and Race in Aphra Behn’s The Dumb Virgin and The

Unfortunate Bride.” Ḥikma: Revista de Traducción, vol. 13, 2014, pp. 173–92.

Southerne, Thomas. Oroonoko. 1699. Visconsi, Elliott. “A Degenerate Race: English Barbarism in Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko and the

Widow Ranter.” ELH, vol. 69, no. 3, 2002, pp. 673–701, doi.org/10.1353/elh.2002.0029.