Oroonoko: or, The Royal Slave
SynopsisPlot
The first woman in England to make her living by writing, Aphra Behn (1640-1689) combines memoir, exotic travel narrative, and romance to tell the story of the noble Oroonoko, a black man who begins life as a prince and ends it as a slave. The tale depicts the overthrow of a hero by a civilization that considers itself superior to him. Taken up by reformers in the long battle against the slave trade, reprinted, and imitated countless times, Oroonoko remains a popular tale that introduces powerful themes onto the literary stage.
Story
About this book
Aphra Behn, often described as one of the first professional English women writers, published Oroonoko in 1688. It follows an African prince, grandson of a king, who loves the daughter of the king's general. The king claims the young woman for his harem, and she is sold into slavery. When Oroonoko tries to follow, an English slave trader captures him and carries him to the same West Indian island.
Much of the story unfolds in the colony of Surinam, where Behn claimed to have spent time. She blends travel writing, romance, and memoir to show a man of high standing reduced to property. The story sets his sense of honor against the cruelty and broken promises of a colonial society that thought itself civilized. His resistance to enslavement forms the central tension.
Behn wrote as English involvement in the Atlantic slave trade was expanding. Oroonoko was reprinted often, imitated by other writers, and later used by campaigners against the slave trade. Thomas Southerne adapted it for the London stage in 1695. The text sits at a crossing point between prose romance and the early English novel.
