Oroonoko

Aphra Behn, Oroonoko (1688)

I.  An American Mythology
A.  Captivity Narrative as a combination of two perspectives on contact
            1.  Captivity as Redemption
            2.  Captivity as Adventure
B.  Captivity Narrative as an American Myth
            1.  mythic because it invokes general universal patterns (typology)
            2.  American because it embodies those mythic pattern in the New World

Rowlandson's captivity narrative as a combination of two distinct "stories":  (1) the captivity as redemption (based on the conversion narrative, with a heavy dose of the jeremiad); and (2) the captivity as adventure.   We also considered the extent to which those stories were contradictory:  telling the captivity as a story of remption and reintegration into the community required Rowlandson to subordinate her personal initiative to God's well and even to abdicated the role of speaker (I speak not for myself, but for God), but telling the captivity as an adventure emphasizes her individual intitiative and personal experience outside the boundaries of the community physically and even spiritually or in terms of her identity--i.e., she begins to take on characteristics of the Indians, to "go native," to become a hybrid.  That is why she cannot really say what she sees in the mirror just before she is released.

Together, these two kinds of stories turn the captivity narrative into the first "American mythology" because they embody general "universal" myths (including the Bible) in specifically American settings with specifically American characters.  (Bradford did the same thing.)
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A similar combination of "stories" or purposes can be found in Aphra Behn's Oroonoko :  the "romance" and the travel narrative.  Some literary hisorians have argued that the result is the first American novel.  My lecture today will focus on what that term, an "American" novel, might mean culturally and historically.

 

II.  The World of Oroonoko
            A.  Correcting our focus
Historical correction:  In the 17th C., people would not have understood us spending so much of our time talking about New England.  The Puritans were often dismissed as a bunch of religous fanatics roaming around in the snow.  The real action was in the West Indies and, as Behn show us, in Surinam.

            B.  Surinam and Coramantien [map]
            C.  Slavery in the New World
            D.  Aphra Behn

III.  How That World Was Represented
            A.  Narratives of Exploration and Discovery (Columbus, Vespucci)
            B.  Chronicles (Diaz, Garcilaso de la Vega)
C. Typological narrative (sacred or "providential" histories) (Bradford, Aztec Cosmovision)
D.  "Romance" and myth (The Tempest, Homer's Odyssey, even the Bible in a certain sense that we have seen this quarter)
            E.  The Novel

These categories are seldom pure, and they often blend into one another when you apply them to a specific work, but they represent generally recognized genres.

Toward the middle 1600s, we begin seeing a new kind of writing, one that spans this range to combine romance and chronicle and begins to integrate the genres to some deliberate end:  Bradford's "History," Rowlandson's captivity narrative, Behn's Oroonoko.  (A counter example is Columbus's reports, as facts, about strange monsters living on remote islands:  we read that as a combination of fact and myth( the islands were there, the monsters not), but it was all reported as fact by him.  Also see Morton, who moves blithely from very concrete details about the Indians' lives to speaking of them as if they were characters in a romance-fantasy with nymphs, etc.  The two kinds of writing are not integrated, just juxtaposed.)

This combination of romance and realism characterizes the early stages of the novel, which emerges at the same time that writing about the New World was becoming popular (i.e., late 1500s through the 1600s).  I will be addressing the question:  is that a coincidence? (No)  And if not, what is the historical significance of this new kind of writing, which quickly becomes the novel?

 

IV.  Oroonoko:  from Explorer to Tourist
            A.  Narrator as eyewitness

To develop her ethos, the narrator claims the authority of the eyewitness, either that of her own observations or via reports of other eye-witnesses (principally Oroonoko himself or her mother and sister:  p. 7, 8a (nb her reference to the "curious" about his life).  She calls her work a "history" and insists that it is the Truth.

(Note that the figure of the eyewitness emerges more importantly through travel writing about the New World, because it was principally in that writing that the eyewitness began to challenge "authority" based on intellectual traditions, myth, and blind faith.)

            B.  The New World as Eden

From that perspective of eyewitness, the narrator reports what she sees in the new world in terms that are very familiar to us by now:  wonderful and strange animals, "marvels," etc. (8).

She represents the world as Edenic, and the Indians are compared to Adam and Eve living in a state of natural innocence:  8.   The point here is that she is reporting this as fact, just like the other travel writers before her.

NB:  Columbus thought that the earthly paradise lay at the mouth of the Orinoko River.  Defoe located Robinson Crusoe's island there, too.

            C.  God and Gold

 

But something is very strange about this account if read from the perspective of this quarter:  it is not motivated by the usual motives that drove earlier explorers:  conversion and gold.  In fact, Behn goes out of her way to invoke both of those motifs only to reject them as of any interest to her: 

Conversion:  Oroonoko thinks the story of the trinity is ridiculous, and he has earlier dismissed English notions of God as the source of the English Captain's hypocrisy.  (41)

Gold:  some maybe-Incas? Show up at one point with a bag of gold (51) and tell stories about Mountains of Gold in the interior.  This is a direct allusion to all of the stories about gold inSouth America, but now the pursuit of gold is just another possible "Adventure," no more or less important than the hunting and fishing, and anyway the Dutch now have the land.  In one paragraph she tells the gold story and reduces it to just another adventure.

This notion of adventure is what dominates this particular travel narrative, turning the explorer and conquistador, the missionary and the colonist, into a tourist, titilated and save in the aesthetic distance from the world in which she or he lives.

            D.  The New World as Museum and Stage-Set. [Indian Queen]

But notice how her description tends to emphasize the curiousity toward this scene as an aesthetic spectacle:  the butterflies and other things can be viewed now in England in the King's museum, and when she receives a native costume as a gift, she gives it to a theatrical group to use as a costume in a play:  9a.

My point here is that the New World appears in this novel as a spectacle, an object of curiousity. Her account is based on facts and actual things she saw, to be sure, but she portrays the scene more as a scene in a play, or a display in a museum,  rather than as a place to go live.  In short, there is a kind of aesthetic distance being set up from which the new world is viewed as a spectacle.

                        1.  Beauty and Use
                        2.  Sports
                        3.  Curiosity and an Experiment
4.  Diversions and Entertainment

These two poles, fantasy and fact, romance and realism, are constantly worked vs. one another in the novel, but they are connected consistently via a new kind of attitude:  curiousity.

Much of the novel is taken up with what she calls a long "digression" (51) from the story of Oroonoko (43-51), which is a tourist's account of the New world, a guidebook of the strange and "entertaining."  Some of the Reading and Discussion questions ask about this passage. 

The American Continent is priased for both Beauty and Use (43b), but for the narrator it is mainly a source of delight and adventure (43a), and Caesar/Oroonoko they are safe from harm and able to enjoy it (43-44). 

The scene on the river below the house St. John's Hill is explicitly presented as a blend of nature and art, a "prospect' that "fancy" creates:  44.

She then turns to their "Sports," which include "Tiger" hunting (jaguars and cougars), "surprizing" these wild cats for amusement.  Oroonoko vanquishes one just like he did his enemies while a commader of an army in Africa, and brings its heart to them to satisfy their curiousity and tell tales about it:  46a.

O. is "curious," too, and it almost gets him killed when he decides to catch an electric eel to see if it is really as bad as he has heard:  46-47.  He is saved by some Indians, which introduces this theme:  47-51.

The visit to the Indians is the earliest manifestation I know of what will come to be known as the "ugly American" we saw in Madama Butterfly last quarter:  utterly self-absorbed, "delighted" by the curious child-like natives he or here she encounters in the travels.  What is in Columbus a momentus encounter with a strange new world is here represented as a trip to Disneyland or to a zoo.  She does not speak the language, so they plan to settle for the "Diversion in Gazing" at the natives (48), who are "Ingnorant" and "Simple." The  nakedness of the Indians vs. the tourists' finery is presented as an observation about fashion, not a profound ideological shock (48).   NB:  the references to the Indians' Wonder, which is now presented as a sign of their "Ignorance and simplicity" (49).  That is the context for the familiar scene in which they take the tourists for Gods, though here that perception is the result of simple little trick with a magnifying glass.   And rather than suggesting how easy it would be to colonize them or conquer them or convert them to Christianity, now it is just a sign that they would be susceptible to any "unknown or extravagant Religoin" and that that the English might "impose any notions of Fictions upon 'em," rather than a form of government.

(NB the "Indian trader" a go between [48-49]).

 

V.  Oroonoko and the Spectacle of Nobility in the New World
            A.  Oroonoko as the Perfect Prince:  a Hybrid of Art and Nature

The portrayal of Oroonoko also combines a travelers's interest in the strange and exotic facts with an attempt to "aestheticize" them as a spectacle performed for the reader (who is assumed to be English or European, not a native or a colonist):  he is African with a Great Soul, but has European charms and manners.  He is compared to Art (a statue) but better, and his features are critiqued from an aesthetic perspective that does not fit simply into more modern forms of racist bigotry:  his blackness becomes an attribute of his beauty:  12-13-14.

  In short, Oroonoko is a hybrid himself, but a cultural hybrid that combines the refinement of Europe with the natural grace and nobility associated with the Noble Savage, and that combination is represented as the object of an aesthetic gaze--like a statue, or a character in a heroic play, or a figure in a romance--an aesthetic version of the "wonder" we have seen in travel narratives.

            B.  The "Japan'd" Savage [Indians][Picts]

In fact, both Oroonok and Imoinda are covered with tatoos to the point where they look like they are "Japan'd" (i.e., enamelled):  40a [show the colored pictures of a pict!]

                        (Cf. The Orientalism of the King's Harem)[harem]

We get a similar effect with the presentation Imoinda and all the scenes in the King's Otan, or harem.  See the illustration on p. 123.  This combination of Oriental motifs and African setting is possible because the main point is their exotic, titillating appeal to a curious audience.   Hence the erotic, softly pornographic account of Imoinda disrobing before the old King, his leading her into the bath, (17), all of the dancing, etc., including the "antick Postures the women Royal made" (18).  Imoinda resists the old man, but as soon as she and Oroonoko are together, he "ravish'd" her:  24.  The point here is that the whole scene in the harem is just that, a scene, highly romanticized and stylized, and played for its dramatic effect on the audience rather than any ethnographic interest in how African kings may have lived.  In short, we are reading here Oroonoko as romance.

            C.  Slavery as Captivity:  Caesar in America

The reason Oroonoko is there to amuse his English friends with his hunting and fishing, of course, is that he has been sold into slavery by the evil English ship captain.  The very idea of slavery is horrible, but Oroonoko is treated like a visiting dignitary by his owner or "Backearary", the Ibo word for master (NB the Ibo connection with Bucci Emechetta) (35) because that owner, Trefry, recognizes Oroonoko's  innate nobility immediately (35).  In recognition of that nobility, he names Oroonoko "Caesar."  Here is an obvious attempt to set up a parallel between the events in this new world and the mythic status of Caesar as a purely secular "type" of the great man.  As the narrator puts it, 36.  This is an overt attempt to present the story of Oroonoko as an "american myth," and herself as a mythographer.

            D.  Noble and Ignoble Readers:  the Tale of Clemene

Why?  What is the point of that effort?  We get a sense of it when Oroonoko and Trefry are talking about the beautiful young woman that Trefry has presumably bought six months earlier:  38.  The two men tell and hear this story as a conventional, idealized love poem of sorts, with wildly exaggerated descriptions of her modesty and beauty, etc.  At the end of this tale, the "Company," i.e., the group of slave-holders, overseers, etc. working for Trefry, laugh at him for treating a slave with such respect since he could not rape her, but "Caesar" is able to understand the nobility of his passion and nature.  I.e., the romanticized exaggeration, the conventions, the "romance" or mythic dimension of this story, is able to represent the nobility of the characters in this new world, against the degrading "realism" of the company who only laugh at the master for treating a slave this way instead of as merchandise or a object to be defiled.  Hence, two entirely different levels of perception are represented, realism vs. romance, and on the side of romance lies moral rectitude.

            E.  An Unredeemed Captive

 

There is no place for nobility in the New World that the narrator describes, however.  Trefry and the other slave-owners know that Oroonoko is potential trouble, and that is in fact why he is out fighting tigers and visiting Indians:  the narrator is supposed to be keeping an eye on him.  But it does not work.  Oroonoko is simply incapable of living as a slave and leads a revolt, which terrifies all of the colonists including the narrator.   But the revolt fails when most of the other slaves desert him, and he is caught and whipped--by the "other" slaves (57).  As you know, he is nursed back to some health, and then, plotting revenge against Deputy Gov. Baym and the others who whipped him, he decides to kill Imoinda rather than leave her to the shameful lusts of his captors:  60.  After killing her, however, he is so overcome with grief (and his wounds and hunger) that he cannot go on, and he stays with her body over a week.  A posse finally tracks him down by the smell of her rotting corpse:  62.  He definatly cuts off a piece of his own throat just like he learned that indian warriors do to prove their bravery (62, 50) tries to commit suicide but it stopped, returned to the plantation, tied to the whipping post, castrated, quartered, and  burned while smoking a pipe--a habit picked up by the English in the New world from the indians.  The body is then cut to pieces and sent to the other slave owners to be displayed to the slaves as an example.

This story is no more than a melodramatic morality play about the tragic demise of a Great Soul at the hands of evil.  The setting would obviously suggest that the evil might have specifici hisorical assoications wiht slavery in the New World, but slavery per se is clearly not the target since Trefry is clearly represented a a good man and Oroonoko himself claims that most of the negroes are suited only for slavery.  Given the way the new world is treated throughout the novel, it would be surprising if suddently at the end that setting were now valued for its historical specifricity or significance anyway.  I want to suggest that the historical significance of the book lies elsewhere, in the answer to a question that is begged by the narrator herself:  since her ethos depends on her being an "eyewitness" to events, where is she while all of this is going on?

VI.  An American Eye
            A.  Escape to the River

She does not see Caesar /Oroonoko get whipped because she has fled to the river with all the other women when they hear of his revolt, even though she says she probably could have prevented the whipping had she been there:  57a.  When she sees him, she "Protests her innocency of the fact" [of what, having been there when he was whipped? Of the colonists cruelty?], protesting a bit too much, suggesting guilt?58.  Then, when he is executed, she is gone again, this time because she had to leave the place because of illness and depression (64).
            B.  A New View

What I think is happening here is that the narrator deliberately absents herself from the scenes of cruelty as a way of maintaining, or creating, a distance beween her point of view and that of the colonists.  It is a way of maintaining that "Innocency of the Fact" that is so important to her (58)   Had she been there, could she have stopped it?  I doubt it; her mother and sister cannot stop the "rabble" from murdering and mutilating Oroonoko's corpse at the end.  That "innocence" is a product of the abscence from the scene, a distaince from the "fact' of life in the new world that we can associate with the aesthetic distance that characterizes her "curiousity" and that distances her from both the native perspective but also that of the European, English colonists.  That is the perspective associate with virtue and nobility in the novel.   As readers, we are left somewhere "in between" the "innocent" narrator and the guilty colonists, neither as simple and ignorant as the Indians, nor as corrupt and evil as the European colonists.  That position in between those extremes, between the Indians and the Europeans, is where Crevecoeur's American lives, and we will talk more about that next time.

[NB:  take up this point as an intro to the last lecture on Crevecoeur;  the guilt and alienation associated with the distance from the old world and the new. i.e., the tendency to treat the New World as an aesthetic spectacle staged for the amusement of Europe.  But the novel does not let her get away with that and suggests that the narrator might not be as "innocent" as she protests--i.e., that treating the New world simply as a source of amusement, of exploiting it aesthetically, is connected to the more brutal physical exploitation and conquest we have studied this quarter. 

i.e., the tendency to treat the New World as an aesthetic spectacle staged for the amusement of Europe.  But the novel does not let her get away with that and suggests that the narrator might not be as "innocent" as she protests--i.e., that treating the New world simply as a source of amusement, of exploiting it aesthetically, is connected to the more brutal physical exploitation and conquest we have studied this quarter. 

What I want to do is to carve out that distance from the Indians and the Europeans as the place of theAmerican, associated here with the fusion of Art andNature, capable of seeing through to the innate nobility of a Great Soul.  That will set up the first Crevecoeur lecture.  THEN, as an intro to the second Crevecoeur lecture, I can return to this point and say that that distance was perhaps not all that innocent, that the narrator was perhaps as guilty for not stopping them as she implies, and that guilt, too, is part of the American character as Crevecoeur describes slavery.]