Post 1

Passage: “...and it is most evident and plain that simple Nature is the most harmless, inoffensive and virtuous mistress...religion would here but destroy that tranquility they possess by ignorance; and Laws would but teach ’em to know Offences, of which now they have no Notion” (131).

Behn’s reference to “Nature” here characterizes the indigenous people as purer and more primitive than the white Christian colonizers. While in one sense she elevates the indigenous peoples’ apparent lack of religion, she is in another sense erasing indigenous spirituality and moral conflict. Behn may be saying something quite radical here by declaring that “Nature is the most harmless, inoffensive and virtuous mistress,” as the word “Nature” is most often used in the Christian church to indicate “impulse as contrasted with the perceived influence of God on man” (Oxford English Dictionary). If nature is in fact the better influence, Behn’s statement seems to reject the rigidity of Christian doctrine. As Anita Pacheco writes, “in the absence of [Christian] faith, there is little reason to argue for the pressing need of external conformity to the church on the part of an elite skeptical of its truth claims” (253-280). This characterizes the indigenous people as pure because they are untouched by the idea of sin, and so they are not necessarily in need of some kind of Christian savior.

Behn’s description of the “tranquility they possess by ignorance,” however, demonstrates an overall failure to see the indigenous people as complex, with their own set of moral conflicts and spiritual beliefs. Though her reference to their apparent lack of “religion” may simply mean that they do not adhere to a religious institution, her references to “tranquility” and the “Offences...of which now they have no Notion” lead me to believe that she is painting with a somewhat broader brush. It is unclear what beliefs the indigenous people hold from Behn’s description, because her description allows only for Christianity or the absence of it; there is no acknowledgement of other possible moral or spiritual systems of belief. In this way, Behn erases the possibility that the indigenous people may have just as rigid and complex a system of moral laws and spiritual beliefs as the Christian colonizers do. Because there is so much erasure like this in travel narratives such as Behn’s, historical knowledge of the early indigenous people of the Americas becomes distorted.

Works Cited

Behn, Aphra. “Oroonoko; or, the Royal Slave.” The Works of Aphra Behn, edited by Montague Summers, Project Gutenberg, 2009, pp. 125-208.

“Nature, n1.” Oxford English Dictionary Online, https://www-oed-com.proxy-um.researchport.umd.edu/view/Entry/125353?rskey=PRpXCf&result=1&isAdvanced=false#eid. Accessed 6 Feb 2020.

Pacheco, Anita. “‘Little Religion’ but ‘Admirable Morals’: Christianity and Honor in Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko.” Modern Philology, vol. 111, no. 2, 2013, pp. 253-280, https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/673098. Accessed 6 Feb 2020.