Oroonoko; or, The Royal Slave 205cately concerned with issues of race. The tale is told
by an eyewitness narrator who both collaborates
with and criticizes the colonial enterprise within
which the titular hero finds himself trapped. To this
end, the novella replicates and contests early modern
notions of the racial “other.”
The narrative opens with a description of Suri-
nam (today Suriname), the English colony in the
West Indies where the story is set. Behn’s narrator
exhibits a fascination with the exotic objects of
Surinam, portraying the Americas as rich in land
and natural resources. The narrator’s experiences of
meeting the indigenous peoples are intermixed with
the main plot of the love story of Oroonoko and
his betrothed, Imoinda. The natives of Surinam are
depicted as innocent and free from sin, but also as
racial “others,” primitive and in tune with nature.
Similarly, when recounting what she has learned
from Oroonoko about his home in Coramantien,
the narrator portrays Africa as an exotic landscape
where the inhabitants engage in unfamiliar cultural
practices: They practice polygamy and seem to be
continually fighting in order to win slaves in battle.
In short, the novella appears to uphold English
Renaissance and Restoration stereotypes about the
black man—that he is strange, unfamiliar, inferior,
savage, brutal, exotic, sexual, heathen, an ethnic
“other.”
And yet, at times the boundaries between the
non-European and the European, between the
black man and the white man, become blurred. For
example, the narrator makes clear that what most
distinguishes Oroonoko from the other slaves on
the plantation is the European characteristics that
he is seen to possess. With his straight hair and
Roman nose, Oroonoko’s physical makeup accords
in many ways to a Eurocentric vision of beauty. He
is learned in European lore, having received the ele-
ments of a courtly education from a French tutor
at his grandfather’s court. He also adopts many of
the European aristocratic values that define courtly
life in Restoration England. Oroonoko is presented
by Behn as a hero of the European sort. In this way,
Oroonoko can be seen to show a resistance to facile
racial categories: Oroonoko is a heroic prince, but at
the same time he is a black slave.
At other moments, however, Behn’s narrative
can be seen to perpetuate the very categories that
it elsewhere seems to reject. For example, when the
narrator describes Oroonoko’s body and physical
beauty, she commodifies the African prince as an
exotic, luxurious, and appealing example of colonial
bounty. She pauses over each feature of his body
so that Oroonoko’s person comes to emblematize
the alluring potential of colonial exploration. What
Behn makes clear is that there are two competing
models of value mapped onto Oroonoko’s body:
one of commercial value, the other of political and
moral value.
Indeed, Oroonoko’s graceful kingship and natu-
ral nobility is continually emphasized to the reader.
This is particularly apparent when he tries to dis-
guise himself on entering the slave colony: In spite
of his being dressed in rags, he instantly commands
the respect of both his fellow slaves and his captors.
The African prince encompasses the naturalized
aristocratic values of authority such as moral virtue,
mercy, equity, and gentility—qualities that appear
to be absent in the colonial profiteers, who prize
exchange value over virtue, commerce over justice,
violence and barbarism over stability, and the rule
of ignorant and uncivilized people over the rule
of the educated and just. In this way, the narrative
appears to reject contemporary racial stereotypes
that at other moments it seems to replicate.
It must nevertheless be noted that while Oroo-
noko’s greatness seems to challenge contemporary
Western racist presumptions of superiority, it could
be argued that his radical uniqueness and superior-
ity could justify the continued use of slavery against
Africans less great than he. Oroonoko strikingly
constructs himself through English morality (choos-
ing, for instance, to practice monogamy), which
further sets him apart from the rest of his race.
Indeed, while the novella protests the individual
slavery of Oroonoko, it quite explicitly sanctions the
trafficking in slaves. This is evident in the way that
Oroonoko himself willingly trades slaves in Cora-
mantien after winning them in war. The ideological
contradictions concerning race and colonialism evi-
dent in Oroonoko suggest that for Behn the novel is
as much about the nature of kingship as it is about