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Oroonoko

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Novels

   First edition of Oroonoko, 1688
   Enlarge
   First edition of Oroonoko, 1688

   Oroonoko is a short novel by Aphra Behn (? 1640 – April 16, 1689),
   published in 1688, concerning the tragic love of its hero, an enslaved
   African in Surinam in the 1660s, and the author's own experiences in
   the new South American colony. It is generally claimed (most famously
   by Virginia Woolf) that Aphra Behn was the first professional female
   author in English, living entirely by her own earnings. While this is
   not entirely true, Behn was the first professional female dramatist, as
   well as one of the first English novelists, male or female. Although
   she had written at least one novel previously, Aphra Behn's Oroonoko is
   both one of the earliest English novels and one of the earliest by a
   woman.

   Behn worked for Charles II as a spy during the outset of the Second
   Dutch War, working to solicit a double agent. However, Charles either
   failed to pay her for her services or failed to pay her all that he
   owed her, and Behn, upon returning to England, needed money. She was
   widowed and destitute and even spent some time in debtor's prison
   before scoring a number of successes as an author. She wrote very fine
   poetry that sold well and was the basis of her fame for the following
   generation, and she had a number of highly successful plays staged,
   which established her fame in her own lifetime. In the 1670s, only John
   Dryden had plays staged more often than Behn. She turned her hand to
   extended narrative prose toward the end of her dramatic career;
   Oroonoko was published less than a year before her death.

Plot

   Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

   Oroonoko is a relatively short novel whose full title is Oroonoko: or,
   the Royal Slave. The novel concerns Oroonoko, the grandson of an
   African king, who falls in love with Imoinda, the daughter of that
   king's top general.
   Portrait of Aphra Behn, aged approximately 30, by Mary Beale
   Enlarge
   Portrait of Aphra Behn, aged approximately 30, by Mary Beale

   The king, too, falls in love with Imoinda. He gives Imoinda the sacred
   veil, thus commanding that she become one of his wives. After
   unwillingly spending time in the king's harem (the Otan), Imoinda and
   Oroonoko plan a tryst with the help of the sympathetic Onal and Aboan.
   However, they are discovered, and because of her choice, the king has
   Imoinda sold as a slave. Oroonoko is then tricked and captured by an
   evil English slaver captain. Both Imoinda and Oroonoko are carried to
   Surinam, at that time an English colony based on sugarcane plantations,
   in the West Indies. The two lovers are reunited there, under the new
   Christian names of Caesar and Clemene, even though Imoinda's beauty has
   attracted the unwanted desires of the English deputy-governor, Byam.

   Oroonoko organizes a slave revolt. The slaves are hunted down by the
   military forces and compelled to surrender on Byam's promise of
   amnesty. However, when the slaves surrender, Oroonoko is whipped. To
   avenge his honour, and to express his natural worth, Oroonoko decides
   to kill Byam. But to protect Imoinda from violation and subjugation
   after his death, he decides to kill her. The two lovers discuss the
   plan, and Imoinda willingly agrees. Oroonoko's love forbids him from
   killing his dear one and compels him to protect her, but when he stabs
   her, she dies with a smile on her face. Oroonoko is found mourning by
   her body and is kept from killing himself, only to be publicly
   executed. During his death by dismemberment, Oroonoko calmly smokes a
   pipe and stoically withstands all the pain without crying out.

   After the death of Oroonoko, the Dutch take over the colony and deal
   with the uprising by mercilessly slaughtering the slaves.

   The novel is written in a mixture of first and third person, as the
   narrator relates actions in Africa and portrays herself as a witness of
   the actions that take place in Surinam. In the novel, the narrator
   presents herself as a lady who has come to Surinam with her unnamed
   father, a man scheduled to be the new deputy-governor of the colony.
   He, however, dies on the voyage from England. The narrator and her
   family are put up in the finest house in the settlement, in accord with
   their station, and the narrator's experiences of meeting the indigenous
   peoples and slaves are intermixed with the main plot of the love of
   Oroonoko and Imoinda. At the conclusion of the love story, the narrator
   leaves Surinam for London.

   Structurally, there are three significant pieces to the narrative,
   which does not flow in a strictly biographical manner. The novel opens
   with a statement of veracity, where the author claims to be writing no
   fiction and no pedantic history. She claims to be an eyewitness and to
   be writing without any embellishment or theme, relying solely upon
   reality. What follows is a description of Surinam itself and the
   American Indians there. She regards the locals as simple and living in
   a golden age (the presence of gold in the land being indicative of the
   epoch of the people themselves). It is only afterwards that the
   narrator provides the history of Oroonoko himself and the intrigues of
   both his grandfather and the slave captain, the captivity of Imoinda,
   and his own betrayal. The next section is in the narrator's present;
   Oroonoko and Imoinda are reunited, and Oroonoko and Imoinda meet the
   narrator and Trefry. The third section contains Oroonoko's rebellion
   and its aftermath.

Biographical and historical background

   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 recognize
   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

   Anne Bracegirdle 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.
   Enlarge
   Anne Bracegirdle 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 Surinam and,
   if so, when. On the 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, in "Mrs. Behn's 'Oroonoko'" argues, 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 catalog, 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 quite 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. It is interesting, if the
   entire account is fictional and based on reportage, that Behn takes no
   liberties of invention to create European settlers she might need.
   Finally, the characterization of the real life people in the novel does
   not follow Behn's own politics. Behn was a lifelong and militant
   royalist, and her fictions are quite consistent in portraying virtuous
   royalists and put-upon nobles who are opposed by petty and evil
   republicans/Parliamentarians. Had Behn not known the individuals she
   fictionalizes in Oroonoko, it is extremely unlikely that any of the
   real royalists would have become fictional villains or any of the real
   republicans fictional heroes, and yet Byam and James Bannister, both
   actual royalists in the Interregnum, are malicious, licentious, and
   sadistic, while George Marten, a Cromwellian republican, is reasonable,
   open-minded, and fair.
   Francis, Lord Willoughby, patent holder of Suriname
   Enlarge
   Francis, Lord Willoughby, patent holder of Suriname

   On balance, it appears that Behn truly did travel to Surinam. The
   fictional narrator, however, cannot be the real Aphra Behn. For one
   thing, the narrator says that her father was set to become the deputy
   governor of the colony and died at sea en route. This did not happen to
   Bartholomew Johnson (Behn's father), although he did die between 1660
   and 1664. There is no indication at all of anyone except William Byam
   being Deputy Governor of the settlement, and the only major figure to
   die en route at sea was Francis, Lord Willoughby, the colonial patent
   holder for Barbados and " Suriname." Further, the narrator's father's
   death explains her antipathy toward Byam, for he is her father's
   usurper as Deputy Governor of Surinam. This fictionalized father
   thereby gives the narrator a motive for her unflattering portrait of
   Byam, a motive that might cover for the real Aphra Behn's motive in
   going to Surinam and for the real Behn's antipathy toward the real
   Byam.

   It is also unlikely that Behn went to Surinam with her husband,
   although she may have met and married in Surinam or on the journey back
   to England. A socially creditable single woman in good standing would
   not have gone unaccompanied to Surinam. Therefore, it is most likely
   that Behn and her family went to the colony in the company of a lady.
   As for her purpose in going, Janet Todd presents a strong case for its
   being spying. At the time of the events of the novel, the deputy
   governor Byam had taken absolute control of the settlement and was
   being opposed not only by the formerly republican Colonel George
   Marten, but also by royalists within the settlement. Byam's abilities
   were suspect, and it is possible that either Lord Willoughby or Charles
   II would be interested in an investigation of the administration there.

   Beyond these facts, there is little known. The earliest biographers of
   Aphra Behn not only accepted the novel's narrator's claims as true, but
   Charles Gildon even invented a romantic liaison between the author and
   the title character, while the anonymous Memoirs of Aphra Behn, Written
   by One of the Fair Sex (both 1698) insisted that the author was too
   young to be romantically available at the time of the novel's events.
   Later biographers have contended with these claims, either to prove or
   deny them. However, it is profitable to look at the novel's events as
   part of the observations of an investigator, as illustrations of
   government, rather than autobiography

Models for Oroonoko

   An engraving by William Blake illustrating "A negro hung by his ribs
   from a gallows," from Captain John Stedman's Narrative of a Five Years
   Expedition Against the Revolted Negroes of Surinam, 1792. The hanging
   took place in the then-Dutch ruled Surinam, an example of the barbarity
   of punishments of slaves, and the reputation of Surinam.
   Enlarge
   An engraving by William Blake illustrating "A negro hung by his ribs
   from a gallows," from Captain John Stedman's Narrative of a Five Years
   Expedition Against the Revolted Negroes of Surinam, 1792. The hanging
   took place in the then-Dutch ruled Surinam, an example of the barbarity
   of punishments of slaves, and the reputation of Surinam.

   As with other elements of the narrator's account, the idea that there
   was an historical figure named Oroonoko or that there was even a black
   African slave who led a revolt in English Surinam whom Aphra Behn might
   have met has been taken seriously by readers, and even scholars, for
   centuries, and yet the truth of the matter is impossible to ascertain.
   It has been taken on faith that the real Behn met a real enslaved
   African prince, but there is no reason for this generosity. In three
   centuries, no researchers have been able to produce an actual figure
   who matches Behn's description. Therefore, it is likely that the hero
   of the novel is a fiction inspired by reality.

   One figure who matches aspects of Oroonoko is the white Thomas Allin, a
   settler in Surinam. Allin was disillusioned and miserable in Surinam,
   and he was taken to alcoholism and wild, lavish blasphemies so shocking
   that Governor Byam believed that the repetition of them at Allin's
   trial cracked the foundation of the courthouse. In the novel, Oroonoko
   plans to kill Byam and then himself, and this matches a plot 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,

          "where a Barbicue was erected; his Members cut off, and flung in
          his face, they had his Bowels burnt under the Barbicue… his Head
          to be cut off, and his Body to be quartered, and when
          dry-barbicued or dry roasted… his Head to be stuck on a pole at
          Parham (Willoughby's residence in Surinam), and his Quarters to
          be put up at the most eminent places of the Colony."

   Allin, it must be stressed, was a planter, and neither an indentured
   nor enslaved worker, and the "freedom and honour" he sought was
   independence rather than manumission. Neither was Allin of noble blood,
   nor was his cause against Willoughby based on love. Therefore, the
   extent to which he provides a model for Oroonoko is limited more to his
   crime and punishment than to his plight. However, if Behn left Surinam
   in 1663, then she could have kept up with matters in the colony by
   reading the Exact Relation that Willoughby had printed in London in
   1666 and seen in the extraordinary execution a barbarity to graft onto
   her villain, Byam, from the man who might have been her real employer,
   Willoughby.

   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 England (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 the
   character possesses suggests that he is most likely invented wholesale.
   Additionally, the character's name is artificial. There are names in
   Yoruba that are similar, but the African slaves of Surinam were from
   Ghana.

   Instead of from life, the character seems to come from literature, for
   his name is reminiscent of Oroondates, a character in La Calprenéde's
   Cassandra, which Behn had read. Oroondates is a prince of Scythia whose
   desired bride is snatched away by an elder king. Previous to this,
   there is an Oroondates who is the satrap of Memphis in the Æthiopica, a
   novel from late antiquity by Heliodorus of Emesa. Many of the plot
   elements in Behn's novel are reminiscent of those in the Æthiopica and
   other Greek romances of the period.

   Alternatively, "Oroonoko" is an obvious homophone for the Orinoco
   River, along which the English settled, and it is possible to see in
   the character as an allegorical figure for the mismanaged territory
   itself.

Slavery and Behn's attitudes

   The colony of Surinam began importing slaves in the 1650s, since there
   were not enough indentured servants coming from England for the
   labor-intensive sugar cane production. In 1662, the Duke of York got a
   commission to supply 3,000 slaves to the Caribbean, and Lord Willoughby
   was also a slave trader. For the most part, English slavers dealt with
   slave-takers in Africa and rarely captured slaves themselves. The story
   of Oroonoko's abduction is plausible, for such raids did take place,
   but English slave traders avoided them where possible for fear of
   accidentally capturing a person who would anger the friendly groups on
   the coast. Most of the slaves came from the Gold Coast, and in
   particular from modern-day Ghana.
   Diagram of a slave ship. New World Slavery began in Surinam in the
   1650s. The trade went from London to Ghana to Barbados to Virginia.
   Enlarge
   Diagram of a slave ship. New World Slavery began in Surinam in the
   1650s. The trade went from London to Ghana to Barbados to Virginia.

   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. The most likely candidate for Aphra Behn's 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 English colonies under a false flag. Had Aphra Behn 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.

   Todd is probably correct in saying that Aphra Behn did not set out to
   protest slavery, but however tepid her feelings about slavery, there is
   no doubt about her feelings on the subject of natural kingship. The
   final words of the novel are a slight expiation of the narrator's
   guilt, but it is for the individual man she mourns and for the
   individual that she writes a tribute, and she lodges no protest over
   slavery itself. A natural king could not be enslaved, and, as in the
   play Behn wrote while in Surinam, The Young King, 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 potential 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 English,
   with their aristocracy, mismanaged the colony and the slaves 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

   Behn was a political writer of fiction and for the stage, and though
   not didactic in purpose, most of her works have distinct political
   content. The timing of Oroonoko's publication must be seen in its own
   context as well as in the larger literary tradition (see below).
   According to Charles Gildon, Aphra Behn wrote Oroonoko even with
   company present, and Behn's own account suggests that she wrote the
   novel in a single sitting, with her pen scarcely rising from the paper.
   If Behn travelled to Surinam in 1663-4, she felt no need for
   twenty-four years to write her "American story" and then felt a sudden
   and acute passion for telling it in 1688. It is therefore wise to
   consider what changes were in the air in that year that could account
   for the novel.

   1688 was a time of massive anxiety in English politics. Charles II had
   died, and James II came to the throne. James's purported Roman
   Catholicism and his marriage to an avowedly Roman Catholic bride roused
   the old Parliamentarian forces to speak of rebellion again. This is the
   atmosphere for the writing of Oroonoko. One of the most notable
   features of the novel is that Oroonoko insists, over and over again,
   that a king's word is sacred, that a king must never betray his oaths,
   and that a measure of a person's worth is the keeping of vows. Given
   that men who had sworn fealty to James were now casting about for a way
   of getting a new king, this insistence on fidelity must have struck a
   chord. Additionally, the novel is fanatically anti-Dutch and
   anti-democratic, even if it does, as noted above, praise faithful
   former republicans like Trefry over faithless former royalists like
   Byam. Inasmuch as the candidate preferred by the Whig Party for the
   throne was William of Orange, the novel's stern reminders of Dutch
   atrocities in Surinam and powerful insistence on the divine and emanate
   nature of royalty were likely designed to awaken Tory objections.

   Behn's side would lose the contest, and the Glorious Revolution would
   end with the Act of Settlement 1701, whereby Protestantism would take
   precedence over sanguinity in the choice of British monarch ever after.
   Indeed, so thoroughly did the Stuart cause fail that readers of
   Oroonoko may miss the topicality of the novel.

Literary significance

   Claims for Oroonoko's being the "first English novel" are difficult to
   sustain. In addition to the usual problems of defining the novel as a
   genre, Aphra Behn had written at least one epistolary novel prior to
   Oroonoko. The Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and his Sister predates
   Oroonoko by more than five years. However, Oroonoko is one of the very
   early novels in English of the particular sort that possesses a linear
   plot and follows a biographical model. It is a mixture of theatrical
   drama, reportage, and biography that is easy to recognize as a novel.

   Oroonoko is the first English novel to show Black Africans in a
   sympathetic manner. At the same time, this novel, even more than
   William Shakespeare's Othello, is as much about the nature of kingship
   as it is about the nature of race. Oroonoko is a king, and he is a king
   whether African or European, and the novel's regicide is devastating to
   the colony. The theatrical nature of the plot follows from Behn's
   previous experience as a dramatist. The language she uses in Oroonoko
   is far more straightforward than in her other novels, and she dispenses
   with a great deal of the emotional content of her earlier works.
   Further, the novel is unusual in Behn's fictions by having a very clear
   love story without complications of gender roles.

   Critical response to the novel has been colored by the struggle over
   the enslavement of black Africans and the struggle for women's
   equality. In the 18th century, audiences for Southerne's theatrical
   adaptation and readers of the novel responded to the love triangle in
   the plot. Oroonoko on the stage was regarded as a great tragedy and a
   highly romantic and moving story, and on the page as well the tragic
   love between Oroonoko and Imoinda, and the menace of Byam, captivated
   audiences. As the British and American disquiet with slavery grew,
   Oroonoko was increasingly seen as protest to slavery. Wilbur L. Cross
   wrote, in 1899, that "Oroonoko is the first humanitarian novel in
   English." He credits Aphra Behn with having opposed slavery and mourns
   the fact that her novel was written too early to succeed in what he
   sees as its purpose (Moulton 408). Indeed, Behn was regarded explicitly
   as a precursor of Harriet Beecher Stowe. In the 20th century, Oroonoko
   has been viewed as an important marker in the development of the "
   noble savage" theme, a precursor of Rousseau and a furtherance of
   Montaigne, as well as a proto-feminist work. Most recently, Oroonoko
   has been examined in terms of colonialism and experiences of the alien
   and exotic.

   Recently (and sporadically in the 20th century) the novel has been seen
   in the context of 17th-century politics and 16th-century literature.
   Janet Todd argues that Behn deeply admired Othello, and identified
   elements of Othello in the novel. In Behn's longer career, her works
   centre on questions of kingship quite frequently, and Behn herself took
   a radical philosophical position. Her works question the virtues of
   noble blood as they assert, repeatedly, the mystical strength of
   kingship and of great leaders. The character of Oronooko solves Behn's
   questions by being a natural king and a natural leader, a man who is
   anointed and personally strong, and he is poised against nobles who
   have birth but no actual strength.

Adaptation

   Oroonoko kills Imoinda in a 1776 performance of Thomas Southerne's
   Oroonoko.
   Enlarge
   Oroonoko kills Imoinda in a 1776 performance of Thomas Southerne's
   Oroonoko.

   Oroonoko was not a very substantial success at first. The stand-alone
   edition, according to the English Short Title Catalog online, was not
   followed by a new edition until 1696. Behn, who had hoped to recoup a
   significant amount of money from the book, was disappointed. Sales
   picked up in the second year after her death, and the novel then went
   through three printings. The story was used by Thomas Southerne for a
   tragedy entitled Oroonoko: A Tragedy. Southerne's play was staged in
   1695 and published in 1696, with a foreword in which Southerne
   expresses his gratitude to Behn and praises her work. The play was a
   great success. After the play was staged, a new edition of the novel
   appeared, and it was never out of print in the eighteenth century
   afterward. The adaptation is generally faithful to the novel, with one
   significant exception: it makes Imoinda white instead of black (see
   Macdonald), and therefore, like Othello, the male lead would perform in
   blackface to a white heroine. As the taste of the 1690s demanded,
   Southerne emphasizes scenes of pathos, especially those involving the
   tragic heroine, such as the scene where Oronooko kills Imoinda. At the
   same time, in standard Restoration theatre rollercoaster manner, the
   play intersperses these scenes with a comic and sexually explicit
   subplot. The subplot was soon cut from stage representations with the
   changing taste of the 18th century, but the tragic tale of Oroonoko and
   Imoinda remained popular on the stage.

   Through the 18th century, Southerne's version of the story was more
   popular than Behn's, and in the 19th century, when Behn was considered
   too indecent to be read, the story of Oroonoko continued in the highly
   pathetic and touching Southerne adaptation. The killing of Imoinda, in
   particular, was a popular scene. It is the play's emphasis on, and
   adaptation to, tragedy that is partly responsible for the shift in
   interpretation of the novel from Tory political writing to prescient
   "novel of compassion." When Roy Porter writes of Oroonoko, "the
   question became pressing: what should be done with noble savages? Since
   they shared a universal human nature, was not civilization their
   entitlement," he is speaking of the way that the novel was cited by
   anti-slavery forces in the 1760s, not the 1690s, and Southerne's
   dramatic adaptation is significantly responsible for this change of
   focus.

Influences

   Oronoko Township in Berrien County, Michigan, is said to have been
   named after the character.
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