Aboan seduces Onahal, who quickly agrees to help the lovers, and Oroonoko and Imoinda spend the night together.
With the help of his good friend and fellow warrior, Aboan, he concocts a plan to do so.
Oroonoko confirms Imoinda’s longing to return to him from Onahal, one of the King’s old wives, and by exchanging secret glances with Imoinda when visiting the Otan.īefore Oroonoko leaves for war, he is determined to consummate his marriage to Imoinda. Due to the strict laws of the Otan, Oroonoko is prevented from seeing Imoinda until the King invites him.ĭespite being persuaded otherwise by those around them, the lovers remain faithful to each other. She is still a virgin and refuses, as much as she can, the King’s advances. Separated from her true love, Imoinda is kept cloistered at the Otan, the King’s pleasure palace. While Oroonoko is off hunting, the king sends her the royal veil, a sign of invitation for attractive women to come to court. After seeing her at court, he decides he wants her to become one of his concubines. However, the king, a lecherous old man, hears about Imoinda’s beauty. They participate in a marriage ceremony but Oroonoko still has to ask his grandfather, the King, for his blessing, in keeping with the patriarchal customs of the society. While at court, Oroonoko visits the daughter of his foster father, the beautiful and pure Imoinda. The narrator spends much time describing Oroonoko’s noble characteristics, and is particularly interested in detailing his exceedingly fine physical beauty, which is a blend of Roman and African traits. The seventeen-year-old Oroonoko becomes the new general, and returns to court an elegant and intelligent young man. One day, during an intense battle, Imoinda’s father takes a fatal arrow in the eye and saves Oroonoko’s life. Oroonoko has grown up away from the court, and has been trained to be a great military leader by Imoinda’s father. Coramantien is a brave and warlike nation that participates in the trans-Atlantic slave trade, selling prisoners of war to Western ships. As the novel’s full title announces, Oroonoko is not just any old slave-he is the last descendant of a royal line, and the prince of an African country called Coramantien (probably modern-day Ghana). Suriname is a British colony at the time the narrative takes place (the 1660s). The narrator claims to have known Oroonoko during his captivity in Suriname, South America. Oroonoko’s tale is told from the perspective of a female narrator, possibly Aphra Behn herself.
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