Page "Oroonoko" Paragraph 28

Todd is probably correct in saying that Aphra Behn did not set out to protest slavery, but however tepid her feelings about slavery, there is no doubt about her feelings on the subject of natural kingship.

The final words of the novel are a slight expiation of the narrator's guilt, but it is for the individual man she mourns and for the individual that she writes a tribute, and she lodges no protest over slavery itself.

A natural king could not be enslaved, and, as in the play Behn wrote while in Surinam, The Young King, no land could prosper without a king.

Her fictional Surinam is a headless body.

Without a true and natural leader ( a king ) the feeble and corrupt men of position abuse their power.

What was missing was Lord Willoughby, or the narrator's father: a true lord.

In the absence of such leadership, a true king, Oroonoko, is misjudged, mistreated, and killed.