Aphra Behn's Oroonoko and the "Blank Spaces" of Colonial Fictions

Abstract

Near the beginning of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, Marlow confides to his listeners that I was a little chap I had a for maps. I would look for hours at South America, or Africa, or Australia, and lose myself all the glories of exploration. At that time there were many blank spaces on the earth, and when I saw one that looked particularly inviting on a map (but they all look that) I would put my finger on it and say, When I grow up I will go there. Fortunate enough to have been born nineteenth-century England, the grown man has lived out the little chap's of exploration in every sort of latitude all overthe two hemispheres. But, as Marlow ruefully confesses, the hankerings of nineteenthcentury European explorers must be tempered by the recognition that, what was once virgin territory inviting European possession has, at least since his boyhood, ceased to be a blank space of delightful mystery-a white patch for a boy to dream gloriously over. It [has] become a place of darkness.' The little chap's seemingly commendable passion for maps and dreams of glorious exploration have become the grown man's colonizing lust transformed into imperialistic nightmare. I have been begun this essay on Oroonoko with a brief excursion into Heart ofDarkness because, though written two hundred years apart, these stories show remarkable points of convergence. Both stories, for example, are told by an eyewitness narrator (Mrs. A. Behn, Marlow) who both collaborates with and criticizes the colonial enterprise; both feature a protagonist (Oroonoko, Kurtz) who, beginning as civilized, goes spectacularly native; both delineate an uncanny identification or collusion between