While I'll be going into just how messed up and twisted the ending to this story is in another blog post (because, believe you me, it deserves it), I thought I might backtrack a bit and touch upon the curious matter that is how Oroonoko's (excuse me, 'Caesar's') appearance is presented to us, the audience. It's probably the one thing outside of the ending that I find really fascinating and unique about this story.
It''s hard for me to keep in mind Behn's audience when reading "Oroonoko". At the time, they knew little to nothing about even the bare concept of slavery, let alone how to feel about people who just so happened to carry a different skin tone from their own. I can only imagine how conflicted many of them probably were when reading this story in particular, especially with the way in which the protagonist himself is illustrated.
Make no mistake, Behn clearly wants her readers to look at this seemingly 'alien' and utopian world as something completely different from their own, yet she never seems to go so far deep that she turns them away. Oroonoko himself is described as having traces of European or 'Roman' descent, and in such a way that he ends up being elevated over the rest of his people as the sympathetic protagonist.
I can only imagine that Behn's readers might have clung to these few physical similarities that Oroonoko has to themselves, for the sole reason that those skin-deep features automatically make him easier to warm up to. Yes, it's a shallow way to judge a character, but it seems like appearances were a lot more important in judging a person then than they are now.
I found this really interesting as well. In one of my other classes, we are doing an in-depth study of North Africa, and more than once we have spoken about how people view them as Roman descent. This is because all of the Roman ruins left there from when the Roman conquered the area in the first century. However, with this image also comes the idea that they are not civilized; with the Roman society comes the idea that the people are not as civilized yet still utopian. It is hard to describe, and I believe that Behn does the best job she can to describe this culture so foreign to her original readers.
ReplyDeleteI agree with your analysis of the narrator's description of him, and I would throw his intentions to take only one wife in there as well. She wants Europeans to look at him and think "I like this guy," not "Ugh, a heathen." She gives him enough similarities to the audience for them to relate to him, which is essential to getting the point of the story across. I find it unlikely that he actually looked exactly as she described (though I suppose it is possible), instead it was a creative liberty she took when polishing the book.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Beth. Behn needed to give her readers something to recognize and identify with in Oroonoko for them to feel any empathy for him at all. It annoys me how ethnocentric the tone of the piece is and am trying to remember Maya Angelou's quote about doing better when you knew better but...
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