Kent-Drury
ENG 202

Aphra Behn was born around 1640, probably as Aphra Johnson, and died in 1689. Although she was the first woman who made her living by writing in England, it was not an easy life. Aphra Behn's early life is the subject of some controversy. She had Royalist tendencies, meaning that she (and probably her family) were among those who supported the monarchy, especially Charles II. She was Catholic and spoke and wrote French. Early in her life, she probably spent time in South American in Surinam; although Surinam is today called Dutch Guiana, at the time it was a British possession.

Later, it is thought that she married a Dutch merchant whose last name was Behn and that she served as a spy for Charles II while she was in the present-day Netherlands. Later, after she returned to England, she was imprisoned for debt. At the time, one stayed in debtors prison until one could pay the debt, but often could not pay the debt because in prison. Her earlier service to King Charles earned his intervention, and she was released.

Aphra Behn wrote poetry in the pastoral mode and also poetry of praise for various public figures, including the court. and, primarily for the theatre, publishing several plays and seeing them enacted on the stage until one of the theatres in London was closed, and opportunities to market plays were constrained. Dependent upon the income she earned from writing, Behn turned to writing prose. It was at this point, later in her life, that she wrote Oroonoko, a proto-novel about the betrayal of an African prince into slavery, his activities in Surinam, and his ultimate demise.

Though her biographers disagree on this point, the story told in Oroonoko is probably based on what could have been her experiences in this New World colony, where plantations were made successful through the use of slave labor.

Oroonoko is not a "typical" novel. It is important to remember that the novel had not yet been invented at this time, and that Aphra Behn was experimenting with the form. Consequently, it is a bit uneven. The first part of the novel, which takes place in Africa, is probably more closely related to the genre of romance, which takes up the activities of noble people at court, includes lofty diction, etc. The second part of the novel, which is much more detailed and includes careful descriptions of people, places, commodities, flora, and fauna, is more related to the travel writing genre, in which the traveler goes to a foreign place and writes about it for people back home. Travel writing was extremely popular reading from the 16th century through today.

Oroonoko is therefore a proto-novel that shows the ways in which romance and travel writing contributed to the development of the novel as we know it. It is also, however, sometimes seen as the first in the sentimental genre of the 19th century known as slave narrative, which were used extensively in the abolitionist movements of England and the United States to bring about the end of the slave trade and the practice of slavery thereafter.

As you read, think about the exoticism represented in the way Surinam and its people are described--idealized and in some ways caricatured as the narrator in Behn's story attempts to understand what she, with her European background, is observing. Also, think about the term noble savage, a term that has been used to describe the contradictory ways in which Europeans sometimes saw non-white, non-European peoples--both as intrinsically noble and like the unfallen Adam and Eve, but also as dangerous and savage, capable of inflicting death on white Europeans at any moment.

Instructor

revised 11/19/2015