
If you are a member (student of staff) of a subscribing Her contributions to both prose and poetry have contributed greatly to feminism and to literature.Consult the article in its entirety. Other works of hers include a large work of poetry that is slowly finding its way into mainstream literature anthologies. She champions the female as a deliberately sexual being who is punished for being so. She changed the definition of feminine in presenting works where women are objects subjugated to male carnal desire, and punished for going outside this subjugated sphere. She was also notorious for her torrid relationships with other well-known people of her time, and for working a provocative job as a spy. For a long while, Behn was negatively criticized for both her work and her social life outside of her writing. Oroonoko is one of the only known novels written by this author, who has yet to be fully discovered and publicized. Its value as a story, a novel, and a commentary of social life and slavery is highly valuable. His love interest, Imoinda, shines.ĭismissed during its publishing as vulgar and sensational because of the author's "warm" attitude toward sexuality and violence, Oroonoko is now placed among the treasures of British literature. Oroonoko, while not an immediately likable character in his stoicism, is given the effect of reader appeal through the other characters in the text. The interesting story makes definite commentary on the role of women and of religion as shown by the contrast in cultures. Race, social class, gender, age, life and death all play a part in this manuscript. This is just one the main dualities presented in this text. Separated in different social classes, the main character, who is black, is deemed royalty in one world, and slave in another. The title character of the Royal Prince then finds himself with soldiers and war captains with the natives of Surinam, and then with its colonists. Written by the so-called "bad girl" of her time, Behn's novel explores firs the foreign world of Coramantien and its royalty. Aphra Behn's Oroonoko is theorized in style and format to possibly be one of the first novels in English, connecting the worlds of Europe, Africa, and America in a tale that is common in plot but uncommon in character.
