On The Heterotopias In Ahpra Behn’s Oroonoko

Aphra Behn (1640-1689), was a prolific dramatist of the English Restoration and wasone of the first professional English female writers. Along with Delariviere Manley and ElizaHaywood, Behn is sometimes referred to as one of “The fair triumvirate of wit”. VirginiaWoolf wrote,“All women together, ought to let flowers fall upon the grave of Aphra Behn[…] for it was she who earned them the right to speak their minds”. Oroonoko: or The RoyalSlave (1688) is the most important one among Aphra Behn’s works and one of the earliestnovels in Britain. As the first humanitarian novel written by the female writer, some criticsanalyzed the novel from postcolonial and feminist perspectives. However, little attention hasbeen paid to the more profound and complex heterotopias within. This thesis explores thepower relations in different heterotopias in the novel as well as the marginalized people’spursuit of equality and love with Foucault’s heterotopias theory as a starting point.Foucault defines the modern concept of space as the space of “site” and hold that there isanother space of sites, which is “in such a way as to suspect, neutralize, or invert the set ofrelations that they happen to designate, mirror, or reflect”. These spaces, called utopia andheterotopia, are linked with all the others sometimes, but on the other side, they contradictwith each other. Heterotopia is a space to connect the two worlds of reality and myth, sodiverse, where heterogeneous factors can be simultaneously and parallelly presented.Foucault claims, space is not a matter like entity, but a heterogeneous space, a power relation.Based on the concept of heterotopias, this thesis analyzes in three chapters the heterogeneouselements and power relations in three different heterotopias in Oroonoko.The first chapter analyzes the heterotopias of African autocratic feudal monarchyCoramantien. In Coramantien, the idea of hierarchy was deeply rooted in the subjects’ mind,the upper having absolute rule over the lower, while the lower only covertly resisting the top.That is why Oroonoko’s pursuit for true love and Aboan’s defence could not turn to positiveefforts and met their failures under the deep oppression of hierarchy. Although people therewere of the same race, there existed gender differences within the same class. Women’s statuswas lower than men. Imoinda and Onahal suffered the oppression of patriarchy. Due to thedeep influence of patriarchy, Imoinda’s and Onahal’s covert pursuit of their love could not be free from the bond with men and eventually they failed. The second chapter analyzes thecontended heterotopias of the races-hybrid of blacks and whites in South American colonySurinam. In Surinam, the whites placed themselves above enslaved blacks; tamed them byviolence and space technology for their own use. The colonial culture was based on Europeancivilization, which in turn influenced the colony and awakened the oppressed blacks. Underthe leadership of Oroonoko, they counterattacked on board and they fled from the plantationin the colony. In the gender dimension, white women, black women were lower than men andsuffered the prejudice by men. But compared to women in Coramantien, they resisted morecourageously than before, as Imoinda fiercely fought against the enemy and would rather diethan to lose honor; the narrator broadened the scope of profession to win more rights forwomen. The third chapter analyzes the balanced heterotopias of various races outside thecolony in Surinam. In front of the powerful nature, they discovered the ideal relationship ofpeople from different ethnic groups and the possibilities and necessities of cooperationbetween them. When they visited the Indian town, they found the friendship and equalityamong the Indian people. Those expeditions were undoubtedly a breakthrough to duality, apositive quest for power exchange and balances, which embodied the marginalized people’spursuit for equality and friendship.By the analysis of heterogeneous elements and power relations in the novel, this paperattempts to find how such marginal groups as blacks and women in the middle and late17thcentury absorbed and practiced the advanced European democratic ideas and sought for loveand life under the oppression of feudal hierarchy, imperialism and patriarchy. Though theblacks’ uprising ultimately failed and Oroonoko was dismembered, the voices of democracy,equality and love were expressed in the novel. This paper tries to conclude, the novelOroonoko embodies the idea that only by constructing and protecting the individual powersof space, can we see the vision of equality and love..