Oroonoko,or the royal slave.

[sparklechick]

"male-female relationships and marriage in the novel"
.

[den]

I've read Aphra Behn's
Oroonoko: Or, The Royal Slave ( 1688), Norton Critical Edition.

Whether this tragic love story of slaves of rank is a `true' story from Behn's personal travels or just fiction, studying the accompanying editorial notes, explanatory annotations and supporting contextual seventeenth-and-eighteenth-century documents help to gain clarity of who and what Imoinda and Oroonoko represent.

Behn's tale certainly contributes to Jean Jacques Rousseau's later noble savage myth, as in (man's) life reconnected with nature, and that the hero and heroine embody The idea of Innocence, grace, before man knew shame and sin.

Oroonko fell in love with Imoinda, and in Behn's interpretation,

" The only Crime and Sin with Woman is, to turn her off, to abandon her to Want, Shame and Misery: Such ill Morals are only practis'd in Christian-Countries, where they prefer the bare Name of Religion; and without Virtue or Morality, they think that's sufficient." p.15

Behn goes on to defend this royal `savages' values of Honour and Duty irregardless of colonialist slavery. This value system including her eternal Empire over Him. Imoinda `condescended' to receive him for her husband, as the greatest honour the Gods could bestow her with.

Maybe you can presume where this is heading... :D

Some essays of note in this edition that may be pertinent in regards your mentioning "male-female relationships and marriage in the novel" (not exactly sure what your post is about here but you've mentioned a book near and dear to my heart and I'll go on and on about it all night ;) )

- The Other Problem with Women: Reproduction and Slave Culture in Aphra Behn's Oroonoko. Charlotte Sussman

There are also included invaluable written accounts of this time period and the slave trade.