The Presence of a Female Narrator in Behn's Oroonoko

Aphra Behn's most famous novella, Ornooko or The Royal Slave A True History, pairs romance with realism alongside Greco-Roman story elements that aid in expressing at least one of the work's overall messages. The catch, however, is that Ornooko's narrator is not male like Virgil or Homer's. She is a woman and almost stereotypically so. Despite Behn's adoption of a male epic story format for Ornooko, the apologetic introduction and the emasculation of Prince Oroonoko as the ideal lover obviously indicate that the narrator is female and overall conveys an empathetic tone that points to Behn's anti-slavery leaning.

Oroonoko's apologetic introduction follows an almost set formula for female writers of the Restoration, so that the narrator could not possibly be mistaken for male. The narrator does not claim to have authority on the subject of Ornooko's story because the Restoration was evidently a patriarchal society that expected women to be docile and submissive. The story starts with a self-incriminating:

"I do not pretend, in giving you the history of this royal slave, to entertain my reader with the adventures of a feigned hero, whose life and fortunes Fancy may manage at the poet's pleasure; not in relating the truth, design to adorn it with any accidents, but such as arrived in earnest to him" (Behn 2279).

Behn undermines herself as a writer, a storyteller, and even as a witness of the events she describes in the story because she was not really allowed to sound too confident, given her time in history. Like famed diarist Cavendish, Behn assumes a lady-like ignorance that was a popular female stylistic tool during the era because it alluded to the virgin-like innocence that society during the era required women to at least feign, if not actually possess.