So Rude and Wild were the Rabble
Just as the earlier instances of
emblematic composition turn the narrative text of Behn’s book into a series of
satirical revelations of the weakness, arrogance, and violence of European
systems of knowledge, so the final episode of the book, with its series of
scenes of romantic sacrifice, heroic self-mutilation, and the cruelly violent
and grotesque pulling apart of the African Prince’s noble body can best be
understood in the epistemological terms we have been developing.
One further emblematic scene from
the narrative is needed before we continue with the theoretical matters of the
last few sections. Under a disguise of
conformity and submission to the colonial slave regime, Oroonoko or Caesar made
plans to elad his fellow Africans in a rebellion, and especially to rescue his
wife and the child developing in her womb.
To the other slaves, Oronooko appeals to their sense of honor and
indignation at being treated in such a bloody and cruel manner, totally
unbefitting their own traditions and status in Africa. The narrator loads the heroic and glorious
epithets on the Black rebels and describes the colonial militia as “a comical
army.” However, the battle, such as it
is, goes against the slaves because of the timidity and cowardice of many of
the Africans, especially of the women—except for Imoinda, though she was with
child. Duplicity and trickery on the
part of the Europeans also leads to the defeat of these noble savages. Oroonoko cannot believe that so-called noble
gentleman among the colonial leaders would tell lies and make promises they did
not mean to keep.
The narrator, her mother, and
other women in her company, who had been frightened by news of the rebellion,
come to see the captured leader, Oroonoko, and are shocked by the state he is
in. Their respect for the handsome Black
Prince leads them to give all sympathy to his condition and to see the colonial
council and its officers as a farcical or burlesque band of village
idiots. They are appalled not just by
the lack of honesty, honor and dignity amongst their own menfolk, but fearful
of the common people, the “inrag’d multitude” or “Fury of the English Mobile,” that is, a mob.
In her account of what Oronooko
did to try to save his wife from the obloquy and outrage of the savage
colonists—the normal terms of praise and blame being reversed to cast the
Africans as heroic and noble lovers—Aphra Behn’s persona explains how the Royal
Slave gained permission to take a walk in the woods, during which he led his
wife Imoinda
…into
a Wood, where, after (with a thousand Sighs, and long Gazing silently on her
Face, while Tears gusht, in spite of him, from his Eyes) he told her his Design
first of Killing her, and then his Enemies, and next himself, and the
impossibility of Escaping, and therefore he told her the necessity of Dying; he found the Heroick Wife faster
pleading for Death than he was to propose it, when she found his fix’d
Resolution; and on her Knees, besought him, not to leave her a Prey to his
Enemies. He (griev’d to Deth) yet
pleased at her noble Resolution, took her up, and imbracing her, with all the
Passion and languishment of a dying Lover, drew his Knife to kill this Treasure
of his Soul, this Plweasure of his Eyes, while Tears trickl’d down his Cheeks,
hers were Smiling with Joy she shou’d dye by so noble a Hand, and he sent in
her own Country, (for that’s the Notion of the next World) by him she so
tenderly Lov’d…. (p. 60)
This passage owes much to the exalted language
and images of Italian heroic poetry of the Renaissance and to the prose
versions of “tender” love expanded upon by French women authors of the early
seventeenth century such Madeleine De Scudery.
It draws on the earlier passages in Oronooko describing the heroic feats
of military valor and the courtly intrigue displayed in the African kingdom
from which the hero and heroine were ignominiously betrayed as slaves to the
European merchants. Some of this is
evident, though not as developed, in Dryden’s heroic plays set in Oriental Lands
or in the New World kingdoms of South and Central America.[i]
At the same time as this mode of discourse
is exotic and romantic (in the sense of medieval and Renaissance love
romances), it is also permeated by cross-currents of the scientific (the asides
on the anthropological characteristics of the two black lovers’ religious
beliefs) and by a sense of the satiric in the burlesqued inversion of roles—the
slaves as exalted heroes, the colonists as crude and savage bumpkins. But text also carries a vein of the grotesque
in several senses, not just that of interwoven incompatible characters and
actions and contradictory generic tones, but also in a deeper sense that comes
close to the tragic and the bizarre.[ii]
This may be seen in the way the
narrator continues the description of how Oronooko killed his beloved and
willing wife Imoinda.
All
that Love cou’d say in such cases. Being ended, and all the intermitting
Irresolutions being adjusted, the Lovely, Young, and Ador’d Victim lay her self
down, before the Sacrificer; while he, with a Hand resolv’d, and a Heart
breaking within, gave the Fatal Stroke, first, cutting her Throat, and then
severing her yet Smiling Face from that Delicate Body, pregnant as it was with
Fruits of tend’rest Love. (p. 61)
As speech yields to action, the
details of the sacrifice move from a clean death to a grotesque action: the
cutting of her throat as the least painful of means of killing is followed by
the removal of her face—not a beheading but a stripping off of the mask of her beauty,
youth and loyalty.
And then what does Oronooko do with Imoinda’s face?
As
soon as he had done, he laid the Body, decently on Leaves and Flowers of which
he made a Bed, and conceal’d it under the same cover-lid of Nature: only her
Face he left yet bare to look on. (p. 61)
The passage seems fairly clear, but does not
stand up to close-reading, and instead becomes disturbingly ambiguous at
best. The dead wife is “decently” buried
under a natural covering to prevent it from being gazed on by unworthy others
and to protect it from predatory beasts.
The face, however, peeled from the pregnant corpse and from the head, is
set up as “to be look on,” the incomplete passive voice suggesting either some
kind of shrine to be worshipped by the husband and perhaps other noble
personages who once knew her or as a type of apotropaic fetish, something to
shame and harm the ignoble European savages who brought on this monstrous
action. This sense of the grotesque goes
beyond any satirical intent.
Oronooko, following the burial of
corpse and the setting up of the face-mask,[iii]
stares at the relic of his beloved Imoinda.
He makes a formal speech to it, finding that the search for glory that
he wanted to achieve once he removed his wife from the place where her body
would be disgraced and violated and he need not worry about her honor is now
impossible: he rages in frustration because any attempt to act further is
blocked since he has been abandoned by his supporters and the rag-tag enemy,
though fools and knaves, are overwhelming in number. In addition, his own physical strength has
ebbed away, due to his untended wounds.
And
however bent he was on his intended Slaughter, he had not power to stir form
the Sight of his dear Object, now more Belov’d, and more Ador’d than ever. (p.
61)
The sacrifice seems as though it
were in vein, making his grief now unsustainable. If he cannot take revenge on the Europeans,
what is left to him?
After two further days of frustration and pointless
rage, he
...found
his Strength so decay’d, that he reel’d to and from, like Boughs assail’d by
contrary Winds; so that he was forced to lye down again, and try to summon all
his Courage to his Aid; he found his Brains turn round, and his Eyes were
dizzy; and Objects appear’d not the same to him they were wont to do; his
Breath was short; and all his Limbs surprised with a Faintness he had never
felt before… (p. 61)
Weak and giddy, he is rapidly
approaching a point of madness and death.
Such a state exceeds the condition reached by Othello after he was
driven to distraction by Iago’s deceptions and slew his beloved Desdemona in
Shakespeare’s tragedy, a play Aphra Behn alludes to in order to call to mind
appropriate images of her hero’s plight.
Oronooko, unlike Othello, does not remain strong enough to defy the
authorities that gather to arrest him for the murder of his wife but sinks into
physical decay, left with almost no resources to challenge the colonists who
capture him and put him on display before his inevitable execution. Imoinda’s corpse, meanwhile, is discovered in
the jungle by the stench from her own decaying body. There are really no passages of this sort in
the heroic or even Gothic books of the seventeenth and eighteenth century to match
what Behn creates here; it will not be until the nineteenth century that
authors revel in such fantastic grotesquery.
Lying in a near stupor near to
the corrupt flesh that was his wife, Oronooko can only defy the Europeans and
African slaves who surround him with an even more grotesque set of
actions. While they hang back from
taking hold of him, he “cut a piece of Flesh from his own Throat, and threw it
at ‘em” (P. 62). He speaks a few words
to curse them and mock their lack of heroism, and then acts again:
…he
rip’d up his own Belly; and took out his Bowels and pull’d ‘em out, with what
Strength he cou’d… (p. 63)
There then ensues a struggle when
one of his captors, a former companion among the slaves, lunges at him, but is
killed, leaving Oroonko to be carried away back to the settlement.
Meanwhile, the narrator and other
women who had been absent during this scene—and the others of the sacrifice and
its aftermath—come running when they learn that the Royal Slave is about to be
brought back. The question of how the persona of Aphra Behn came to give such
a vivid account of these grotesque events will need to be discussed later. For the moment, it is sufficient to note the
juxtaposition, overlaying and melding of the various genres, tones, levels of
mimetic representation of reality, and themes that are in play here.
But before we can examine this
last section, it is best to go back to clarify several theoretical issues: not
least the question of generic categories appropriate to discussion, but also
the question of how appropriate or legitimate are interpretations that breach
normal protocols of historicity and literary evaluations in a post-modern (and
politically-correct) period, namely, our own.
These theoretical points contain within them the most important of all:
the construction and justification of a Jewish model of analysis and discussion
for authors and works neither explicitly Jewish or normally recognized by
authoritative scholars to be Crypto-Jewish.
[i] Behn
refers to some of these heroic plays and takes credit for providing some of the
exotic feathers and other material used in the first productions, remarks that
cut through the distinction between fictional reality and historical, as well
as scientific discourses.
[ii] These
horrors can be found in Roman writing, such as Virgil’s descriptions of the
Underworld in the Aeneid, or
Apuleius’s scenes of mutilation and dismemberment in The Golden Ass. They are
sometimes alluded to in Jacobean tragedies, but more in the imagery than in the
actual representation on stage. Only
perhaps Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus
seeks to show so much blood and guts to the audience.
[iii] On the role of masks
and masquerades in Crypto-Jewish literature, see my Masks in the Mirror: themes to be returned to later in this essay.
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