The Imperial Gaze in Aphra Behn's Oroonoko

黃埔學報 埔學報 第四十 第四十九期 第四十
民國九十四年
WHAMPOA - An Interdisciplinary Journal 49(2005) 267-271
The Imperial Gaze in Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko
Tsai-hua Yang
National Army Senior high School
Abstract
I try to explore the ideological ambiguities and complexities of the European woman
writer as she tries to glorify the Black prince, Oroonoko. Being a “White,” “female” writer,
her multiple subjective positions conflict with one another. Hence, her attitudes toward the
racial Other are always ambivalent and complex. In the perspective of a female, she identifies
and sympathizes with him because of their parallel positions of being the Oppressed. However,
being one member of the White race, she treats him as a slave, the colonized. Moreover, she
aspires to be an authoritative author so she offers a more detailed description of the dialectical
relationship between the English community and the Black slave.
Keyword: Oroonoko, Gaze, English community, Black slave, Oppressed.
The narrative of colonialism itself is
shot through with ambivalences in Aphra
Behn’s text, Oroonoko. Homi Bhabha states
that “the discourse of post-Enlightenment
English colonialism often speaks in a tongue
that is forked, not false.” 1 Oroonoko is a
prose narrative, in which the female
colonizer records a story of the colonized
Other during “the first expansion of the
British empire” 2 in Surinam. The white
female narrator represents her colonial
experiences in a “forked” tone. On the one
hand, the narrator expresses her sympathy
when she idealizes the slaves and natives in
the colony as “the noble savage.” However,
as a white female subject of the British
Empire, she internalizes the imperialist
binarism, separating the colonizer and the
1
Homi K. Bhabha, The Location of Culture (London:
Routledgep, 1994) 85.
2
D. K. Fieldhouse, The Colonial Empires: A
Comparative Survey from the Eighteenth Century
267
colonized, master and slave. In this paper, I
will examine the ambiguity of her imperial
gaze on the colonized Other, Oroonoko, in
the text.
Behn describes the Black noble prince
as a Europeanized Other. He looks very
different from the other Blacks. “In order to
be the hero,” said Pearson, “Oroonoko has
to be Europeanized, presented as ‘more
Civilized’, according to the European mode
and given not only mastery of European
languages and cultures, European manners
and a European tutor, but even European
facial features …” (231). The narrator
describes Oroonoko in great detail when she
spots him at the first time with surprise and
amazement:
His Face was not of that brown, rusty
Black which most of that Nation are, but a
perfect Ebony, or polish’d Jett. His Eyes
were the most awful that cou’d be seen, and

268 黃埔學報 埔學報 埔學報 第四十 第四十九期 第四十 民國九十四年
very piercing, the White of ‘em being like
Snow, as were his Teeth. His Nose was
rising and Roman, instead of African and
flat. His Mouth, the finest shap’d that cou’d
be seen; far from those great turn’d Lips,
which are so natural to the rest of the
Negroes. The whole Proportion and Air of
his Face was so noble, and exactly form’d,
that, bating his Colour, there cou’d be
nothing in Nature more beautiful, agreeable
and handsome. There was no one Grace
wanting, that bears the Standard of true
Beauty. (13-14)
Behn beautifies him to become a noble
European. He has Western features: piercing
eyes, white teeth, rising nose, and a
fine-shaped mouth. On the other hand, his
Europeanized looks are sharply different
from the other Negroes. At first, Behn
distinguishes Oroonoko from other natives
by his skin. His skin is brightly black, like
“a perfect Ebony”, or “polished Jett” but
other people’s is “rusty black”. His mouth,
“the finest shap’d” does not have “the great
turn’d Lips” as those other Negroes. His
features are so similar with the Europeans’
that we almost identify him as a European
aristocrat, not a Negro, or a savage. In this
way, Behn tries to erase Oroonoko’s racial
distinction by his Europeanized appearance.
Even though Behn idealizes Oroonoko
as a” Noble Savage,” her attitude toward this
racial Other is still ambivalent. This
ambivalence is shown at the moment when
the White female narrator observes
Oroonoko’s physical features, educational
background, and social class. In the text, we
find both Behn’s desire to serve the purposes
of empire and an effort to put a stop to it. It
is also difficult to detach the female narrator,
who has sympathy for the oppressed Black
prince, from the White colonizer, who
oppresses Oroonoko to serve the interests of
colonial capitalism. As a White female
writer, Behn has split perspectives in
observing the Black subject, Oroonoko. She
portrays the nobility of Oroonoko. However,
she also shows a strong ambivalence for this
Black prince when she idealizes him.
Behn’s portrait of Oroonoko’s physical
features reveals her dichotomous
representation of the colonized. According
to Firdous Azim, “Oroonoko’s racial
characteristics and features follow a long
line of tradition of the delineation of the
Black man in English literature. The racially
ambivalent or mixed person, such as the
Moor, is preferred. (49)” Based on the
tradition, his physical appearance is different
form other Blacks and suitably
Europeanized. His Europeanized features
not only easily integrated him into the White
society but also serve the European
readership. On the other hand, Oroonoko’s
Europeanization is a “reductive
normalizing” according to Mary Louise
Pratt 3 . Laura Brown also agrees with this
point that it is a process of familiarization to
“mediate the shock of contact 4 ” in the first
encounter of the racial Other. Through the
“reductive normalizing,” the familiarized
racial Other is fixed and codified in the
framework of the European system.
When Behn characterizes Oroonoko,
3 Mary Louise Pratt, “Scratches on the Face of the
Country; or, What Mr. Barrow Saw in the Land of the
Bushmen,” Critical Inquiry 12(1985):121.
4 Laura Brown, Ends of Empire (New York: Cornell
University, 1993) 39.

Tsai-hua Yang: The Imperial Gaze in Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko 269
she attempts to familiarize him. However,
the unsuccessful part such as his black skin
becomes far more visible instead. “In Looks
That Kill: Violence and Representation in
Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko,” Anne Fogarty
remarks that “the more she (Behn)
endeavours to erase Oroonoko’s difference,
the more prominent it becomes. (12)” In
spite of his Europeanized appearance, she
does not wipe out his black ethnic identity.
Moreover, his complexion is extremely
black, like “perfect ebony” or “polished jet”
(13). It is impossible for Oroonoko to
remove his alterity completely. As a result,
neither a Negro nor a White man, he
becomes a racially ambivalent or mixed
person. He is described as someone very
familiar and attractive but also strange and
exotic. Behn’s imperfect Europeanization of
Oroonoko predicts the impossible unity
between the Black prince and his White
female friend within the framework of the
colonial system. Furthermore, Oroonoko’s
ineffaceable skin color becomes a locus of
their separateness.
I think that Oroonoko’s blackness is of
double meanings. I do not deny that his
blackness represents his racial difference
from the Western narrator and causes their
division. However, I do believe that his skin
color also reminds the female narrator of his
oppression and causes her sympathy for the
anti-slavery discourse in the Eighteenth
century. The racial difference, symbolized
by black skin, paradoxically generates split
and fusion, discrimination and sympathy
between the Black and White races.
Oroonoko’s blackness reminds the White
female simultaneously of their difference
and comradeship. It also arouses both her
love and hate for the Black Other at the
same time.
Behn does want to bring about the
fusion of the Black and White race, so she
tries to break the traditional opposition
between “us” Europeans and “them”
non-Europeans. However, this
Europeanization of his physical beauty by
Behn also exhibits her Eurocentric cultural
supremacy. Oroonoko, as Jacqueline
Pearson points out, in order to be the hero,
has to be Europeanized according to “the
European Mode” (30). This could be
regarded as a reduction of Oroonoko’s
Otherness by the Eurocentric aesthetic
standards. The so-called “cultural
hegemony” according to Antonio Gramsci is
clearly at work especially when Oroonoko is
depicted as a Europeanized prince. For the
racist bias is never denied by Behn that the
idea of European identity is a superior one in
comparison with all the non-European
peoples and cultures 5 .
Behn introduces Oroonoko’s physical
beauty in anthropological details, as if the
Black prince is transformed into the “object”
of the Western gaze. He is at first under the
narrative gaze of the dominant White female,
and then brought under the gaze of
European readers. This objectification is
also a part of a process of feminization and
sexualization because he is like an actress
putted on the centre-stage and fetishised for
corporeal display. In addition, as one of the
slaves in the capital and commercial colony,
5 Edward W. Said, Orientalism (New York: A
Division of Random House, 1978) 7.

270 黃埔學報 埔學報 埔學報 第四十 第四十九期 第四十 民國九十四年
Oroonoko is turned into the colonizer’s
property for the economical market. This
reading enables a parallelism between the
Black race and the oppressed women. As M.
Duffy said, “The slaves have become
property, as women purchased in the
marriage market were property.” 6 Although
the female narrator and Oroonoko were
members of the similarly subjugated group
in the patriarchal society, the female
colonizer nevertheless uses the fetishizing
language of the colonizer in order to
sexualize Oroonoko.
Behn idealizes Oroonoko as a “royal”
slave because of his high social status as a
prince. This noblization is an ambiguous
process of idealization and fetishization
shown in the way Behn characterizes
Oroonoko. It, however, cannot change his
actual situation of being a slave in the
colony. On the contrary, it makes Oroonoko
not just a commodity, but a “fetished”
commodity in the colonial slave economy.
Oroonoko is commodified because he
becomes a slave to be traded by the
colonizers. On the other hand, he is not
taken as a labourer as other slaves. He is
fetishised according to his “exchange value”,
not his “use value” 7 because “he suffered
only the Name of the Slave, and had nothing
of the Toil and Labour of one” (42). It does
not matter that he is not useful for his White
master. After all he becomes a fetish, the
object of the colonizer’s desire.
The colonial gaze on the Other is
6 The Passionate Shepherdess: Aphra Behn, 1640-89,
London, Jonathan Cape, 1977, p268.
7 For Marx, a “commodity” is judged not according
to their “use value” but according to their “exchange
value”.
always dubious and vague, no matter what
social rank the Other comes from. Oroonoko
is sold as a slave to Trefry, who finds out his
royal bearing from “something so
extraordinary in his Face, his Shape and
Mien, a Greatness of Look, and Haughtiness
in his Air” (35). Oroonoko’s class difference
from other slaves results in the brotherhood
and friendship between him and the Western
masters but the truth is, he is nothing but a
slave, albeit a “royal” slave. The
master-slave relationship is obvious in the
text when Trefry renames Oroonoko as
“Caesar”. Although Behn explains that the
Westerners give the natives new names
because their native ones are hard to
pronounce. In fact, the act of naming is
related to a declaration of possession. The
new name signifies Oroonoko’s new identity
as a slave in the colony. As a result, Behn
writes that “by that name he was receiv’d on
Shore at Parham-House, where he was
destin’d a Slave” (37). Therefore, the new
name “Caesar” symbolizes their relationship
of master and slave in the colonial empire
although they show love and esteem to each
other.
In the very beginning, Oroonoko is
idealized as a noble prince, who not only has
classical European beauty and mind but also
can build a brotherhood with the White
people. As I have discussed in Chapter One,
the sentimental identification proves Behn’s
sympathy for the oppressed. However, the
racial and ethnical difference never can be
effaced under the colonial gaze throughout
the whole story. He cannot avoid being
identified with a black slave in the system of
imperial society. Behn’s narration about her

Tsai-hua Yang: The Imperial Gaze in Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko 271
Black hero is always so ambiguous that we
cannot tell whether Oroonoko is a friend or
an enemy, a prince or a slave in Behn’s
opinion. (Summarizing from my thesis for
the Master Degree)
References
[1] Homi K. Bhabha, The Location of
Culture (London: Routledgep, 1994)
85.
[2] D. K. Fieldhouse, The Colonial
Empires: A Comparative Survey from
the Eighteenth Century
[3] Mary Louise Pratt, “Scratches on the
殖民者的角度凝視被殖民者
殖民者的角度凝視被殖民者
殖民者的角度凝視被殖民者
楊采樺
楊采樺
陸軍高中 陸軍高中
陸軍高中
摘要
摘要
Face of the Country; or, What Mr.
Barrow Saw in the Land of the
Bushmen,” Critical Inquiry
12(1985):121.
[4] Laura Brown, Ends of Empire (New
York: Cornell University, 1993) 39.
[5] Edward W. Said, Orientalism (New
York: A Division of Random House,
1978) 7.
[6] The Passionate Shepherdess: Aphra
Behn, 1640-89, London, Jonathan Cape,
1977, p268.
[7] For Marx, a “commodity” is judged not
according to their “use value” but
according to their “exchange value”.
本文主要探討班如何以殖民者的角度凝視 (Gaze)被殖民者。從一個殖民者的角度看
被殖民者,她的態度搖擺不定,徘徊在肯定及否定被殖民者之間。當一位歐洲女性作家
試圖刻劃黑人王子歐魯諾克的故事時,在意識型態上所面對的矛盾弔詭之處。身為一個”
白人”,”女性”作家,艾芙拉,班的主體意識位置 (subjective positions)多重而複雜且互
相衝突,因此,她對這位異族他者的態度總是曖昧不明。從一個女性的角度來看,同樣
身為社會中的受迫者,班認同且同情歐魯諾克,將之盛讚為一位外貌俊美挺拔之黑人王
子。但是,身為白人社會的一份子,她仍視他為黑奴,是一個被殖民者。
關鍵字:凝視,被殖民者,主體意識位置,歐魯諾克。

272 黃埔學報 埔學報 埔學報 第四十 第四十九期 第四十 民國九十四年