Oroonoko (or The Royal Slave)- By Aphra Behn Published 1688
Summary: Oroonoko is the prince of
some African country, which is now Ghana.
His grandfather is the king. The
prince is a great war hero, and gets made General, after the first General
gives his life for Oroonoko. Then he
meets the old general’s daughter, who is the most gorgeous girl to have ever
lived (that’s an assumption based on the fact that every man who meets her in
this novel, falls in love with her).
HE’s also very attractive, and using that to his advantage he
successfully woos Imoinda. They get
married secretly, even though they should have asked the permission of his
grandfather, the king. This is where it
all goes wrong. The old man king, from
just hearing about Imoinda, falls in love with her. Well, not right away. First he sets up this whole secret spy
meeting, in which he sends her a gift (but pretends it’s from Oroonoko), and
watches from the shadows to see her reaction.
Long story short: the old king falls in love with his grandson’s girl,
and forces her to marry him. And since
he’s the king, she can’t say no.
When
the king hears that his new wife is already married, he instantly gets
jealous. But he graciously tells her that if
she relinquishes her marriage, he won’t kill her husband. Being selfless, Imoinda agrees. Disturbingly enough, this scene takes place
in a bathtub. To protect Oroonoko,
Imoinda pretends to be over him. And to
get back into the king’s good graces (because the king knows without being told
who her husband is), pretends that he is over her. So the king invites him to come over and hang
out in his harem. The two lovers see
each other and know that they still love each other, so with the help of an
“old wife” they plan a secret sleepover.
The king finds out and ships Imoinda off into slavery, which is worse
than death. But he tells Oroonoko that
he just had her killed. The prince, now
returned to battle (after being thrown out of court for the dancing incident,
and the not-so-secret sleepover), is so distraught when he hears about her
death he is catatonic. Then when his
troops are starting to loose, he gets the energy to win the battle. The way it’s described, it seems to be the greatest
comeback in all history.
So
everything is going great for the prince after he won the battle, until he
starts hanging out with the slave trader.
At first, this relationship seems to be great. Oroonoko and the slave trader have a great
time together; they drink expensive wines, and do some math (which is
apparently what the prince did for fun), and everything is great. In fact, they become so close the slave
trader invites Oroonoko to come party on his boat. So the prince gathers up 100 of his closest
friends and they go the slave trader’s boat.
They are on the boat for about ten minutes when the crew ties up
everyone with intentions to sell them as slaves. This is the precise reason I make it a policy
not to trust human traffickers.
The prince and his court all get
sold into slavery in an English colony.
Even after he changes out of his princely clothes, everyone who sees Oroonoko,
knows he is not just some ordinary slave.
So this earn him a lot of respect, and he is treated much better than
regular slaves. But when he arrives at
the plantation he discovers Imoinda is there (renamed Clemene), and that every
male in a fifty mile radius, is in love with her. Oroonoko has been renamed Caesar, because
white people like to name their own slaves.
And everyone tells Caesar they’ll let him go back home. But they don’t. And when Imoinda gets pregnant, he gets
impatient and organizes a slave revolt.
But they get caught, then tricked into thinking they won’t be punished,
and then punished. This is too much for
the prince who organizes his revenge. He
plans on being killed either during or after this and doesn’t want any of that
splashing back on his wife, so he decides it would be best to murder her. Which she willingly agrees to. So he kills her, which makes him much sadder
than he thought it would, and after about a week people find him next her dead
body. He is then chopped up into pieces at
the stake, while smoking a pipe.
And that's the jist of it. My recommendation? It's a good almost novel (by which I mean "the novel" as we know it didn't quite exist yet), but it is a bit dragging, and one of those reads you have to concentrate on. It's really short, but not really worth all the time. The author is a woman, which was rare for 1688, awesome, girl power. Cool side note: It is a political commentary on the current events in England in that time, the mistreatment of the king.
Big themes: Slavery (note that Behn wasn't opposed to slavery, just the slavery of the prince), the "other", there is a definite anti-Christian theme running through this book (almost everyone who wrongs him is Christian with the exception of the king), woman as property (Imoinda has no say, just goes along with everything the men want her to do, including being murdered. Boo girl power, wtf Apha?)
