Analyse The Representation Of Women In Oroonoko, Or The Royal Slave By Aphra Behn And The Fortunes And Misfortunes Of The Famous Moll Flanders By Daniel Defoe

In this essay we are going to try to set the role of women in two texts that we have studied during the course, the first one is Oroonoko, or the Royal Slave by Aphra Behn and the second one is The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe. In times when women could not be writers, Aprha Behn (1640-1689) got to live of her writings. Of course critics of those times saidthat she could not be the author of her works but some man wrote it for her, specially because she had no money and she was not an upper class citizen. In her works she expounds themes of sex and matrimony from an nonconformist point of view, which claim women as owner and subject of her sexuality and having choice in her matrimony. Furthermore to be a feminist, she was one of the firstabolitionists. In her novel Oroonoko (1688), she describes the horror of the slavery from a feminist point of view. As her life as her works were labelled of indecent and immoral. Oronooko, The story, whose protagonist is an African slave who is brought to Surinam around the 1660s, tells a tragic relationship, which apparently was inspired in Aphra Behn's travels around the colonies of South Africa. Thisstory describes very well the slave system of the time. Imoinda, is a female character who is really interesting for this analysis because she is portrayed as an object and then as a character. Firstly she is depicted as an object in relation with the king, by which – at least at the beginning - Imoinda has no capacity to decide. But also at the start of their relationship with Oroonoko she isportrayed as an object, in relation about the desire of him and not of her, and her pleasure shows subordinate of Oroonoko's. In this sense, it is interesting to compare this image of Imoinda with of Onahal's. Onahal is not considered as an object for losing her beauty and youth and, on the other hand, she has acquired a kind of power, for being an old king's lover. For these reasons, Onahal can , onthe contrary of Imoinda, expresses her own desires and acts about them. In the illustration of Imoinda as an object it can be read as a critic about women's situation, specially through her suffering, to have given in to the king's desire. From her transgression, that she got together with Oroonoko, despite of duty forces her to belong to the king exclusively, she began to look like a subject. Thechange of Imoinda from object to subject occurs when it can be said that she is guilty for her voluntary participation, as a subject able to take her own decisions and to suffer for their.

Once in Surinam, after the transgression that turns her into a subject, Imoinda will be represented as a strong woman, free a capable as each other. It has even highlighted her courage showing her fightingfor her freedom being pregnant, and also it is a mark of equality – regarding her and Oroonoko fight together for the same matter – without relegating the maternity as a identity sign of the female body. Imoinda dies against the slavery too, and she denies, maybe more than Oroonoko, her slave name Clemene. Aphra Behn writes a lot about the unfair treatment that society gives to women. In many ofher works she denounces the hypocrisy which the physical appearance of women is valued which is deteriorated in agreement as time passes. She also denounces the commercialization of the body of women and how this is no different with the treatment of women slaves. She denounces the double parameter with which men and women's behaviour is judged and this is called sexism . Journalist and novelistDaniel Defoe was born in London in 1660, he took studies in the seminary but he left and he dedicated himself to trade, making several travels around Europe. He was accused of misconduct, because he belonged to politic rival parties, he was a spy of the English crown, he served King William III of Orange whose death he was imprisoned. He edited the newspaper the review. In his last years he was...