This study will examine Aphra Benn's Oroonoko and Harriet Jacobs' Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, focusing specifically on the light which each work sheds on the gender discourses of their time. The study will consider the extent to which Oroonoko questions conventional gender roles, especially in the areas of writing and sexuality. With respect to Jacobs, the study will explore how she aligns the events of her life to fit conventional expectations, and how she resists and redefines conventional notions of womanhood, motherhood, female sexuality, and family.
The study will argue, ironically, that Jacobs, a black slave, offers much more resistance to traditional gender roles than does Behn, who presents herself on the surface as an aggressive and rebellious woman, but who, on a more profound level, is actually far more conservative in her attitude toward gender issues.
Behn plays a central role as narrator and character in her tale of the "Royal Slave" Oroonoko. Behn claims that it is a true history, that she is reporting what she herself saw and experienced, as well as what the hero himself told her about his life.
Behn's role as narrator, then, is crucial to the believability of the romance of the Royal Slave and his beloved Imoinda. The credibility of the story depends on her credibility as narrator/writer. The hero of the story is certainly a man, but if it were not for the courage and tenacity of Behn in recording what she saw and heard (assuming the work is at least substantially non-fictional), the nobility and heroism of Oroonoko would have been lost to history forever.
So bewildered is the naive Oroonoko by the misfortunes unjustly visited upon him throughout the story that he could not himself have told his story with any coherence. Behn the woman supplies such narrative coherence to the story of the noble but often baffled male hero Oroonoko. As a result, we might say that Behn is testifying indirect...