Oroonoko is now the most studied of Aphra Behn's novels, but it was not immediately successful in her own lifetime. It sold well, but the adaptation for the stage by
Thomas Southerne (see below) made the story as popular as it became. Soon after her death, the novel began to be read again, and from that time onward the factual claims made by the novel's narrator, and the factuality of the whole plot of the novel, have been accepted and questioned with greater and lesser credulity. Because Mrs. Behn was not available to correct or confirm any information, early biographers assumed the first-person narrator was Aphra Behn speaking for herself and incorporated the novel's claims into their accounts of her life. It is important, however, to recognise that
Oroonoko is a work of fiction and that its first-person narrator—the
protagonist—need be no more factual than
Jonathan Swift's first-person narrator, ostensibly Gulliver, in ''
Gulliver's Travels'',
Daniel Defoe's shipwrecked narrator in
Robinson Crusoe, or the first-person narrator of
A Tale of a Tub.
Fact and fiction in the narrator appearing in
John Dryden's
The Indian Queen in a headdress of feathers purportedly given by
Aphra Behn to
Thomas Killigrew. Scholars speculate that Behn had this headdress from her time in Surinam. Researchers today cannot say whether or not the narrator of
Oroonoko represents Aphra Behn and, if so, tells the truth. Scholars have argued for over a century about whether or not Behn even visited
Suriname and, if so, when. On one hand, the narrator reports that she "saw" sheep in the colony, when the settlement had to import meat from
Virginia, as sheep, in particular, could not survive there. Also, as Ernest Bernbaum argues in "Mrs. Behn's 'Oroonoko'", everything substantive in
Oroonoko could have come from accounts by
William Byam and George Warren that were circulating in London in the 1660s. However, as J. A. Ramsaran and Bernard Dhuiq catalogue, Behn provides a great deal of precise local colour and physical description of the colony. Topographical and cultural
verisimilitude were not a criterion for readers of novels and plays in Behn's day any more than in
Thomas Kyd's, and Behn generally did not bother with attempting to be accurate in her locations in other stories. Her plays have indistinct settings, and she rarely spends time with topographical description in her stories. Secondly, all the Europeans mentioned in
Oroonoko were really present in Surinam in the 1660s. Finally, the characterization of the real-life people in the novel does follow Behn's own politics; Behn was a lifelong and militant
royalist, and her fictions are consistent in portraying virtuous royalists and put-upon nobles who are opposed by petty and evil
republicans/
Parliamentarians. Byam and James Bannister, both actual royalists in the
Interregnum, are characterized as malicious, licentious, and sadistic, while George Marten, a
Cromwellian republican, is reasonable, open-minded, and fair. In the novel, Oroonoko plans to kill Byam and then himself, and this matches a plot that Allin had to kill Lord Willoughby and then commit suicide, for, he said, it was impossible to "possess my own life, when I cannot enjoy it with freedom and honour". He wounded Willoughby and was taken to prison, where he killed himself with an overdose. His body was taken to a
pillory, While Behn was in Surinam (1663), she would have seen a slave ship arrive with 130 "freight", 54 having been "lost" in transit. Although the African slaves were not treated differently from the indentured servants coming from Europe (and were, in fact, more highly valued), their cases were hopeless, and both slaves, indentured servants, and local inhabitants attacked the settlement. There was no single rebellion, however, that matched what is related in
Oroonoko. Further, the character of Oroonoko is physically different from the other slaves by being blacker skinned, having a Roman nose, and having straight hair. The lack of historical record of a mass rebellion, the unlikeliness of the physical description of the character (when Europeans at the time had no clear idea of
race or an inheritable set of "racial" characteristics), and the European courtliness of the character suggests that he is most likely invented wholesale. Additionally, the character's name is artificial. There are names in the
Yoruba language that are similar, but the African slaves of Surinam were from
Ghana. Alternatively, it could be argued that "Oroonoko" is a homophone for the
Orinoco River, along which the colony of Surinam was established and it is possible to see the character as an
allegorical figure for the mismanaged territory itself. Oroonoko, and the crisis of values of aristocracy, slavery, and worth he represents to the colonists, is emblematic of the new world and colonisation itself: a person like Oroonoko is symptomatic of a place like the Orinoco. The name "Oroonoko" is also associated with tobacco.
Slavery and Behn's attitudes According to biographer Janet Todd, Behn did not oppose slavery
per se. She accepted the idea that powerful groups would enslave the powerless, and she would have grown up with
Oriental tales of "The
Turk" taking
European slaves. Although it has never been proven that Behn was actually married, the most likely candidate for her husband is Johan Behn, who sailed on
The King David from the
German imperial free city of
Hamburg. This Johan Behn was a slaver whose residence in London later was probably a result of acting as a mercantile cover for Dutch trade with the colony of Suriname under a
false flag. One could argue that if Aphra Behn had been opposed to slavery as an institution, it is not very likely that she would have married a slave trader. At the same time, it is fairly clear that she was not happy in marriage, and
Oroonoko, written twenty years after the death of her husband, has, among its cast of characters, no one more evil than the slave ship captain who tricks and captures Oroonoko. It can also be argued that Behn's attitude towards slavery can be exemplified through her characterisations of Oroonoko and Imoinda, who are both given significantly positive attributes. Oroonoko was a strong, brave, heroic figure, while Imoinda was beautiful and pure in her ways. The final words of the novel offer a slight expiation of the narrator's guilt, but it is for the individual man she mourns and to him that she writes a tribute, and she lodges no protest over slavery itself. A natural king could not be enslaved, and, as in
The Young King, the play that Behn wrote in Surinam, no land could prosper without a king. Her fictional Surinam is a headless body. Without a true and natural leader (a king) the feeble and corrupt men of position abuse their power. What was missing was Lord Willoughby, or the narrator's father, a true lord. In the absence of such leadership a true king, Oroonoko, is misjudged, mistreated, and killed. One possible motive for the novel, or at least one political inspiration, was Behn's view that Surinam was a fruitful and potentially wealthy settlement that needed only a true noble to lead it. Like others sent to investigate the colony, she felt that Charles was not properly informed of the place's potential. When Charles gave up Surinam in 1667 with the
Treaty of Breda, Behn was dismayed. This dismay is enacted in the novel in a graphic fashion: if the colony was mismanaged and the slaves mistreated by having an insufficiently noble ruler there, then the democratic and mercantile Dutch would be far worse. Accordingly, the passionate misrule of Byam is replaced by the efficient and immoral management of the Dutch. Charles had a strategy for a united North American presence, however, and his gaining of
New Amsterdam for Surinam was part of that larger vision. Neither Charles II nor Aphra Behn could have known how correct Charles's bargain was, but
Oroonoko can be seen as a royalist's demurral. ==Historical significance==