Aphra Behn, Part 3

Wonder and Amazement

The second emblematic example for consideration is that in which the young female narrator visits an Indian village and allows herself to be gazed at, touched, and discussed as a “thing”, much more even than just a sexual object in the sense of a woman owned by the masculine gaze.  The transition from the earlier passage (the emblem of the numb eel just discussed) speaks of “some Disputes the English had with the Indians, so that we cou’d scarce trust ourselves…to go to any Indian Towns…for fear they shou’d fall upon us,” a fear confirmed by retrospect when the narrator reports how, as soon as the Dutch made their move to take over the colony—and “who us’d not so civilly as the English”—made a ferocious attack on the Europeans, including those servants which she “left behind me” (p. 47).  It was these tensions between the different nationalities contesting the region that prevented the narrator from receiving “half the satisfaction I propos’d, in not seeing and visiting the Indian Towns.”  The episode told emblematically hereafter therefore has to be read in terms of a complex weaving together of innocent or naïve arrogance on the part of the young female visitor and more mature and self-reflective assessment of the event in a wider social, political and psychological perspective.  Each word and expression moreover needs to be carefully weighed up, scrutinized and interpreted, since such language does more than transmit a transparent piece of information concerning the people, places, things and actions encountered.  The words and images interact, as we have suggested, in an emblematic way.

Duplication of terms, such as “seeing and visiting”, are not simply synonyms or near equivalences.  Instead they cut through assumptions, presumptions and conventional ways of perceiving, feeling, thinking and acting.  In going to the Indian town, the narrator intends to engage in more than a passive exercise in tourism, viewing the inhabitants, their customary activities, and their ways of thinking from a distance, across the divide of cultures.  Her visiting is intrusive and manipulative, just as her seeing combines gaze, surveillance, and evaluation for the sake of possession, entertainment, and transformation.  At the same time, in the moment of the historical event when she was an innocent and powerless adolescent, she is unaware of the moral and political implications of her behavior.  Then, later, in the retrospective, analytical and evaluative production of the text we have to read, the narrator creates new modes of irony and ambiguity.

Despite warnings of the danger in visiting the Indian towns at the interior of Surinam, distant from the plantations and other settlements of the English colony, the narrator follows the directions of Oroonoko/Caesar who volunteers “to be our Guard.”  Many people choose not to go, but eighteen of them form a small party around the narrator and the Black Prince.  “For my part, I said, If Caesar wou’d, I wou’d go” (p. 47).  Further, having no knowledge of the indigenous language, the adventurers engage “a Fisherman that liv’d at the Mouth of the River, who had been a long inhabitant there” and “become a perfect Indian in Colour” (p. 48).  The journey inland is accomplished with a black guard and a long-time settler who knows the local lingo, this seeming to be sufficient organization and strength to go where Europeans have been warned not to venture.  It is, to say the least, foolhardy and provocative, putting the whole colony into jeopardy, as later events will confirm.  But as the highest ranking person on this expedition, the narrator bravely goes to face this danger out of a sense of epistemological advantage, only partly backed up by a slave, a fisherman, some women servants, and several immature young men.  The purpose is now revealed to be more active than passive: “we…resolv’d to surprise ‘em, by making ‘em see something they had never seen, (that is, White People)…” (p. 48).

However, to do this, in their first approach to the native village, the narrator separates the group into two separate and distinct units.  On the one side, there are herself, her brother and her maid-servant, a small party of arrogant young people who put themselves in harm’s way as a prank, on the mistaken assumption that they, who know perfectly who and what they are, will have fun—and gain a greater sense of superiority—by watching the consternation and confusion in those who presumably will not know who and what these visitors are and will, furthermore, think they are divine beings.  On the other side, “Caesar, the Fisherman, and the rest” will stay back, hide behind some reeds, and observe what happens, being prepared, if necessary, to step forward and save the threesome from any untoward eventualities.   Just how disingenuous the narrator is at the time of the approach to the village is not easy to tell, although she clearly presents herself as a little leader who sets out to tease the supposedly savage, uneducated and unsophisticated Indians.  Thus, she writes,

They had no sooner spy’d us, but they set up a loud Cry, that frighted us at first; we thought it had been for those that should Kill us, but it seems it was of Wonder and Amazement. (p. 48)

The language here is at once vague and indeterminate but then seems to fall into a paradigm of conventionalized colonialist superiority.  The fear that the young folk feel is part of the game they are playing by tempting fate, while all the while knowing that, if not protected by their own European dignity and elevated civilization, symbolized by the fact they are dressed and the Indian naked, there close by, under cover, strong men to rush forward and rescue them.  That the presence of the second party, even with a proven warrior such as Oroonoko among them, would be insufficient to save the three silly youths from real danger does not really seem to be factored into their behavior or thoughts.  The older mind and the more experienced knowledge of the narrator who writes this all down in London at least a generation later, however, must be aware of how silly and stupid this game was.  That the threat is only implied by the text, requiring the reader to leap ahead of the young narrator’s consciousness, indicates that the emblem being created is exposing and criticizing something much more than youthful self-delusions of invulnerability. 

It would further seem that, since the party of visitors is all incapable of comprehending the words and gestures of the Indians in these circumstances, putting aside the Fisherman whose practical knowledge would not extend to any of the anthropological or epistemological questions raised by the incident, the implications of the emblem belong to the hindsight of the older narrator, and, even then, she is clearly avoiding too explicit a comment on what happened, leaving it up to her readers to interpret from attention to both components of the emblem and the tensions generated between them.  Nevertheless, in the historical moment she is recollecting, once the Indians have begun to touch her and look under her garments, she holds herself still, as though she were a statue, enjoying the superiority she presumes she has of observing the wonder of these savage men and women who cannot imagine who or what she is.  But when her three g\uardians—the Fisherman, Oroonoko and her brother—approach, as we said, to protect the narrator and her maid servant from any harm, the misreading of the Indians’ actions and words begins to resolve itself into a clearer mental picture.  The words spoken in the savage tongue are translated by the Fisherman whom they know as a trader.

So advancing to him, some of ‘em gave him their hands, and cry’d, Amora Tiguamy, which is as much as, How do you, or Welcome Friend; and all, with one din, began to gabble to him, and ask’d, If we had Sense, and Wit? if we cou’d talk of affairs of Life, and War, as they cou’d do?  If we could Hunt, Swim, and do a thousand things they use?  He answer’d ‘em, We cou’d. (p. 49)

           

To a certain extent, then, this continues the implicit joke: the indigenous people fail to recognize the humanity of the young European visitors; they seek information from the go-between who speaks their language; and they categorize the accomplishments of a human being in terms, first generally, as possessing intellectual faculties, and then, more particularly, as being able to communicate about important activities in society.  The literary joke, of course, turns on the ironical reversal of positions, with the Indians not sure whether the visitors are animal or human, just as Europeans were often unable to judge where to place in the scheme of things the nations they met whose cultures and languages were radically unfamiliar to them.

But there is a point in this narration when the situation begins to tip and the epistemological superiority of the young female narrator—and by extension all of European civilization—becomes questionable.  Though the Indians may be unsure of the gender of the narrator and her servant because their bodies are covered in garments they have never seen before, the question of what these two young females can speak about or do in their own culture is sharpened.  The affairs of life, war, hunting swimming and other vigorous activities are conventionally outside of a woman’s experience, and even her capacity for sense and wit have been denied by some ideologues, Christian and otherwise.  Viewed as satire, the scene exposes the gender, class and national prejudices of the presumably civilized and rational Europeans insofar as the narrator confesses to her own mistaken assumptions about the savages she meets. 

Yet the narration continues, with the Indians inviting the visitors into their village to enjoy the hospitality offered.  On the one hand, as before, the initial presentation, seen through the recollected perspective of the young girl’s naïve presuppositions, speaks of rude customs and unsophisticated values.  For example, we are told, “They serve every one their Mess on these pieces of [Sarumbo] Leaves, and it was very good, but too high season’d with Pepper” (p. 49).  On the other hand, when the narrator begins to imagine the responses of her hosts to her presence and the small tricks played by her companions, the situation begins to undercut the assumption of moral and intellectual superiority.

When we had eat, my Brother, and I, took out our Flutes, and play’d to ‘em, which gave ‘em new Wonder; and I soon perceiv’d, by an admiration, that is natural to these People, and by the extream Ignorance and Simplicity of ’em.  For seeing a Kinsman of mine set some Paper a Fire, with a Burning-glass, a Trick they had never before seen, they were like to have Ador’d him for a God; and beg’d he wou’d give them Characters or Figures of his Name, that they might oppose it against Winds and Storms; which he did, and they held it up in those Seasons, and fancy’d it had a Charm to conquer them; and kept it like a Holy Relique. (p. 449)

The process by which the naïve comments by the young unnamed narrator are transformed into the satiric exposure of European bigotry is visible in the change in verbs and the extension of reflective comments to considerations completely beyond the scope of the writer.  Thus, while she and her brother are playing the flute, she claims that the Indians are astounded by this performance, as though they had never heard music before, especially flute-playing, and even more bizarre that these two young people are such virtuosos that their music stupefies the primitive listeners.  Her assumption that the Indians, by virtue of ignorance and simplicity, that is, their condition of natural stupidity, misconstrue the whole relationship between the two cultures.  She forgets—although the words written on the page are her own, albeit inscribed close to a generation later—that she too is seeing something for the first time and that she cannot understand the people, their language, or their customs; and therefore, the expression she sees in the audience’s response to her performance, does not stem from any biological inferiority, but merely from surprise and unfamiliarity, shared human emotions. 

This same self-deluded cultural arrogance continues in regard to the relative who plays a trick with a magnifying glass to start a fire.  The wonder and admiration spoken of first now becomes something even further from the limits of probability.  The narrator assumes that the Indians would naturally take the kinsman for a god, or at least to be a shaman.  This is likely since it is indeed the kind of a trick medicine men do perform, as well as ventriloquism, prestidigitation, and similar “magical” illusions.  The indigenous culture could absorb this trick, too, once the mechanics were explained: the glass concentrates the light of the sun, the concentrated light increases the heat focused on a small area, and a dry piece of paper or a leaf will consequently burst into flame.  It is doubtful if the more scientific details of any explanation would be known to the kinsmen or the narrator either, certainly at this moment of their life. 

It is when she says that the Indians, in order to capture the powers displayed in the trick with the burning-glass, ask the young man for a copy of the characters or figures of his name that the explanation becomes absurd.  If these Indians have never before met Europeans, other than the Fisherman who had “gone native” by the time he meets them and hence does not appear to them as strange and beyond categorization, how do they know to ask for a written or symbolic representation of the young man’s name?  If they already have some system of writing, whether alphabetical or pictographic, then they would stand at a much higher level of cultural achievement than the narrator grants them throughout her report on how she met them when she was a young girl in her teens.  These Indians request this gift of a symbolic representation in order to perform other tricks, and in so doing their logic works something like this: the power of the burning-glass resides not so much in the instrument itself as in the owner of the object, hence it is necessary to have access to his power if any further acts of magic are to be performed.  The power of this godlike man can be reproduced in his name or some figure that captures his essence; hence, they ask for a copy of that symbolic essence “that they might oppose it against Winds and Storms.” 

There is no indication anywhere in the text, however, that the narrator knows how to reason in this anthropological way or to reproduce their symbolic thoughts.   She guesses, at best.  She guesses, not in the existential moment in the past when this visit to the village occurs, but much later, in London, when she brings to bear her mature memory and more educated thoughts based on much reading in the science of the seventeenth century.  That is, unless, as we shall have to discuss later in this essay, the narrator is more than the older woman she pretends to be in London—the actress, the spy, the intellectual amazon; but also as the Crypto-Jew who sees the whole of the Christian enterprise of slavery, colonization and anthropology as something superficial, erroneous and threatening to her own status as Jew.

Not only does the persona in her guise as naïve explorer presume that the Indians might think in this strange way about her kinsman and his tricks, but she asserts that they already have done so.  Her perspective has thus shifted.  She is not reporting on what she saw and thought and felt as an innocent adolescent in Surinam twenty to thirty years earlier, she is now recording what she knows happened after she left the colony. In subsequent years, the Indians used the characters received from the kinsman and, since it worked as a source of magical powers, they “kept it like a Holy Relique.”   It may be, as she explains, that the charm only worked in their fancy, and that the preservation of this piece of paper with figures inscribed on it is a delusion, as much so as a sacred relic in a Roman Catholic Church.  That being so, then her comments again take on satiric force, as much now on European superstitions, symbolized by the worship of holy objects by the Church, as among primitive peoples in faraway and exotic lands.  But since we know from the Epistle dedicating the whole of the book to Lord Maitland, and praising him therein for his loyalty to the Catholic Church, we may have to wonder at how much the critique here may be against her own pieties, or pretended pities as a New Christian or Crypto-Jew.

There is little need to continue with this long scene in order to show that, like those shorter emblematic episodes discussed already, it is composed in the form of an elaborate conceit—or even, as we shall have to discuss later, a subversive rabbinical midrash.  Moreover, once we have noted that the composition juxtaposes statements about the meaning of the images contained in the narrative and the narrative reflects back upon those discursive statements enriching complications, often with a satiric sting in their tails, it is important to see that the structure of the emblem superimposes several layers of textualization.  At the core, in the fictional terms of the historical moment (the pretense of the writer’s own “true” life story), there is a problematical awareness of her own vulnerability and lack of skill as a female; but stretched over this in a somewhat fragmentary and transparent way is another layer of fiction, that of the mature and yet always ambiguous Aphra Behn’s reflections on the adventures of her youth, and her pride in her acquired knowledge and experience that allows her to represent the royal slave Oronooko and his wife Imoinda as heroic and romantic figures; while on top of this, even less consistent and coherent in appearance, is a third layer, a filmy discourse of satiric intent, exposing the hypocrisies and foolishness of the colonial enterprise, as well as of the subjection of women to male authority; and perhaps still further, though more occluded than all the others, is the secret mask of the Crypto-Jew or Marrano experience, with its faith imbued with persecution, its memories of enslavement to the crowns of Europe, especially in Iberia, and its pride in the Sephardic achievements in the Golden Age of Andalusia.