Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko, or, The Royal Slave (1688) as a Feminist Response to William Shakespeare’s The Tempest (1611).
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Date
2014
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university Mouloud Mammeri of Tizi-Ouzou
Abstract
This paper studies Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko, or the Royal Slave (1688) as a feminist response to William Shakespeare’s The Tempest (1611). It reads both works in the light of Mikhail Bakhtin’s and Moira Ferguson’s ideas. In my analysis, I focus on the dialogism that exists between the two works in their representation of ethnicity and gender with a special emphasis on their respective ideologies. Behn’s novella revises the status of the slave, which she uses as a metaphor for women’s confinement to the domestic sphere of life. She achieves her revision of the slave through her male protagonist Oroonoko. Behn’s novella rewrites Caliban’s savagery, ignorance, obedience, and naivety through Oroonoko’s nobility, education, independence and eloquence. In addition, Behn responds to Shakespeare’s representation of women through Imoinda and the white female narrator. The narrator is portrayed as an active female agent and an independent travel writer through whom Behn answers Shakespeare’s portrayal of Miranda as a woman subjected to the patriarchal rules of British society. Finally, by the qualities she attributes to her native female character Imoinda, she responds to Shakespeare’s stereotyped conception of native women embodied in his depiction of Sycorax as a witch and a prostitute. Besides, Behn’s criticism of the harem and the veil serve her intentions as a woman who calls for the suppression of female objectification and confinement to the domestic space. Imoinda and Onahal are Behn’s native women through whom she revises the status of the British women as the ‘Other’.
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56p.;30cm.(+cd)
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Cultural and Media Studies