Study Questions for Aphra Behn, Oroonoko

1. Oroonoko is the central character in Behn’s novel. Is he a “hero”? What qualities does he have that make him heroic? Does he have any qualities that seem to be clearly unheroic? Do you consider him to be “believable”? That is, does Behn seem to portray him realistically? What aspects of his character and action seem particularly realistic? Are there things about him that seem not to be realistic?

2. Consider the ways in which Behn treats Oroonoko as a black African person. Notice that she specifically assigns him positive aesthetic qualities: he is not just physically attractive, but Behn expresses his “blackness” is expressed in terms that almost suggest he is being described like a work of art. At the same time, Behn takes care to distinguish him from “brown” Africans, whom she describes in much less flattering language. And she also describes his features in terms of familiar European (and therefore “white”) physical characteristics.

Is Behn’s presentation of Oroonoko “racist”? When she describes him as “noble,” is she judging by white European standards? Is she over-compensating because he is not European? What can we discover from Behn’s story about English (and European) assumptions about race at the time?

3. Oroonoko became an important document in the English campaign to abolish both the slave trade and slavery itself, and so its influence on other writing from the period (and afterward) was very considerable. And yet Oroonoko himself trades in slaves. What do you suppose Behn wanted her readers to conclude from this fact, especially when it is taken together with her generally flattering portrait of Oroonoko?

Is it fair simply to say that slavery is different in Oroonoko's kingdom than it is in the European culture? In fact, is it even reasonable to make that sort of distinction, or is it simply “making excuses”? What does he seem to believe about concepts like freedom, liberty, and individual self-determination?

4. Would it be fair to say that Behn uses her novel to question the idea that European culture is superior to other cultures – that Europeans are more “civilized” somehow than non-Europeans? What evidence can you find to support this view? Is there any evidence to the contrary – that is, does Behn offer any instances in which the non-European characters and cultures appear to be superior to the European ones?

5. Why does Behn make it important that Oroonoko be able to speak English?

6. How would you describe the role of the narrator in Oroonoko? At what point do we understand that the narrator is female? Does the gender of the narrator “matter” to how we read the work? If so, why and in what ways? And if not, then why not? Does the first-person narrator add to – or detract from – the apparent authenticity of the tale being told? Explain. And why does she apologize for her “female pen”?

7. What is the main point that Behn is trying to make in the first two paragraphs of Oroonoko? What effect do these paragraphs have upon you as a reader? Do you think a reader in 1688, when Oroonoko was published?

8. The Empiricist philosophers and scientists, who were beginning to be dominant in European culture by the later seventeenth century, believed that Along with contemporary science and philosophy the novel in particular was empiricist—that all knowledge comes from direct experience and not from “rules” or “principles.” That is, one learns by doing and by observing, and not by theorizing in the abstract. The empiricist therefore naturally pays great attention to concrete details and observable data, both of which can be subjected to rational analysis, and pays proportionally less attention to abstract theorizing and to what might be called “belief” or “faith.” Does Oroonoko strike you as an Empiricist (an empirical thinker)? Explain, with supporting evidence.