Trying to frame the unframable: Oroonoko as discourse in Aphra Behn's 'Oroonoko.'

Studies in Short Fiction, Wntr, 1997 by Daniel Pigg

Aphra Behn's Oroonoko (1688), an intensely stirring work, has captivated scholars of Restoration English literature in the last two decades with its obvious preoccupations with race, class, and gender. Behn, an underappreciated writer whose fortunes in the scholarly world are rising, is an experimenter in literary forms that attempt to characterize cultural and national identities. Among her works, Oroonoko is most keenly attentive to this issue. Studies of the "novel" have focused on issues such as the interplay among the writer, the constructed Behn of the narrative and the character Oroonoko, the notion of the noble savage or natural man, reliance on travel and romance narratives, fact versus fiction in the text, and political posturing within the scope of representing Oroonoko and Imoinda. What was seen in the Restoration and throughout the eighteenth century as an important abolitionist text has since the early '80s been investigated with methodologies--especially new historicism and feminist critique--that while not undermining obvious historicist assessments of the text, at least show socio-political ambivalence in Behn's posturing. In her 1981 article, Lucy K. Hayden 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). In an almost conscious way, William C. Spengemann in 1984, Laura Brown in 1987, Jacqueline Pearson in 1991, and Moira Ferguson in 1992 attempted to answer her question. Ferguson, for example, 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. It is certainly true that on some level she is not present at some of the most critical junctures in Oroonoko's life (339-59).

While these studies have provided an important context for examining the work, none has attempted to explain those seemingly irresolvable issues in light of the text's own comments on the power of language and representation. Fissures or gaps in the text that we as late twentieth-century readers perceive as "Anglo-African"--a highlighting of the seeming superiority of European qualities--reflect more on Behn's own crisis in the creation of a discourse to represent a world which most of the time is the "Other" (Moira Ferguson 340). Oroonoko as a character is a construction of a variety of discourses--all of which he speaks or presents in gestures. He exists at the intersection of these voices, and thus as one of these shaping voices shifts and another gains dominance, his construction changes. He can be a talented speaker of European languages, be knowledgeable and sympathetic to some of the dire political events of seventeenth-century England, be a master of rhetoric, be a passionate lover, and even be a barbaric murderer.

This article asserts that Oroonoko as a character represents a different order of discursive model, unlike the typical European discourse, identified by verbal communication only. He represents a literary approximation of universal language theory. Throughout the text Oroonoko communicates by words but more importantly through gestural signs by which Behn attempts to separate him from others, including other African slaves. Much of the nobility that Behn assigns to Oroonoko circulates around this model for characterizing him.

To understand Behn's development of Oroonoko as a discourse, we first need to define this "discourse" in terms of Restoration language theory. Then we can suggest a reading of the text in an historicist/semiotic mode that shows the process by which Behn creates Oroonoko as a discourse that ultimately cannot be contained within traditional frames. At the same time that this treatment forms a significant commentary on English colonialism and exploitation, it increases the worth of the African Oroonoko by allowing him to transcend the national limits of European discourse.

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Behn wrote Oroonoko during a period of considerable discussion about the nature of language and the interconnectedness of languages throughout the world. Ideas of a universal language that might be discovered for and used by merchants to harness the economic potential of foreign trade by the application of both a Marxist-based vision of power as suppression and of the Foucaultian-based notion of power as creating a kind of network circuitry were the driving forces behind the activity. Linguists such as Cave Beck, John Wilkins, and George Dalgano attempted to develop a symbolic-based language much like that of Egyptian hieroglyphics or Chinese ideographs (Cohen 1-6). Among these linguists and among philosophers such as Descartes, there was a growing sense of the limitations of human speech and writing in representing thought. In a letter to Mersenne, Descartes contended there is a relationship between "natural language (as speech) and the natural language of emotions caused by sensations" (Reiss 280). Timothy J. Reiss notes that Descartes's notion relates to "`body language,' a language composed essentially (though not entirely) of gestures" (280).