‘La différence de couleur n'en fait point dans l'âme': Behn's Oroonoko and the French Antislavery Debate
2008; Wiley; Volume: 31; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1111/j.1754-0208.2008.00100.x
ISSN1754-0208
Autores Tópico(s)Colonialism, slavery, and trade
ResumoIn discussions of the French antislavery movement, it is customary to pinpoint Montesquieu's L'Esprit des lois (1748), as opening the debate into the rights and wrongs of slavery which would continue in France throughout the second half of the eighteenth century.1 As is well known, in book 15 of L'Esprit des lois, Montesquieu shows slavery to be an institution condemned by natural and civil law. Chapter 5 of this book famously sees the author assume the persona of an advocate of slavery, and through skilful use of irony, succeed in undermining the conventional economic, religious and racial justifications for the enslavement of black Africans. Montesquieu's indictment of slavery encapsulates many of the arguments against the practice that would be developed and reformulated by French Enlightenment philosophers over the following decades. His influence is nowhere more evident than in the articles relating to slavery that appeared in the Encyclopédie. In the article ‘Esclavage’, for instance, the Chevalier de Jaucourt refers readers to Montesquieu's groundbreaking work in order to strengthen his denunciation of slavery: ‘Il ne sera pas difficile de démontrer que l'esclavage ne peut jamais être coloré par aucun motif raisonnable [...]; en un mot, rien au monde ne peut rendre l'esclavage légitime. [...] Voyez-en les preuves dans M. de Montesquieu.’ Whilst not seeking to challenge Montesquieu's status as the leading exponent of enlightened French arguments against slavery in the eighteenth century, I do however wish to bring to light the significance of the publication, in 1745 (three years before the appearance of L'Esprit des lois), of the first French translation of a work that had already done much to stimulate the antislavery debate on the English side of the Channel. First published in England in 1688, Aphra Behn's Oroonoko, or the Royal Slave tells the story of an African prince who is captured by English slavers and transported to the then English colony of Surinam in South America. Having married a fellow slave and conceived a child, Oroonoko baulks at the prospect of his offspring being born into slavery. He therefore incites his fellow slaves to rebellion, and when their schemes prove unsuccessful, kills his wife and unborn child and attempts to take his own life. Recaptured by his white masters, Oroonoko is brutally executed in order that his fate might discourage further uprisings. Soon after publication, Behn's text was adapted for the stage by Thomas Southerne, whose tragedy Oroonoko was first performed in 1695. During the eighteenth century, as the abolitionist movement gained in strength, both Behn's text and Southerne's dramatisation were appropriated by British antislavery campaigners, and the figure of Oroonoko became a powerful emblem of the evils of the slave trade.2 At the same time, Oroonoko's influence also began to spread overseas. In 1745, Pierre-Antoine de La Place, best known as the first French translator of Shakespeare's plays, published his translation of Behn's text under the title Oronoko, ou le Prince nègre. It is interesting to note that La Place, who was a prolific translator of English drama (his collection entitled Le Théâtre anglois ran to eight volumes, published 1745-1749), chose to translate Behn's fictional Oroonoko rather than Southerne's play.3 La Place's comments in his preface, which includes a reference to Southerne's adaptation, suggest that he chose to translate Behn's text in order to exploit the device of the female narrator, a feature of Behn's original work that disappeared in its transition from fiction to drama. In La Place's eyes, the narration of the story by a female eyewitness, whom he identifies as Behn herself, lends an added romantic and sentimental dimension to the text, of which French audiences will be particularly sensible.4 La Place's translation of Behn's work quickly became a bestseller in France, going through seven editions before the end of the century.5 Mornet's analysis of the catalogues of French private libraries in the years 1750 to 1780 further reveals that Oroonoko ranks alongside works by Richardson and Fielding as one of the most popular English novels to appear in French translation during this period.6 Not only, therefore, did the appearance of Behn's text in France predate the first systematic denunciation of slavery by a French Enlightenment philosopher, but the work also commanded a significant readership at a time when, as Claudine Hunting has commented, the French philosophes were making ‘their first concerted efforts against slavery’.7 This evidence is an invitation to interrogate the relationship between Oroonoko and the French antislavery debate. To do this, I will begin by examining the work's reception in France, before going on to assess Oroonoko's status as an antislavery narrative, and the extent to which the text foreshadows the arguments against slavery deployed by the French philosophes. The reception of La Place's translation of Oroonoko by contemporary French commentators has been documented in detail by Edward Seeber, whose short article, despite its age, remains the most comprehensive study of the impact of Behn's work on French audiences.8 Seeber's survey reveals that any mention of Oroonoko by French commentators is generally accompanied by a reflection as to the historical truth of the narrative. As La Place emphasises in the preface to his translation, Behn claims in the text to have witnessed the events she records during a period of residence in Surinam as a young woman. This claim is frequently reported by French reviewers of the text, as is the suspicion that the author's relations with the African prince went beyond disinterested humanitarianism. Typical of this tendency is Fréron's review in L'Année littéraire for 1756, written in response to the publication of a second edition of La Place's translation. This review emphasises the factual rather than the fictional dimension of the text, drawing attention to both the author's status as an eyewitness, and to Oroonoko's significance as a historical figure: ‘Ce fut pendant son séjour en Amérique qu'Astrea[Aphra Behn] témoin oculaire des aventures d'Oronoko, en composa l'histoire. [...] Le caractère d'Oronoko est un des plus nobles & des plus fermes que j'aye rencontrés dans l'Histoire & même dans les Romans.’9 Fréron's insistence on the truth of the narrative serves to reinforce the moral crux of the story, which he identifies as the contrast between the noble, heroic behaviour of the black African protagonist, struggling to achieve freedom for himself, his family and his people; and the cowardice and brutality of his white English masters. Playing on the binary oppositions between black and white, vice and virtue, Fréron presents Oroonoko to French readers as a challenge to traditional stereotypes: Lisez cet ouvrage en entier, [...] il vous attachera, il vous remuera, il vous attendrira. Vous y trouverez de l'intérêt, des situations, des faits, des épisodes liés à l'objet principal, des traits affreux de noirceur, de perfidie & d'inhumanité, mais tempérés par des couleurs douces de l'amour le plus tendre & le plus fidèle, & par de grands sentiments d'honneur, de vertu, de courage & de générosité.10 Fréron's comments are particularly worthy of note because L'Année littéraire was the most widely read literary periodical of its time, and its author is credited with wielding considerable influence over French public opinion.11 Interestingly, the review also pinpoints several factors which may account for the popularity of Behn's text in France. Firstly, as is suggested by the use of the terms ‘honneur’, ‘vertu’, ‘courage’ and ‘noble’ in the previous quotation, Fréron roots Oroonoko in a tradition of heroic romance that would have been familiar to French audiences. Indeed, this aspect of the text is emphasised by La Place in the preface to his translation, where he couples Behn's name with that of several famous French romancières of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, declaring Oroonoko to be the work ‘d'une plume aussi célèbre, en Angleterre, que celle des Villedieu, des Scudéri, & des Lussan, l'est en France’.12 Significantly, however, Fréron's review suggests that Oroonoko should be read as a conte philosophique rather than as a roman galant. Discussing the depiction of Oroonoko's youth at the beginning of the novel, Fréron comments on the African prince's education by a dissident Frenchman, whose radical ideas had made him unwelcome in France. This tutor, described by Fréron as an ‘homme d'esprit’, provided Oroonoko with ‘des leçons de morale & une idée des Arts & des Sciences de l'Europe’.13 In the novel, it is clear that this education results in the religious scepticism that is one of Oroonoko's distinctive characteristics, and which is reinforced when he is captured by a white slave trader. This trader gives Oroonoko his word as a Christian that he will be treated well, only to sell him to a notoriously cruel plantation owner in Surinam. Fréron quotes in his review Oroonoko's final address to his captor: ‘Adieu, Monsieur; ce que je vais souffrir est peu de chose en comparaison des lumières que vous me faites acquérir. J'apprend au moins le fond que l'on doit faire sur vos pareils & sur le Dieu au nom duquel vous avez juré.’14 This association of the term ‘lumières' with Oroonoko's dismissal of Christian morality, establishes a clear link between the philosophical import of Behn's work and the ideas of the French Enlightenment; a link further reinforced by Fréron's comment, elsewhere in the review, that certain scenes in the text recall Voltaire's tragedy L'Orphelin de la Chine (1755).15 Fréron's review thus suggests that Oroonoko was read in eighteenth-century France as a philosophical novel with an enlightened message. This message emerges even more clearly from the analysis of the work included in the article on Aphra Behn that appeared in the first volume of Chaufepié's Nouveau Dictionnaire historique et critique (1750-1756), a homage to and continuation of Pierre Bayle's famous work. While Seeber credits Chaufepié himself with the authorship of the long article in praise of Behn's writing that appears in the dictionary, closer examination has led me to question this attribution.16 In fact, when compiling his Nouveau Dictionnaire, Chaufepié extracted material from the most recent English translation of Bayle's dictionary, published 1734-1741.17 The editors of this translation had added new entries concerning the life and work of English literary figures who were deemed to have continued Bayle's tradition of radical critical thinking. Among them was Aphra Behn. The English article dedicated to Behn was then selected by Chaufepié for inclusion in his Nouveau Dictionnaire, and duly translated into French. Here we find the character of Oroonoko credited with possessing ‘un fond naturel d'esprit & de génie', which makes him worthy of the reader's respect and admiration. More notably, the message of Behn's work is condensed into the egalitarian declaration: ‘La différence de couleur n'en fait point dans l'âme.’18 To appreciate the force of these statements, Chaufepié's article, which appeared in 1750, can usefully be compared to the discussion of racial difference found in the third volume of Buffon's Histoire naturelle, published in 1749. The French anthropologist devoted a long chapter of this volume to the ‘Variétés dans l'espèce humaine’, claiming that ‘la première et la plus remarquable de ces variétés est celle de la couleur’, which is in turn linked to ‘celle du naturel des différens peuples.’19 Having discussed the skin colours of the various African races, Buffon cites the Jesuit Père Charlevoix to support his conclusion that: ‘Tous les Nègres [...] ont l'esprit extrêmement borné, qu'il y en a même plusieurs qui paroissent être tout-à-fait stupides, qu'on en voit qui ne peuvent jamais compter au delà de trois, que d'eux-mêmes ils ne pensent à rien.’20 Whilst stressing the essential unity of the human species, Buffon clearly differentiates between racial groups; these he tends to arrange hierarchically, placing the white European at the top, and the black African at the bottom.21 More importantly, his comments here appear to establish a causal relationship between physical characteristics, notably skin colour, and the mental capacity of black Africans. While recent scholarship suggests that ‘scientific racism’ of this sort did not emerge in Britain until the last quarter of the eighteenth century, it would appear that a focus on skin colour as what Roxann Wheeler terms ‘the primary signifier of human difference’ can be detected in French scientific discourse before this period.22 Indeed, in 1725, the influential French Journal des Savants carried a review of John Ovington's account of his travels in Asia and Africa, in which the reviewer mentions recent scientific examinations of the blood and skin of African men, undertaken in an attempt to discover ‘la cause de leur noirceur’. The results of such investigations suggest, according to the reviewer, that ‘les Noirs sont une espece d'hommes essentiellement différente de celle des Blancs’.23 While the terms ‘race’ and ‘espèce’ were essentially interchangeable at this time, and their meaning yet remained uncertain, the implication of such comments is clear.24 It appears that, in the first half of the eighteenth century, French scientists expounded the theory that differences in skin colour marked a fundamental disparity between black and white men. Therefore, in citing Oroonoko as living proof of the fact that ‘la différence de couleur n'en fait point dans l'âme’, Chaufepié's dictionary article on Aphra Behn contradicted the conclusions of contemporary French scientific discourse. It also challenged attitudes that supported the institution of slavery, which was predicated on a belief that Africans possessed inherent characteristics which made them suitable subjects for exploitation and forced labour. On this basis, African slaves had since the late seventeenth century officially been classed as ‘meubles’ by the French Code Noir, and were subject to total dehumanisation.25 To affirm, as did Chaufepié's article, that despite differences in skin colour no fundamental division existed between slaves and masters, was thus to undermine conventional moral, if not legal arguments in favour of slavery. Indeed, French readers of the Nouveau Dictionnaire are encouraged to view slavery as an unnatural and inhuman practice. The analysis of Oroonoko concludes with a reference to a passionate speech by the protagonist, in which Oroonoko questions his servitude, and refuses to accept that his child will be born a slave. Oroonoko is said to speak with ‘la voix de la Nature; voix forte, qui doit être écoutée, & qui doit l'emporter. Quiconque y résiste, doit avoir dépouillé l'Humanité.’26 This brief analysis of reviews of Oroonoko by French eighteenth-century commentators reveals that there do appear to be grounds for linking the work with the antislavery debate in Enlightenment France. However, when it comes to analysing the content of the work itself, it is necessary to confront a new current in literary criticism which tends to deconstruct Behn's text in such a way as to devalue its status as an antislavery narrative. Critics such as Ferguson and Brown have pointed to Oroonoko's markedly non-African physiognomy,27 his education by an enlightened Frenchman, and his status as a prince, claiming that Behn does not condemn slavery in general, simply the indiscriminate enslavement of an African noble whose refinement marks him out from his barbarian countrymen.28 Critical scepticism is even more marked in the case of La Place's translation of Behn's work. Both Rivara and Stackelberg enumerate the ways in which La Place attenuates any antislavery message present in Behn's original text, making significant alterations in accordance with the aesthetic of the roman galant.29 Most dramatically, La Place changes the ending of the novel so that Oroonoko and his wife remain alive, and are freed by a magnanimous colonial governor, a happy outcome typical of heroic romances. More surprisingly perhaps, the couple are given a passage back to Africa, in return for which Oroonoko agrees to supply the colony with 300 slaves from his homeland.30 In spite of such alterations, however, it can be argued that certain elements of La Place's translation of Behn's work nevertheless prefigure the arguments later used by the philosophes in their combat against slavery. The most obvious example of antislavery rhetoric in the text can be found in Oroonoko's address to his fellow slaves on the eve of their rebellion. This speech itself is translated faithfully from Behn's original work.31 Interestingly, La Place adds a rousing prologue in which Oroonoko commands his friend Jamoan to summon the other slaves on the plantation: ‘Réveille ces malheureux, accablés sous le faix de leur infortune! Ranime en eux, ces sentimens naturels à tout homme né libre! Fais naître, dans leur cœur abattu, l'espoir d'une liberté, qui est prochaine [...]! Prépare-les enfin, à un évenement inattendu, qui doit briser leurs fers.’32 The inclusion of this passage, which is absent from the English original, proves that not all La Place's alterations to the text had the effect of reducing its value as an indictment of slavery. Oroonoko's long harangue is intended to convince his fellow slaves of the evils of the slave trade and thus persuade them to join him in defying the colonial authorities. He outlines a series of powerful arguments against slavery, declaring firstly that servitude strips the slave of both his identity and human dignity: ‘Il leur représenta, avec les couleurs les plus vives, les travaux attachés à l'esclavage: Espece de travaux, ajouta-t-il, plus convenables à des bêtes, qu'à des hommes! S'il en résultoit, du moins, quelqu'honneur personnel, ou quelque gloire pour la patrie? Mais non!’ Secondly, he questions whether slavery has any basis in law: ‘Eh, de quel droit? Par quelles loix, mes chers compagnons, devons-nous être esclaves, d'un peuple inconnu?’ He thirdly reveals how the trade also debases the merchants and plantation owners who make human beings the subject of a commercial transaction: ‘C'est leur argent, c'est la trahison, qui les rend nos maîtres! Vendus, comme des animaux [...], ce sont des hommes qu'on assujettit aux fonctions les plus viles, pour enrichir de misérables vagabonds.’ Continuing in this vein, he declares the white Europeans to be unworthy of their slaves' respect: ‘Continuerons-nous, mes amis, d'obéir à une race d'hommes si méprisables? Leur connoissez-vous des vertus capables de leur donner quelque supériorité sur nous?’ Finally, and most forcefully, he informs the slaves that their position is an insult not only to themselves and to their masters, but also to the whole of society: ‘L'état d'oppression dans lequel vous gémissez [...] dégrade l'humanité!’33 Within the logic of the narrative, we are expected to conclude that Oroonoko owes both his eloquence and his ideology to his radical French education. However, when we consider that Behn's original text was published in 1688, it becomes clear that this speech is rooted in the political theory of late seventeenth-century England. In particular, Oroonoko's rhetoric resonates with the reflections on human autonomy and freedom found in the work of John Locke and others. Indeed, as we come to examine the evident similarities between Oroonoko's speech and the antislavery arguments put forward by the philosophes, it is important to remember the extent to which French philosophers such as Montesquieu and Voltaire were influenced by the political theory of the early English Enlightenment. Throughout his work, Montesquieu in particular was concerned with the corrupting effects of despotic power, and this is evident in his denunciation of slavery in book 15 of L'Esprit des lois, which begins with a summary of the negative effects of slavery on both slaves and masters: L'esclavage [...] n'est utile ni au maître ni à l'esclave; à celui-ci, parce qu'il ne peut rien faire par vertu; à celui-là, parce qu'il contracte avec ses esclaves toutes sortes de mauvaises habitudes, qu'il s'accoutume insensiblement à manquer à toutes les vertus morales, qu'il devient fier, prompt, dur, colère, voluptueux, cruel.34 Having thus echoed Oroonoko's argument as to the masters' lack of virtue, Montesquieu then devotes several chapters to providing an answer to the African prince's rhetorical question regarding the legal justification for slavery, concluding that: ‘La loi de l'esclavage [...] est contraire au principe fondamental de toutes les sociétés. [...] L'esclavage est d'ailleurs aussi opposé au droit civil qu'au droit naturel.’35 It is important to note that Oroonoko's speech was not only an impassioned plea in favour of liberty, but also an incitement to rebellion. The mid-eighteenth century saw an increased number of slave rebellions in the French Caribbean, which led to mounting fears in France regarding the sustainability of a slave-dependent colonial economy.36 Rivara comments that La Place plays on these fears in his translation of Behn's work, insisting far more than the English author had done on the ever-present threat of rebellion that hangs over colonial societies.37 La Place's version of Oroonoko certainly underlines ‘la défiance continuelle, dans laquelle on est forcé de vivre, avec les esclaves, dans ces sortes de colonies, où le nombre des Noirs, surpasse de beaucoup celui des Blancs.’38 The translator was indeed in a better position to make such comments than Behn had been. In the 1680s, on an island such as Martinique, slaves outnumbered their masters by two to one; by the mid-eighteenth century the ratio had risen to four to one.39 The philosophes who campaigned against slavery appear to have recognised that the European fear of slave rebellion was a factor that could work in their favour. In book 15 of L'Esprit des lois, Montesquieu devotes a chapter to the ‘Danger du grand nombre d'esclaves.’ He describes the dangerous condition of the disenfranchised slave who is forced to witness his master enjoying the fruits of liberty and prosperity: Il voit une société heureuse dont il n'est même pas partie; [...] il sent que son maître a une âme qui peut s'agrandir, et que la sienne est contrainte de s'abaisser sans cesse. Rien ne met plus près de la condition des bêtes que de voir toujours des hommes libres, et de ne l'être pas. [...] Il ne faut donc pas être étonné[...] par la révolte des esclaves.40 In his speech to his fellow slaves, Oroonoko twice emphasises the slaves' subhuman status; they are treated ‘comme des animaux’, and made to perform tasks ‘plus convenables à des bêtes, qu'à des hommes!’41 Montesquieu here echoes this assertion, declaring that slavery reduces men to ‘la condition des bêtes'. He also provides a psychological explanation for Oroonoko's virulent reaction to his enslavement, and shows slave revolts to be the inevitable consequence of enforced servitude. The way in which slaves were dehumanised by both slave traders and the colonial authorities is a consistent theme in the Enlightenment denunciation of slavery. Voltaire, commenting on the treatment of slaves in the French colonies in the 1761 edition of his Essai sur les mœurs, writes: ‘Nous leur disons qu'ils sont hommes comme nous, qu'ils sont rachetés du sang d'un Dieu mort pour eux, et ensuite on les fait travailler comme des bêtes de somme.’42 He thus highlights the hypocritical position of the French colonial authorities, who demanded that all slaves be converted to Roman Catholicism – thereby acknowledging their status as men and as potential candidates for salvation – whilst continuing to regard them as mere chattel. In Candide (1759), Voltaire's protagonist encounters a slave in the course of his travels who also complains that his white masters treat him less like a fellow human than an animal. Through the slave's speech, Voltaire draws attention to the fact that it is difficult to reconcile such brutal treatment with the commonly accepted monogenist view of human origins, propagated not only by scientific figures such as Buffon, but also the Roman Catholic Church: ‘Les chiens, les singes & les perroquets sont mille fois moins malheureux que nous: les Fétiches Hollandais qui m'ont converti me disent tous les Dimanches que nous sommes tous enfans d'Adam, blancs et noirs. Je ne suis pas Généalogiste, mais si ces Prêcheurs disent vrai, nous sommes tous cousins issus de germain. Or vous m'avoüerez qu'on ne peut pas en user avec ses parents d'une manière plus horrible.’43 It is worth noting also that this episode of Candide takes place in Surinam, the colony in which the action of Oroonoko is set. In addition, the slave depicted by Voltaire has attempted to escape, and has suffered mutilation as a consequence; as a runaway, his punishment is the amputation of a hand and a leg. This recalls Oroonoko's brutal treatment by his masters in Behn's original English text, where the rebel leader's limbs are cut off during his execution.44 All this suggests a deliberate allusion to Behn's text on the part of Voltaire. The French philosophes' arguments against slavery find perhaps their fullest expression in the articles concerning slavery in the Encyclopédie. As we have seen, in the article ‘Esclavage’, the Chevalier de Jaucourt takes Montesquieu's theories as the basis of his discussion of the issue.45 He reiterates the many rational arguments against slavery made in L'Esprit des lois, and reinforces them with his own, more passionate, pleas. Enlarging on Montesquieu's claim that slavery is a debasing condition, Jaucourt employs terms that are remarkably similar to those used in La Place's translation of Oroonoko's speech, declaring that: ‘L'esclavage n'est pas seulement un état humiliant pour celui qui le subit, mais pour l'humanité même qui est dégradée.’ Jaucourt's eloquent arguments in his article ‘Traite des nègres' further evoke those made by Oroonoko, for he questions the legitimacy of trafficking in human liberty: ‘Les hommes & leur liberté ne sont point un objet de commerce; ils ne peuvent être ni vendus, ni achetés, ni payés à aucun prix.’ Raising the important question of slave rebellion, the focus of European fears regarding the consequences of slavery, Jaucourt maintains that since slavery is an illegitimate practice, a slave has every right to rebel. He argues that the true responsibility for slave revolts lies with the masters: ‘Il faut conclure [...] qu'un homme dont l'esclave prend la fuite, ne doit s'en prendre qu'à lui-même, puisqu'il avoit acquis à prix d'argent une marchandise illicite, & dont l'acquisition lui étoit interdite par toutes les loix de l'humanité & de l'équité.’ As mentioned above, Behn's Oroonoko first appeared in French three years before the publication of L'Esprit des lois marked the philosophes' entry into the French antislavery debate. Although it is probably an overstatement to claim that Behn's work had a defining influence on this debate, it is nevertheless important to note that, despite La Place's alterations to the text, the French translation of Oroonoko conveys several powerful arguments against slavery – particularly in the protagonist's emotive speech to his fellow slaves – and that these same arguments can also be found in the subsequent writings of the French philosophes. It is possible to argue that La Place, by transforming Behn's work into a heroic romance, depicts Oroonoko in a manner typical of what critics have termed the trope of ‘sentimental identification’.46 Oroonoko, who is of noble birth and has received a European-style education, is ‘naturalised’ as the hero of a classic French roman galant. Although La Place thus diminishes the character's social and racial otherness, he perhaps promotes a more empathetic response to the text. Discussing slavery in Raynal's Histoire des deux Indes, Diderot highlights the difficulty of exciting just such a response. Commenting on the eighteenth-century cult of sensibilité, he remarks ironically that the European public is rarely stirred to sympathise with the fate of African slaves: Des malheurs même imaginaires, nous arrachent des larmes dans le silence du cabinet & sur-tout au théâtre. Il n'y a que la fatale destinée des malheureux nègres qui ne nous intéresse pas. On les tyrannise, on les mutile, on les brûle, on les poignarde; & nous l'entendons dire froidement & sans émotion. Les tourmens d'un peuple à qui nous devons nos délices ne vont jamais jusqu'à notre cœur.47 Diderot here shows that, to be convincing, the campaign against slavery must have both a sentimental and a rational dimension. La Place's translation of Oroonoko clearly represents a contribution to the former. The character of Oroonoko in particular is drawn in such a way as to engage readers' emotions. Indeed, the intended response of the text's female readership, at least, is inscribed within the text itself in the reactions of the female narrator. For instance, recounting her first encounter with Oroonoko, the narrator admits to having been ‘frapée d'admiration’.48 La Place's preface to his translation further emphasises this attachment, for he comments that the emotive style in which the work is written proves that the author ‘n’avoit pas été insensible au mérite de son Héros'.49 As Diderot comments, however, merely portraying the sufferings of a heroic slave was not sufficient to convince readers of the evils of slavery; the public's stake in the colonial economy also had to be addressed. This is achieved in the writings of enlightened thinkers such as Jaucourt, who, in his article ‘Traite des nègres’, promotes the idea that emancipation would in fac
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