Summary: Oroonoko (or the Royal Slave) by Aphra Behn

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?)