SOURCE: Introduction, in The Novels of Mrs. Aphra Behn, George Routledge and Sons, Ltd., 1905, pp. vii–xxi.

In the excerpt below, Baker argues that Oroonoko represents the ideal man, and that through her novel Behn condemns European civilization.

It was the truth and power with which she recounted what she had herself witnessed in Surinam that has singled out for permanence the best of her novels, the story of the royal slave, Oroonoko. We need not give ear to the whispers of a liaison with the heroic black. A very different emotion inspires the tale, the same feeling of outraged humanity that in after days inflamed Mrs. Stowe. Oroonoko is the first emancipation novel. It is also the first glorification of the Natural Man. Mrs. Behn was, in a manner, the precursor of Bernardin de Saint-Pierre; and in her attempts to depict the splendour of tropical scenery she...