Writing dignity under empire:
Imoinda in Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko
Riya Singh
ABSTRACT
This article examines the figure of Imoinda in
Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko by situating her portrayal within the
historical moment in which Behn was writing, a period marked by
early colonial expansion and the marginal position of women writers
within English literary culture. Rather than approaching Imoinda
solely as a tragic romantic figure, the article reads her as a
carefully imagined representation of female dignity, courage, and
moral strength within systems structured by both patriarchy and
empire. Behn’s depiction of an enslaved Black woman who retains
composure, loyalty, and ethical resolve was an unusual narrative
choice in the seventeenth century, when colonial texts often reduced
such figures to spectacle or silence. At the same time, the novel
does not fully escape the ideological limits of its moment, and
Imoinda’s fate remains shaped by male authority and colonial
violence. By attending to this tension, the article argues that
Behn’s portrayal reflects a moral unease with domination rather than
a fully articulated political resistance. Imoinda’s suffering and
eventual death function not as romantic idealization but as a tragic
exposure of the human cost of empire and gendered control. Through
this reading, the paper suggests that Oroonoko gestures toward an
early feminist ethical imagination, one that acknowledges female
bravery and dignity even as it reveals the severe constraints placed
upon women within early colonial narratives.
Keywords: Imoinda; Oroonoko; Aphra Behn; Feminist Literary
Criticism; Female Agency; Colonial Patriarchy; Representation of
Women; Restoration Literature.
