Oroonoko; or, The Royal Slave 203Gender in Oroonoko; or, The Royal Slave
As a woman who exists in a patriarchal culture that
is hostile to female creativity, the narrator of Aphra
Behn’s Oroonoko is conscious of her apparent gen-
der transgression in putting pen to paper. Writing
was typically viewed in 17th-century England as a
masculine activity; thus, in foregrounding the female
voice, the novella can be seen to undermine the
accepted gender codes of the day. The narrator, an
English settler at the slave colony of Surinam, con-
tinually offers apologies for the comparative weak-
ness of her “female pen.” This is especially apparent
in the closing lines of the novel, where she asserts
that Oroonoko, the black prince who is captured and
sold by a slave trader, is “worthy of a better Fate, and
a more sublime Wit than mine to write his Praise.”
Such assumptions of modesty are designed to dis-
tance the narrator from any perception of a female
transgression. A further narrative technique that she
employs as a means of legitimating her work can
be found in the clear moral motivation the narrator
identifies for her act of writing: She wants to ensure
that Oroonoko’s “Glorious Name” survives “all ages.”
Although the narrator’s character does not seem
developed (she does not have a name, and the reader
learns little about her appearance, her family, or her
life in the colony), it is nevertheless a recognizably
female narrative authority that is prioritized by the
text. The novella is written in a mixture of first and
third person as the narrator relates events in Africa.
Claiming to record the adventures of an actual, as
opposed to an imaginary, hero and setting herself up
as an eyewitness to events in Surinam, she attempts
to overcome gender bias concerning women’s writ-
ing. The narrator repeatedly highlights female spec-
tatorship so that even at the scene of Oroonoko’s
death, she informs her reader that, though she was
absent, her mother and sister were present. In this
way, the narrator places an emphasis on women’s
powers of observation and invokes her own experi-
ence in order to grant the female voice authority.
The novella’s concern with gender is further
explored through the narrator’s relationship with
Oroonoko. This is a relationship that initially
appears to be based on traditional gender roles, in
that Oroonoko heroically saves the narrator’s life in
the text on several different occasions. And when-
ever his own life is in danger (two times), the narra-
tor poignantly explains her absence and inability to
save Oroonoko from physical harm in terms of her
female gender. For example, when Oroonoko is cap-
tured after having led an uprising of slaves into the
woods, the narrator asserts that she was not present
when he was punished by whipping because “We
were possess’d with extream Fear” and “This appre-
hension made all the Females of us fly down the
Rover, to be secur’d.” The only actions open to her in
the face of danger are flight and speech, indicative of
both her powerlessness as a woman and her struggle
with the constraints of the gender hierarchy.
However, Oroonoko’s exploration of the gender
dynamic between the narrator and Oroonoko is
much more complicated than this. While they do
occupy traditional roles, their relationship is not sim-
ply male-female, active-passive: Because she is white,
she also occupies a position superior to Oroonoko’s in
the social hierarchy. Indeed, Oroonoko is the story of
the African prince from the point of view of the mid-
dle-class narrator colonial mistress: The black male
protagonist can only speak through the white female
narrator. The narrator, then, can be seen to enjoy
a position of power in Surinam that does not cor-
respond to the gender conventions of early modern
England. This is reinforced by the way in which she
claims intimate knowledge of Oroonoko. The verb to
know is suggestive of sexual domination, and so the
white colonial mistress can be seen to assert a sexual
domination over Oroonoko and thereby to claim a
power traditionally assumed to be male. Similarly,
when Oroonoko is castrated during his death scene,
femininity becomes inscribed onto his body, and at
the same time, the female narrator who recounts the
dismemberment can be seen to usurp the position
typically defined as masculine. Gender inversions are
thus enacted throughout the text, with traditional
gender codes becoming confused and unhinged.
Ultimately, then, Oroonoko argues for the necessity of
abandoning the notion of women’s (and men’s) gen-
der identity as stable and easily understood.
Victoria E. PriceHerOism in Oroonoko; or, The Royal Slave
As a virtuous African prince who is unjustly impris-
oned and then executed by colonial profiteers, the