Oroonoko

I'm still confused as to why Behn wrote this story. Like many other texts we have encountered, Behn assures the reader that she really was in locality described and talked to the characters about whom she writes. What I don't understand is her motivation. Why does she urge the reader to take her seriously because she was there, but then tell a story about a man that did not exist?

My simple conclusion is that she wanted to sell. She was capitalizing on current interests. Like the vampire craze we are seeing in contemporary times (yes, I did a lot of work on vampire books this summer), Behn was writing about something she knew was 'hot.' The discovery of new people and new worlds was probably something that interested most Western Europeans of colonizing nations. This wasn't just a descriptive account, however, she used the formula for success: powerful and attractive people + romance + deception + tragedy + action = readership from multiple audiences. Another reason I think she was itching to sell, or at least the publisher, was the printing job... We talked about the Improper Use Of Capital Letters and italics, suggesting that there was More of A Focus on getting it printed than Getting it Right.

I could totally be wrong, though.