In a world where women were oppressed and overshadowed by their male counterparts, Aphra Behn was still able to voice her mind through literature. Early on in her professional and personal life, she made it a point to stand against the confined possibilities that were available to women in society. This is a sentiment that ended up being manifested in 1660 where London opened playhouses after the restoration of the English throne to Charles II. During this time women were allowed to participate in plays and also were provided with a space where their creativity innovation could excel. In 1688, Behn published one her most known works named Ooronoko, a story surrounding that of a prince who is captured and sold into the slave trade taught from the point of view of a narrator that is closely involved in his experience. To many critics, this story preceded the abolitionist movement and takes a powerful stance against slavery. The transatlantic slave trade consisted of a process of kidnapping African men, women, and children where deprived of their freedom and sold off as property. In this work she was able to depict the triangular trade of people and goods between Europe, Africa, and the Caribbean. The setting of this story, the sugar colony of Surinam, even highlights the sugar trade that England depended on for profit. Upon arrival, Oroonoko shares his story which coupled with his elegant appearance mesmerises the narrator. Eventually, the torment that comes with enslavement leads him to organize a revolt that is met with the wrath of his owners. Although this may arguably be used as an abolitionist text, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave by Frederick Douglas is a more accurate example of an effective primary source attempting to depict the evils presented by the institution of slavery. The events that take part of the story in Oroonoko could be furthered through Gerald Horne’s The Counter Revolution of 1776.

             Oroonoko by Aphra Behn is an example that fails to be an accurate depiction of the primary source. In this work, the story of an enslaved man is told from the point of view of a white woman. This is especially problematic because aside from her not being enslaved herself, she is a white woman who has power over Oroonoko and can change anything about his image for the reader with no repercussion. His reality is not told from someone who has lived through similar experiences as him, but through someone who is far richer, far more powerful, and far more respected than he was in this time as someone else’s property. On the contrary, the famous memoir Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass written by abolitionist and former slave Frederick Douglass is a work that touches on the realities of being enslaved and in the same breath also speaks to the importance of having primary accounts in literature. The horrific abuse on plantations he describes part of the memoir to take place is also one that can only be told with the passion of someone who was living that reality.  The slaves which he mentions in his memoir were constantly physically abused, as well as emotionally and mentally tormented. He was able to depict the way that all of the power leaned toward the side of power, not the side of justice. He was able to speak on the true racism and barbarization that slaves, including himself, were subject to. Texts such as these that are told from the primary accounts of slaves without the overbearing and watchful eye of a bystander that was never subject to these injustices are crucial in understanding the cruel and vicious nature of transatlantic slave trade.

             In the text The Counter Revolution of 1776, the lens that most relates to Behn’s narrative is that of the unification through whiteness. There was fear among those who owned slaves and participated in slave trade that enslaved Africans would eventually gain enough power to revolt against their masters and others whom participated in this institution. This fear of unification among Africans and even between Africans and indigenous peoples, who were also exploited and brutally murdered, led to these people in power unifying under the pretense of race. With European settlers deciding to find similarities within themselves that were synonymous with their power and societal status in order to create a strong fused fort with the purpose of intimidating a potential revolt. This was a way to instill fear and a reminder that the strength of all minorities together would not be as powerful as that of the European settlers. In the text Oroonoko, the white individuals including the narrator herself were placed in the category of “we” throughout the work. The narrator made sure to place that line of separation between her and her people before the Black man. No matter how beautiful she considered him to be, he would never belong to the collective because one of the things that united them was race. A Black enslaved man no matter how educated would never belong in an alliance that is solely based on the power and status the individuals possess. It is stated in Horne’s text that: “Then there was the developing notion of ‘whiteness,’ smoothing tensions between and among people hailing from the ‘old’ continent, which was propelled by the need for European unity to confront raging Africans and indigenes: this, inter alia, served to unite settlers in North America with what otherwise might have been their French and Spanish antagonists, laying the basis for a kind of democratic advance, as represented in the freedom of religion in the emergent U.S. Constitution” (3). This quote further explains that the best way to keep one group submissive to another is to keep them separated towards the goal of obtaining freedom. The possible unification among the enslaved was never a topic of discussion of Behn’s novel which shows that in her subconscious white mind, she could not fathom there being a chance of it occurring.

             Although Aphra Behn failed to use her voice to speak about the evils of slavery, she also failed to contextualize the brutal reality endured by these individuals while being owned. The unification through whiteness, one sided attitudes that favor the atrocity of slavery, and the different occupations a slave fills in a given place are all themes that are shared within these two sources. Although it fails to be an accurate depiction of the primary source, it exposes the faulty mentality in the individuals who have him captured and hold him as property. This “abolitionist”, for lack of a better word, work of literature is told through the filtered and limited observation of the person who is actually telling the story which takes away from the passion and rawness of the slave experience. Oroonoko is not only taught from the point of view of the incorrect person, but also because of the overwhelming differences that filter their live experiences. Issues of race, gender, social and economic status are all factors that affect how effectively this story is told. As common as it was for this to be the case, there were several instances in which the story of slaves and former slaves were told through primary accounts.

         Works Cited

Andrade, Susan Z. “White Skin, Black Masks: Colonialism and the Sexual Politics of

Oroonoko.” Cultural Critique, no. 27, 1994, pp. 189–214. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/1354482. Accessed 13 Oct. 2020.

Frederick Douglas. Narrative Of The Life Of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave. Written By

Himself. 1845.

Horne, Gerald. The Counter-Revolution of 1776: Slave Resistance and the Origins of the United

States of America. NYU Press, 2014. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt9qg0bm. Accessed 24 Nov. 2020.