Reimagining the “Royal Slave”: Paradox, Power, and the Politics of Representation in Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko

Abstract

Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko has long occupied an ambiguous position within early English literature. The novella resists straightforward interpretation, inviting readers into a space of narrative instability, shifting cultural codes, and unresolved tensions. This paper argues that Behn’s text is deliberately crafted as an interpretive puzzle—what Roland Barthes might call a “writerly” narrative—because it encourages multiple, sometimes contradictory, readings. At its core, the novel constructs a hero who is simultaneously noble and enslaved, dignified yet degraded, idealized yet racialized through European aesthetic norms. The persistent interplay of such oppositions suggests that Behn uses Oroonoko as a site of discursive negotiation rather than ideological affirmation. The essay examines Behn’s rhetoric of admiration, her Eurocentric descriptions, the politics of naming and representation, and the unresolved conflict between Oroonoko’s heroic status and his fate as colonial property. In doing so, it demonstrates how the novel both participates in and destabilizes the ideological structures of its time.