“. . .by him she so tenderly loved and truly adored in this; for wives have a respect for their husbands equal to what any other people pay a deity” (Behn 71)
In this passage Behn implies that the idealized love between Oroonoko and Imoinda is in fact representative of some broader cultural practice of marriage which involves faithfulness that is so absolute it manifests in the woman begging to be murdered by her husband because he says it will be good for her. While it would be boorish and obvious to simply say that Behn’s idealized depiction of this marriage beggars belief, contrasting it with a less ideal marital episode should help provide some grounding for the relationship between the leading heroes of this text.
One such less idealized conjugal tale can be found in Emanuel Aranda’s The History of Algiers and it's Slavery. This book includes a section called “Of the fidelity of a husband, and the unfaithfulness of his wife.” (Aranda 188) As the title suggests, this segment tells the story of a slave named Vipra who loses “all the conjugal love she should have had for her husband”, as she falls in love with a man named Assan (Aranda 190). The full episode is much more complicated and extensive, but the relevant detail lies in the way a woman is described as choosing to leave her husband for another man.
This serves to undercut the breadth and absolute nature of Behn's depiction of marriage, but it also reinforces aspects of the central relationship in Oroonoko. Early on in the story, Behn notes that Oroonoko could have had multiple wives (Behn 17), but elected to enter into a monogamous relationship with Imoinda. The passage from Aranda's book builds on the singularity of this relationship by implying that Imoinda's devotion was not in fact culturally dictated in quite the way Behn suggests. Instead, it was a choice. So even as Behn's comments on the nature of marriage are undercut by another account, the sentiment of her drama is borne out by the same comparison.
Works Cited
Aranda, Emanuel d.,b.1602. The History of Algiers and it's Slavery with Many Remarkable Particularities of Africk / Written by the Sieur Emanuel D'Aranda, Sometime a Slave there ; English'd by John Davies .. London, Printed for John Starkey .., 1666. ProQuest, https://search.proquest.com/docview/2240948210?accountid=14696.
Behn, Aphra. Oroonoko, edited by Janet Todd, Penguin Books, 2003.