Analysis Of Oroonoko, And The Royal Slave By Aphra Behn

Slavery is a humongous topic involving both slaves and former slaves. The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave Story is one such story. Douglass suffered punishments, and watching others get punished, he uses those experiences to make his argument against slavery.Douglass’ tone in the narrative is sarcastic and dark. Frederick Douglass successfully uses vast quantities of rhetorical devices, illuminating the horror and viciousness of slavery, including the need to eliminate it.

She emphasizes that the life of a slave woman is incomparable to the life of a slave man, in the sense that a woman’s sufferings are not only physical but also extremely mental and emotional. Whether or not a slave woman is beaten, starved to death, or made to work in unbearable circumstances on the fields, she suffers from and endures horrible mental torments. Unlike slave men, these women have to deal with sexual harassment from white men, most often their slave owners, as well as the loss of their children in some cases. Men often dwell on their sufferings of bodily pain and physical endurance as slaves, where as women not only deal with that but also the mental and emotional aspect of it. Men claim that their manhood and masculinity are stripped from them, but women deal with their loss of dignity and morality. Females deal with the emotional agony as mothers who lose their children or have to watch them get beaten, as well as being sexually victimized by white men who may or may not be the father of their children. For these women, their experiences seem unimaginable and are just as difficult as any physical punishment, if not more so.

In a time period when women were considered inferior, as were blacks, it was unimaginable the horrors a black woman in the south had to endure during this period. African women were slaves and subject to the many horrors that come along with being in bondage, but because they were also women, they were subject to the cruelties of men who look down on women as inferior simply because of their sex. The sexual exploitation of these females often lead to the women fathering children of their white masters. Black women were also prohibited from defending themselves against any type of abuse, including sexual, at the hands of white men. If a slave attempted to defend herself she was often subjected to further beatings from the master. The black female was forced into sexual relationships for the slave master’s pleasure and profit. By doing this it was the slave owner ways of helping his slave population grow.

People often wonder about the struggles of slave life, including the fact that it was extremely difficult to become literate as a slave. Frederick Douglass, who was once a slave who learned to read and write, outlines these obstacles and the effects that they had on him in a chapter titled “Learning to Read and Write” within his autobiography. Said chapter reveals Douglass’s innermost thoughts and attitudes towards many things during his time as a slave, including his mistress, slavery itself, and reading. Douglass displays an appreciative and later aggravated tone towards his mistress, an outraged tone towards slavery, and an enthusiastic tone that later becomes resigned and despairing towards reading, exemplifying that tone can strongly influence the portrayal of a topic.

Since the publication of the first slave narratives as early as 1740, black authors accounting their experiences as former slaves have used a variety of tactics to best reach audiences with whom it was thought they had little in common with beyond basic humanity, including testimonials, documentation, and use of the popular literary techniques of the era. As the tradition of the slave narrative grew alongside the abolitionist movement, these narratives became increasingly political, as authors hoped to not only share their stories of subjugated, but motivate those in power to action against the institution oppressing them. Two of the most significant

Women were not only used for their labor, but were also exploited sexually. Slave owners felt they had the right to use black women for their own sexual desires, and felt they had the right to use their bodies for slave breeding. This obscenity between the master and slave were not only psychologically damaging for black women, but would also lead to physical abuse. In her narrative, Ms. Jacobs gives us a firsthand description of the abuse that would occur if she were to upset her master, “Some months before, he had pitched me down stairs in a fit of passion; and the injury I received was so serious that I was unable to turn myself in bed for many days”

Throughout history, slaves have been treated like animals and thought of as property, not human beings. Even Oroonoko, a handsome, statuesque prince is turned into a slave because of his race, and is degraded and mistreated. To racist slave owners, the horrible treatment of Africans was acceptable because they were a different species, and no amount of education or beauty could save them. Behn shows how unjust and brutal slavery is in Oroonoko. The treatment of slaves is comparable to the treatment of the poor, as both have few rights, and both are unjustly judged and mistreated based on social status.

During the time prior to the twentieth century our world accepted slavery as a normal part of life. Aphra Behn and Phillis Wheatley, both female authors born about 100 years apart, had their own views of slavery and wrote poems and stories about the subject. These women were physically different, Aphra was a Caucasian, and Phillis was an African American, and their lives were rather different as well. Aphra was a spy and playwright, who lived the middle class life and Phillis, was a slave who was taken from her homeland, brought to America, sold into slavery, then later freed. I believe that both writers’ views were difficult to figure out, especially by just reading their works.

Slavery is one of the darkest parts of American History. Slave narratives are personal accounts written by former slaves about their experiences during slavery as well as their struggles to obtain freedom. The slave narratives offer chronological events and individual experiences. This is important because it gives us writers perspective on slavery. Slaves, like Frederick Douglass and Jacobs, wrote narratives using ethos, pathos, and logos in their rhetoric to persuade their readers. In comparing both authors, Frederick Douglass uses pathos the most effectively.

White explores the master’s sexual exploitation of their female slaves, and proves this method of oppression to be the defining factor of what sets the female slaves apart from their male counterparts. Citing former slaves White writes, “Christopher Nichols, an escaped slave living in Canada, remembered how his master laid a woman on a bench, threw her clothes over her head, and whipped her. The whipping of a thirteen-year-old Georgia slave girl also had sexual overtones. The girl was put on all fours ‘sometimes her head down, and sometimes up’ and beaten until froth ran from her mouth (33).” The girl’s forced bodily position as well as her total helplessness to stop her master’s torture blatantly reveals the forced sexual trauma many African females endured.

write. Douglass uses irony and a sense of unawareness in his narrative to describe "the toils of women through his aunt’s afflictions but failed...to accurately address and interpret," (James 34) these strategies attempt to validate his role as a "fugitive American slave narrator, seeking a written document to prove that"(James 27) he has obviously suggested through language the free territory he claims. The connection for Douglass between the wanting of literacy and personal worth is what he focuses on primarily throughout the narrative. Douglass establishes himself as a man who is deserving of freedom, and that itself is a major significance to other slave narratives. This generalization doesn't extend to the slave narrative written by Harriet Jacobs who focuses on the brutality that women slaves face compared to men slaves. She states many times the fact that women slaves are degraded and treated "less than there worth." (Jacobs 29)

Most commonly slave narratives were written by men compared to women, primarily focused on the physical pain and endurance they experienced. Narratives that were written by men included descriptions of whippings along with other punishments that were known to deprive male slaves of their masculinity. Even though both men and women were beaten, starved and forced to work in the fields, women slaves suffered horrible mental abuse such as sexual harassment and the loss of their children. Usually, one of the central themes of a slave narrative is violence which is present in both of these books however in slightly different ways. Even though the main motif in the Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl is not violence, violence is still portrayed periodically throughout. For example, Linda heard other slaves not only being whipped but also being burned or frozen to death. The physiological, mental and emotional abuse that slaves experienced was not always fully illustrated in narratives like physical abuse was, however in Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl it is a consistent theme.

In a surprise ending, the female slave lightly debates everyone’s morals coherently: “(Stand off!) we help not in our loss! / We are too heavy for our cross, / And fall and crush you and your seed” (243-245). Notably, this is the one time in the narrative that we find the female slave easy to understand and sensible.

The story, Oroonoko; or, The Royal Slave, written by Aphra Behn, depicts the main character, Oroonoko, as being an African prince that lives among his people, whom all abide by a code of virtue and fidelity. When Oroonoko is faced with a dilemma in his own country and living among a “civilized” white society, that are devout Christians, he is confronted with the burden to uphold his code of virtue and maintain a title of being a “Noble Savage” by means of loyalty, religious beliefs, and honor.

Aphra Behn’s novel, Oroonoko, gives a very different perspective on a slave narrative. Her characters embody various characteristics not usually given to those genders and races. Imoinda’s character represents both the modern feminist, as well as the subservient and mental characteristics of the typical eighteenth-century English woman. Oroonoko becomes an embodiment of what is normally a white man’s characteristic; he is the noble, princely, and sympathetic character that is not usually attributed to black men in general throughout most novels of slavery. The complete opposite character style is given to the slavers; the English are viewed as the barbaric, cunning, brutal characters that are usually portrayed in opposite and more generous