“The Power of my Pen”: Wielding Subjectivity to Engage and Influence the Collective Experience of the Nation
The question of how the highly individualized genre of life writing engaged with the collective experience of the nation has been widely debated in the field of eighteenth-century literary/cultural studies, with scholars such as Felicity Nussbaum arguing that autobiography was deployed as a technology of the self that assisted in the assertion of an identity in public print, and Daniel Cook and Amy Culley arguing that life writing is an integral part of eighteenth-century culture. In “Collecting Lives,” Caroline Bowden argues that the “communal reading” of texts of “exemplary lives” was key to the motivation, continued devotion, and discipline of the individuals who comprised the convent-community. This essay addresses exemplary life writings with special attention to individuals’ identities in alignment with the dominant social structure of the nation during the 57-year period from the Glorious Revolution (in 1688) to the Jacobite Rising (in 1745). Specifically in this essay, I will be looking at Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko (1688) and Olaudah Equiano’s Interesting Narrative (1745), which book-end the period in question, in order to show how the writing of individuals’ lives engaged with the collective experience of the nation at this point in history. I will discuss Oroonoko and An Interesting Life in order to reveal the connections between political anxieties surrounding the freedom and liberty motif that dominates the eighteenth century as scholars such as Laura Doyle have shown. I argue that life writing from Behn to Equiano used subjectivity to engage and influence the collective experience of the nation: namely, the anxiety surrounding the political freedom of individuals.
In Oroonoko, Behn blends life writing with romance into a unique blend of fiction and nonfiction, subjectivity and objectivity, to engage and influence the collective experience of the nation that craved stability even while it harbored anxiety about individual liberty and freedom. Widely read as Tory-leaning and royalist-supporting,Oroonoko u ses the subjectivity of the author/narrator to assert dominance over this narrative and to add ethos and credibility to the argument at the heart of this tale: that some men are born free, and others are born to be slaves or at least subservient to great leaders. Likewise, society cannot bestow those qualities that make royals royal. Early in the novella, Behn asserts her authority as narrator and subjective observer of Oroonoko, the “Royal Slave” about whom we are to learn in this, her narrative:
“I have often seen and convers’d with this great Man, and been a Witness to many of his mighty Actions; and do assure my Reader, the most
Illustrious Courts cou’d not have produc’d a braver Man, both for Greatness of Courage and Mind, a Judgment more solid, a Wit more quick, and a Conversation more sweet and diverting. He knew almost as much as if he had read much: He had heard of, and admir’d the Romans;
he had heard of the late Civil Wars in England, and the deplorable Death of our great Monarch; and wou’d discourse of it with all the Sense, and Abhorrence of the Injustice imaginable”
Behn 13
In Oroonoko, it is not enough that Behn as a fiction-writer would describe a man that she created; no, she instead asserts dominance using her subjective position by starting her famous description of Oroonoko with, “I have often seen and conversed with this Great Man”; she is “witness to his mighty Actions.” This first-person subjectivity, coupled with her first-person experience in also “the most illustrious Courts,” gives Behn the authority to make her claim: that neither a court, nor education/literacy (“read[ing] much”) could have produced such a romantic, heroic figure: only his noble birth contributed to his “nature.” Not only that, but now that she has established Oroonoko’s “natural” “romantic” and “heroic” figure and propensity for virtue, Behn can use Oroonoko to make her further, ultimate claim: that the “Death of our great Monarch” after “the late Civil Wars in England” was “Deplorable.” Behn’s subjective positionality in relation to Oroonoko, a man who she claims from “experience” is naturally virtuous in his actions as well as thoughts, grants credence to her ultimate claim that the death of the monarch was “Deplorable” even as it not so subtly supports her Tory values. In the end, Behn focuses on the power that she can derive from “the Reputation of my Pen,” which she hopes is “considerable enough to make his Glorious Name to survive to all Ages” Into her romantic fiction, Behn mixed in the highly individualized genre of life writing to powerfully engage her “Pen” with the collective experience, and the Whig-vs.-Tory political debate of the nation.
To engage with the collective experience of the nation at the time that he wrote, even as the Jacobite risings came to fruition and conclusion as his spiritual autobiography and abolitionist tract was published in 1745, Equiano, like Behn, used the rhetorical power of subjectivity. He writes:
“It is therefore, I confess, not a little hazardous in a private and obscure individual, and a stranger too, thus to solicit the indulgent attention of the public; especially when I own I offer here the history of neither a saint, a hero, nor a tyrant. I believe there are a few events in my life, which have not happened to many: it is true the incidents of it are numerous; and, did I consider myself an European, I might say my sufferings were great: but when I compare my lot with that of most of my countrymen, I regard myself as a particular favourite of Heaven, and acknowledge the mercies of Providence in every occurrence of my life.”
Equiano 3
Equiano here acknowledges his status as a “private and obscure individual” to “solicit the indulgent attention of the public.” This passage illuminates the public expectation for “exemplary lives” instead of “nobodies,” to indulge its “attention.” Equiano, unlike Behn, narrates his own life and not the life of an “Oroonoko,” so that he must tread “hazardous” waters of being seen as presumptuous. He uses the “few events” in his life that “have not happened to many” coupled with his status in comparison to his “countrymen,” as “a particular favourite of Heaven,” to fashion his Narrative as a spiritual autobiography that is worthy of his predominantly Christian readership’s attention. While Behn in 1688 uses her narrative fiction/nonfiction blend to invoke and wield the “power of her Pen,” Equiano, claiming more truth to his narrative–as well as a more direct stake in its reception–displays more authorial modesty.
Contrasting Equiano’s goal for writing–the liberation of his countrymen–with Behn’s goal for writing–her own individuation and fame before her own death (the year after Oroonoko’s publication, 1698)–shows how writers of two very different social positionalities book-ending this historical time frame deployed the subjectivity that life writing offers to engage with and ultimately influence the collective, whether for individual (Behn’s) or collective (Equiano and his countrymen’s freedom) gains. Between the Glorious Revolution and Charles’ unsuccessful uprising on behalf of his father in 1745, the fear of instability culminated in life-writing that tempered the individual with the public and thus the political. This essay, by closely examining the life writing that book-ends this period, sheds light on how an individual’s own subjectivity can be balanced with emerging concerns of liberty and for the nation as a collective whole. The publication of exemplary lives such as the fictional/nonfictional blend of Behn in the form of her narrator and crafting of Oroonoko, and the savvily crafted “corporate identity” of Olaudah Equiano related “by himself,” illustrate how life writing was key to the motivation and discipline of the individuals who comprised the British nation between the Glorious Revolution and the thwarted Jacobite Rising. In examining two works that blend fiction with fact, this essay has shed light on the power of one’s subjectivity to engage the collective experience of the nation–one that would thereafter be increasingly defined not primarily as a struggle between Whig and Tory ideology, as was Behn’s work, but rather in Equiano’s framing of the debate between proponents for racially-based slavery, or individual and thus collective liberation.
