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Oroonoko: a “Royal Slave” And/Or a Master of Dignity

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Oroonoko: a “Royal Slave” And/Or a Master of Dignity Advances in Language and Literary Studies ISSN: 2203-4714 Vol. 6 No. 4; August 2015 Flourishing Creativity & Literacy Australian International Academic Centre, Australia Oroonoko: A “Royal Slave” and/or a Master of Dignity Banani Biswas Department of English Language & Literature, School of Foreign Languages & Literature Shandong University, PO box 250100, Jinan, 27, Shanda Nan Lu, P.R.China & Department of English, Comilla University, Comilla-3506, Bangladesh E-mail: [email protected] Doi:10.7575/aiac.alls.v.6n.4p.208 Received: 17/04/2015 URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.7575/aiac.alls.v.6n.4p.208 Accepted: 23/06/2015 Abstract This paper involves a study on Aphra Ben’s Oroonoko (1688) which is considered by many as the first black narrative of English literature, an abolitionist text, while observed by some others as extremely colonialist. The objective of this study is to examine why the novella accommodates such contradictory readings. It assumes that it is the “scriptiblity” of the text that enables it encompassing heterogeneous meanings which should not be reduced to any privileged interpretation. It holds that Oroonoko is interwoven with multiple codes which serve as different socio-cultural agents proliferating variety of meanings often disseminating one another. In order to explore those intervening meanings, this study applies Barthesian codes for reading narratives. Then, drawing upon deconstructionist approach, it surmises neither the text nor its protagonist, Oroonoko, should be categorized into any absolute category. On the contrary, it asserts Oroonoko informs the postmodernist/plural concept of ‘being’, embracing a variety of identities from the “royal slave” to the ‘master of dignity’. Keywords: Oroonoko, Aphra Ben, Royal Slave, Master of Dignity, Scriptibility, Barthesian Codes 1. Introduction It remains as a literary enigma that though the publication of Aphra Behn’s the Oroonoko: Or, the Royal Slave in 1688 inaugurates the literary genre of the “novel”, the recognition of being founder of this genre does not follow her. With her beginning as the first professional woman in English literature to live by her pen, Behn was among the few who achieved earlier biographical and critical attentions. However, strangely enough, afterwards, the eighteenth and nineteenth century, critics, anthologists, publishers, and, as Jane Spencer mentions, the writers like Steele, Pope, Fielding, and Richardson as well ignore her literary productions which continues into the twentieth century until there appears Montague Summers to edit her works in 1915 to open the door for many others (Spencer 1986). Then, as the eighties of the last century feminism undertakes re-excavating writings by women which were long been hidden under the pages of phallocentric literary history, Oroonoko appears as worth study, captivating scholars and critics with its obvious preoccupations with race, class, and gender. For example, on the critics’ reluctance to Oroonoko, the article titled “The Death of the Mother in Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko” traces the “non-conformity with paternal law in its deep structure”. Female authorship, historical authenticity, and ambivalence regarding the institution of slavery have also been the contentions of some other studies. However, as for the contention of this paper, it is the non-conformity of the discourses of the novel to any fixed structure that makes the critics, who always sort out to categorize every work, confused of its meanings. 2. Literature Review The nonconformity of the discourses in Oroonoko gives rise to a complex web of studies. Contemporary classists feel indifferent for being unable to consider its contents as ‘classic’ while some abolitionists welcome it as ‘first anti-slavery narrative’, yet, some other explore the colonialist stance within the novel. For example, many were dismayed by the idea of ‘royal slave’ introduced in the text which makes it fail to fall into the category of ‘classic’ adhering to the pre- determined structure of master/slave relationship. Thomas Southerne's 1696 dramatic adaptation of Oroonoko demonstrates how he tries to diagnose a rationale for slavery as if the planters did not make them slaves but merely bought them “in an honest way of trade”(5). Another group, on the other, draws on the ideological significance of Behn's granting of heroic stature to an African prince. As in his “Anti-colonialism Vs Colonialism in Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko; or, The Royal Slave.”, Said I. Abdelwahed has asserted “Oroonoko did make an early contribution to antislavery thought, whether through its alleged criticisms of Western civilization or through its ennobling and humanizing of an African”. Many critics, however, have challenged such readings. Addressing it a “sentimental anti- slavery literature”, Anita Pacheco refutes that contribution. She explores, “the double-edged strategy of Behn which endows the African with human stature while simultaneously assuming that human stature is by definition European….” (Pacheco, 1994, 492). Then, George Guffey examines that “the significance of Behn's hero resides not in his African origins but in his royal blood” (Guffey 1975). He claims Behn endorses the conservative, hierarchical principles that legitimate rather than question the institution of slavery. In her 1981 article, Lucy K. Hayden also ALLS 6(4):208-215, 2015 209 observes that Behn's overall presentations supports slavery's continuation, and she asks “does she pity Oroonoko because he is a noble chief in captivity rather than because he is an enslaved human being?” (405). Moira Ferguson in 1992 seems to answer her question. She contends that “class may be Behn's greatest concern in representing Oroonoko and that she views him favorably as long as he upholds her clear royalist position” (339-59). The studies, stated above, seems to bear prejudices against particular discourses they aim to dismantle. However, in the process of altering discourses, those studies fall into the trap of perpetuating the same structure, they seek to deconstruct. Exploring how the novel can accommodate such opposed readings has, therefore, been crucial. As this paper contends, it is the scriptiblity of the ‘writerly’ text that has made it accommodate so many opposite readings. Scriptibility, according to the French literary critic and semiotician Roland Barthes (1915-1980), is that aspect of a narrative text which is capable of proliferating variety of meanings prone to contradictions and, therefore, deconstruction of each meaning itself (Barthes 1970). By applying Barthes’ concept of analyzing narratives through five codes, this paper examines Behn’s dependency upon various codes and conventions. It explores that how those codes exist in a complex, lingua-cultural matrix, function as socio-cultural agencies which are interwoven and overlap, and solidify that no single meaning is final, stable, or ‘universal’. Exposing the way of creating meaning, it surmises that the novel Oroonoko is a multilayered narrative and should not absolutely be categorized either ‘abolitionist’ or ‘anti-abolitionist’. Likewise, neither Oroonoko nor the race he represents should be stereotyped as anything absolute like ‘slave’ or ‘savage monster’. Cutting through the illusion of Eurocentric, universalizing discourses, this paper asserts that Oroonoko could simultaneously be a master of dignity, a slave of royalty, a native but wit, a black but handsome, a killer but a lover. 3. The Possibility of Scriptibility in Oroonoko Oroonoko is a relatively short novel concerning the tragic love story of Oroonoko and Imoinda, two Africans of royal origin enslaved in the British colony of Surinam during 1660s. The full title of the novel, Oroonoko; or the Royal Slave: A True History, with its apparent oxymoronic epithet ‘Royal Slave’ and its historical claim, takes us back to the age of slavery and arouses evocative speculation how a royal being could be a slave and the vice-versa as well. A close reading of the text also makes the readers confused about Behn’s ambiguity regarding the issue. They are likely to interpret it as per their mind-sets as, according to Barthes, human conceptualization is contextual and, therefore, determined by the world s/he inhabits. In his book S/Z (1970), he practises an exercise on a realistic text of Balzac titled, “Sarrasine”, that dismantles the structuralist notion of the ‘universal’ structure underlying all cultures. Barthes methodically moves through the text of the story exploring where and how different codes of meaning function. The codes expounded by Barthes are: 1. The Proairetic code or the code of Actions 2. The Hermeneutic Code or the Code of Puzzles 3. The Cultural Code 4. The Semic or Connotative Code 5. The symbolic Code Barthes argues although we impose temporal and generic structures onto the polysemy of codes (that traditional, “readerly” texts actively invite us to impose such structures), any text is, in fact, marked by the multiple meanings suggested by the five codes. The codes point to the “multivalence” or sriptibility of the text, and expose “its partial reversibility” (20), allowing a reader to see a work not just as a single narrative line but as a constellation or braiding of meanings. Likewise, the idea of ‘Royal Slave’ in Oroonoko immediately pushes the postmodern readers to discover the multiplicity of cultural and other ideological indicators (codes) in the text what Barthes describes as “ourselves writing”. The readers, aware of the discrepancy between artifice and reality, approach the text from an external position of subjectivity and take active part in the construction of meanings. Oroonoko addresses an issue revolving which the whole world had long been divided, and which is, therefore, opened to multicultural discourses. 3.1 Proairetic Code Contributing to the ‘Universalizing’ Mission As a narrative, Oroonoko is elevated almost up to an artifice, braided by a numbers of sequential actions. The actions are organized in a way that creates an air of ‘naturalness’. As the important function of literature at Behn’s time was to create a ‘realistic’ world, the writers heavily depend upon proairetic code.
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