Aphra Behn, Part 10

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.

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[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-Heush literature, see my Masks in the Mirror: themes to be returned to later in this essay.