The Paradoxes of Slavery in Thomas Southerne's Oroonoko. - Comparative Drama

The Paradoxes of Slavery in Thomas Southerne's Oroonoko.

By Comparative Drama

  • Release Date: 2008-03-22
  • Genre: Performing Arts

Description

Critics generally base their analyses of ambivalent representations of slavery in Oroonoko, Thomas Southernes popular 1695 play, on its hero. (1) By concentrating on Oroonoko, an African prince, many scholars argue that Southerne (1660-1746) objects, not to slavery, but to either the enslavement of aristocrats (2) or the institution's excessive brutality. (3) Like his prototype in the play's source, Aphra Behn's novella Oroonoko; Or The Royal Slave (1688), Oroonoko, is, in fact, an extraordinary case: an idealized member of the nobility whose English owners condemn his bondage and exempt him and his wife, Imoinda, from the harsh labor and punishments that slaves typically experience. Lesser-born slaves, the play appears to conclude, deserve their condition, if not its associated cruelties. Southerne's Oroonoko, however, depicts a third slave of almost equal importance to the prince and his wife: Oroonoko's attendant, Aboan, second only to the title character in the original productions printed cast list. (4) While some scholars include Aboan in their critiques of Southerne's attitude toward slavery, they often minimize his presence (5) or characterize him as a "kneeling, supplicant African." (6) Yet he proves himself Oroonoko's equal--at times his superior--in insight and initiative throughout the play and voices much of its antislavery rhetoric. By focusing on Aboan, I explore a tension in Oroonoko that registers a fundamental critique of slavery as an institution that is absent from Behn's novella: Southerne subverts one major rationalization he offers for enslavement--the traditional aristocratic justification that slaves are naturally inferior and therefore suited to bondage (7)--by presenting an exceptional, nonaristocratic slave. (8)

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