Oroonoko, by Aphra Behn, is a story that romanticizes slavery through the voice of an English Christian white woman. When discussing Oroonoko’s past, Behn highlights issues of gender and the role of women within that society, and the role of women in the colony of Suriname. Behn also touches on classism, slavery, and race throughout her short novel. Behn uses her writing to show empathy and the humanity of a slave once they can conform to the European model of civility.

Behn expresses issues of gender in the way she described the life of Oroonoko’s people when he still lived in his West African kingdom. The role of women having to marry a man just because he said so can be a reflection of the lack of choice most women had in the English marriage arrangement. She describes how the king had multiple wives and his possessiveness in having any woman of his liking as if they were objects. When writing about Suriname, Behn never described the women as being strong or possessing the ability to take up arms to fight. The women needed to be protected and had to flee if danger lurked. The only woman that represented strength in her novel was Imoinda, the wife of Oroonoko. Imoinda was willing to go to battle beside Oroonoko with no questions asked. She even bravely accepted death by his hands to prevent herself from being violated by the colonizers when he was no longer alive. Behn ends her novel with, “the brave, the beautiful, and the constant Imoinda.”

Classism in the novel begins with the title that refers to Oroonoko as a “royal slave.” He is set on a higher pedestal than the other enslaved Africans until he wants to gain freedom from his captivity. Once Oroonoko expresses that he wants this freedom, Behn has the narrator try to coerce him to give up on that desire. He is even renamed Caesar by the man that enslaved him. Oroonoko is seen as above the other enslaved Africans because of his ability to converse in multiple languages that are familiar to the colonizers. He is also intellectually adept since he can engage on varying topics with the overseers and other European settlers. Behn’s purposely told of Oroonoko’s life before slavery as a prince to show his status as higher than the rest of the enslaved Africans.

Behn’s description of Oroonoko, Imoinda, enslaved Africans, and the indigenous people of Suriname shows an affliction between the narrator’s supposed affection for Oroonoko and what she thought about people who were not white. Having established that Oroonoko came from a higher pedigree of Africans, Behn took the liberty to describe his features akin to Romans. She wrote, “His face was not of that brown rusty black which most of that nation are, but of perfect ebony, or polished jet. His eyes were the most awful that could be seen, and very piercing; the white of 'em being like snow, as were his teeth. His nose was 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.” The way she described Oroonoko was like a fetishization. She refers to Imoinda as beautiful and fair several times throughout the novel. Imoinda is treated slightly better than the other enslaved Africans because of her beauty, but she is still a slave. Behn also describes the indigenous people of Suriname as, “Some of the beauties, which indeed are finely shaped, as almost all are, and who have pretty features, are charming and novel; for they have all that is called beauty, except the color, which is a reddish yellow; or after a new oiling, which they often use to themselves, they are of the color of a new brick, but smooth, soft, and sleek.” Her blatant statement that everything about them was beautiful except the color of their skin revealed the narrator and perhaps Behn’s opinion on skin color that was not like a white person.

The way that Behn approaches the topic of slavery is multifaceted. When she begins the novel with Oroonoko’s life as a prince and him presenting one hundred and fifty slaves to Imoinda, it attempts to show that Africans had slaves too. The narrator further tells the readers how Oroonoko’s people sold slaves to those that came to their shores, and it was a common practice. She later has Oroonoko meet some of the people that he sold when he reaches the plantation. He is different from them because he was not sold as a slave but captured in an underhanded way. Oroonoko makes a statement that the colonizers did not capture them in an honorable battle making this form of slavery unjust. He takes notice of the cruelty that the enslaved Africans experience and how vastly different it is from the way they did things in his kingdom. The narrator was not one that could see the injustice and the inhumanity that the enslaved Africans experienced. The only person that she felt sympathy for was Oroonoko because he was not a common slave in her eyes. The narrator also saw no wrong in keeping Imoinda chained as the narrator, and the other colonizers took Oroonoko with them on their travels. The narrator even speaks about her and the other overseers' attempts to divert Oroonoko’s mind from freedom with continuous freedom. They did not trust his thoughts and believed he would influence the other enslaved Africans. “I neither thought it convenient to trust him much out of our view, nor did the country, who feared him; but with one accord it was advised to treat him fairly, and oblige him to remain within such a compass, and that he should be permitted, as seldom as could be, to go up to the plantations of the negroes; or, if he did, to be accompanied by some that should be rather in appearance attendants than spies.”

Behn’s writing makes it hard to determine if she was a friend or foe of slavery. Based on my interpretation of what she wrote, she is worse than the enemy. The narrator voice that she used, and I interpret as an extension of her thoughts or, experience shows an untrustworthy character. Oroonoko’s belief that white people were untrustworthy was proven correct, right down to the narrator as she also was involved in blocking Oroonoko’s escape to freedom. In Behn’s last paragraph, she manages to implement herself, or what is perceived as herself, into the novel. She writes, “I hope, the reputation of my pen is considerable enough to make his glorious name to survive all the ages.”