Racism in Aphra Behns Oroonoko - Book Report/Review Example

Oroonoko's duality is a reflection of the duality at work of the author herself, who seems incapable of fully committing to making an African the hero of her tale without stripping him of many of his uniquely African attributes. Consider that Oroonoko is both a Prince and a slave; a slave trafficker and a slave himself; a savage warrior and an educated noble; as one man with two names. Not only is the protagonist of her story imbued with duality, but the telling of the tale itself is bifurcated by a constant ambivalence toward its own racist viewpoint.

Oroonoko is plainly African, but he also manages to be a representation of the European ideal of masculine beauty. That word needs to be examined more closely; he is a re-presentation. The concept of the Other is one in which man comes face to face with something different from himself. The Other is a threat and must be taken care of either through annihilation or assimilation. Since it wasn't economically advisable to annihilate the Negro, assimilation was called for and the method for assimilation comes through in Behn's writing in which Oroonokoo physically bridges both African and European cultures; he loses his exoticism and becomes one of us.

Though the color of his skin is described as ebony, Behn also describes his nose as "rising and Roman, instead of African and flat; his mouth the finest shaped that could be seen, far from those great turned lips which are so natural to the rest of the Negroes" (15). Behn almost seems determined to create an African hero who bears no resemblance to actual Africans. Instead, she felt compelled to Europeanize his in appearance so he could more readily be accepted as an heroic character. It is Oroonoko's European qualities that make him a natural leader among his own people as well as what ingratiates him so easily among the Europeans.

Oroonoko's identity is connected to his duality and his duality is an extension of Behn's racism which she tries so hard to overcome. At an early point in the story, the narrator gives a backhanded compliment to African women that provides a glimpse into the still burgeoning development of racial tolerance for exotic looks at the time it was written. The black wives of the African King of Coramantien are described thusly: "for most certainly there are beauties that can charm of that color" (13).

This seems quite clearly a racist statement when applied to today's standards, but what about when examined through the prism defined by Jordan when he writes "It was important, if incalculably so, that English discovery of black Africans came at time when the accepted English standard of ideal beauty was a fair complexion of rose and white. Negroes seemed the very picture of perverse negation" (7). Behn attempts to move beyond this negation of perversity by allowing that there is such a creature as a black woman who is charming.

But isn't allowing for the possibility of the existence of some charming black women the exact same thing as saying that most black women are not charming Again, the question of Behn's ambivalence toward race is raised her very effort to move