Audience and Genre in Oroonoko,

The Country Wife, and Gulliver’s Travels

0. Introduction
Genre and audience are interwoven concepts and texts are the evidence of this relation.
Through them, we can perceive how the audience influences a genre, how a genre reflects
upon society, how a text is a product of its times and how it shows the marks of the intended
audience. From three contemporary texts like Oroonoko, The Country Wife and Gulliver’s
Travels we can see the different aspects of this relation. Through Oroonoko we see how a text
includes elements of different genres so as to fulfil the audience’s literary taste; through The
Country Wife, how a genre reflects upon the manners of society and through Gulliver’s Travels,
how a text can become a parody and a criticism of society.

1. Oroonoko
One question that Oroonoko poses is the multiplicity of genres within it. It is a narrative, or it
could be also called short prose fiction, but it has many elements of (1) the oriental romance, (2)
travel writing, (3) adventure, (4) tragedy, and (5) finally of the novel. The reason of this variety of
genres within a single text is that Behn wanted to make her piece mire appealing to the
audience including popular 17th century genres within her writing.

1.1 Oriental romance

Behn includes in her narrative elements of the oriental romance, which was a popular form
during the Restoration. This genre is characterized by a mixture of elements of the romance – a
development of a love relationship where a series of obstacles appears to interfere with the
concretion of love – with descriptions of exotic lands, places, people, and objects; that is, a love
story framed in an exotic place. In Oroonoko, it is present in the love story between Oroonoko
and Imoinda in Coramantien, where Aphra Behn describes to the European reader the exotic
African landscapes.

1.2 Travel writing

When describing Surinam, the narrative takes the colour of travel writing, a genre popularised in
the Elizabethan age of navigation and the discovery of the Americas and the West Indies by the
reports of Hakluyt, Ralegh, Drake and others (Drabble, 2000: 1026). However, there is a

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 Audience and Genre in Oroonoko,
The Country Wife, and Gulliver’s Travels
difference: Aphra Behn positions herself halfway between Europe and America when describing
the other. This is clearly seen in the analysis Chibka makes of Behn’s use of pronouns in his
article “Truth, Falsehood, and Fiction in Oroonoko”. He states that Aphra Behn uses a third
person plural pronoun when she wants to present herself “abode and apart from the actions of
her vicious compatriots” (Chibka, 1996: 227). Besides, Behn loads the places with a meaning
that goes beyond the places by themselves, for example when she compares the Surinameses
with Adam and Eve before the Fall, what moves Oroonoko further away from being a travel
writing.

1.3 Adventure
Oroonoko takes the form of adventure when the author narrates the different “Diversions we
entertain’d him with, or rather he us” (Behn: 43). The adventure genre involves a hero(ine)
taking risks and overcoming dangers to complete a task or journey, being the basic elements
the protagonist and a challenge (Herald, 2006: 208). The main effect of the genre, achieved in
Oroonoko, is that the reader can feel the excitement that the protagonist feels.

1.4 Tragedy
It can be also considered a tragedy because of the way that Behn develops her hero and
because of the themes she deals with: honour and love, to the woman as a man and to the
citizens as a leader. The themes are treated in an elevated way as dilemmas that the hero has
to face. The resolution of the narrative seems taken out of a tragedy: Oroonoko kills his
pregnant wife and then he was dismembered while he smokes a pipe showing his courage.

1.5 Novel
Finally, Oroonoko is frequently quoted as one of the antecedents of the novel, mainly because
Behn’s search of veracity. From the very beginning – even in the title – the author presents her
text as a true story, a fact that will be reinforced and repeated throughout the whole narrative.
“Behn’s contemporary readers were encouraged by her to read Oroonoko as a ‘true story’, [with]
especially given (sic) details such as her statement that she presented a native Surinam head-
dress for use in Dryden’s and Howard’s play The Indian Queen (1664)” (Salzman, 2002: 311).
Her insistence upon presenting herself as a witness to all the events increases the verisimilitude
of the narrative, which was almost a requirement for 17th century prose. If she was not a direct

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 Audience and Genre in Oroonoko,
The Country Wife, and Gulliver’s Travels
witness, she received the information directly from the participants. What she tells is not a myth
that she overheard somewhere in a remote country, it is the narration of her staying in Surinam
and the people she met there – or at least that is the way she wanted us to see the text. This
emphasis on the truth she is aiming at also made some people classify this narrative as a short
chronicle.

2. The Country Wife

In 1660 with the re-establishment of the monarchy in England and the reopening of theatres,
there was a new flourishment of drama, but the principal actors had died or lost continuity, and
“the theatres were closed, destroyed or converted to purposes other than theatrical” (Avery and
Scouten, 1997: 535). When Charles II was crowned, he and the exiled English royalists brought
with them, from Paris, the great influence of the French culture. However, in an England under
the influence of Ben Jonson’s comedies of humour, the seventeenth English comedy took a
different course from the French ones. While the latter respected the unities of time, place and
action and had one plot, the former had more complicated plots, and more than one, as in The
Country Wife: Horner’s impotence trick, Mr. and Mrs. Pinchwife, and Harcourt and Alithea. They
also had no unity of action. Another characteristic of Restoration comedies, as pointed by
Sherburn and Bond, is that they “are in prose, and are realistic rather than romantic or idealistic
[;] repartee is much valuated, and frequently plot is neglected for discussion of proper conditions
for marital happiness, of cuckoldry, and, very commonly, of the nature of wit” (Sherburn and
Bond, 1967: 764). There is no deep depiction of the characters but they represent a specialised
type or function, as the country squire (Mr. Pinchwife), the rake as the hero (Mr. Horner), the
jealous husband (Mr. Pinchwife).

Comedies of manners mirror the manners of the Restoration court. “In the Whitehall which was
ruled over by Charles II, intellectual refinement, epigrammatic wit, and dalliance had been made
the prime qualities sought after by the gallants and their mistresses, and it is these qualities
which are reflected in the ‘manners’ comedy” (Nicoll, 1962: 158). Therefore, the attitudes of the
court would be reflected on the genre, resulting in a type of comedy that openly speaks about
sex and cheating. This led some critics to despise this genre. Collier was one of the most
famous critics that charged against comedy of manners (The Country Wife included) for “their
smuttiness of expression; their swearing, profaneness and lewd application of the Scripture;
their abuse of clergy, their making their top characters libertines and giving them success in

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The Country Wife, and Gulliver’s Travels
their debauchery” (Collier, 1997: 493-4). Once again, if these were present in the comedies, it
was because the comedy of manners responded to the current court’s libertine habits and
values.

This genre also depends on the political changes and social conditions of the period. The first
two decades after the Restoration give raise to a comedy which was extremely satirical, cruel
and savage, and dealt with issues such as marriage, infidelity, and money, fully reflecting the
manners of a sexually society with acquisitive power. But after William and Mary were crowned,
the political spirit changed and with it the liking of the comedy of manners:

“an outward veneer of moral sentiment was beginning to curb the excesses of the gay
gallants and the upper middle classes, which had stood apart from aristocratic
society, now were coming to enter into its previously closed circle, leaving with their
influences its codes of behaviour” (Nicoll, 1962: 163).

The days of the brilliant and careless wit and licentious, vain and worldly comedies of manners
were over (Nicoll, 1962: 163).

3. Gulliver’s Travels
Travels into Several Nations of the World in Four Parts by Lemuel Gulliver, first a Surgeon, and
then Captain of Several Ships or Gulliver’s Travels was written by Jonathan Swift and it was
published by Benjamin Motte in 1726. It was an immediate success mainly because of Swift’s
success in portraying the English society and politics, and also, as an extension, to humanity.
Gulliver’s Travels is said to be a political parallel in the form of travel writing, both kinds of texts
which the audience was used to reading. “Readers approached [them] with certain attitudes and
expectations derived from years of familiarity with current work in this mode” (Bywaters, 1987:
717). Swift created a masterpiece that was— it still is, indeed — read both as a political satire
and children literature. It was by means of the satire that Swift draws different characteristics
from the audience and uses them to criticise the same readers. Gulliver’s Travels is divided into
four books in which each of them satirises and voices different criticisms to the society.

3.1 Anonymity
Writers were sensitive as regards parallels since they were aware that they may be prosecuted
if a reference was too explicit. Therefore, they did not print out a person’s whole name (eg: “Mr.

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 Audience and Genre in Oroonoko,
The Country Wife, and Gulliver’s Travels
St.------” (Swift1 in Bywaters, 1987: 724) but used nicknames or mentioned the actions but not
the actors, instead. Swift was extremely concerned about his preservation of anonymity
because he had already been charged with blasphemy for A Tale of a Tub. Moreover, he was
an Irishman talking about the English society and government. He designed a plan to preserve
his identity and the authorship of The Travels. Swift gave the manuscript to his friend and fellow
writer Gay and he threw it from a Hackney-coach to Motte’s, the publisher, house. Then, Gay
pretending to be Sympson, Gulliver’s cousin, started to speak by letter with the publisher.
Meanwhile, Swift was in Ireland overseeing the publication and future editions of his book by
letter through Pope, Gay and other friends. Swift seemed completely detached from Gulliver’s
Travels, and indeed, except for his friends, no one knew that it was him who hid behind Gulliver.

3.2 Satire
3.2.1 Book I & Book II
Book I “A Voyage to Lilliput” and Book II “A Voyage to Brobdingnag” are complementary books
in that each of them are different sides of the same coin. In the first book, Gulliver is giant and
superior, whereas in the second, Gulliver is tiny and inferior. It is frequently stated that Lilliput is
an analogy to England under the government of Walpole and Queen Anne or George I. There is
a particular episode in Chapter 4 where Reldressal tells Gulliver the problem the Lilliputians are
going through (i.e. Tramecksan vs. Slamecksan, and Big-Endians vs. Little-Endians); to Gulliver
— and to us, readers — these problems are insignificant, they are tiny in relation to English or
any other country’s problems. That is to say that there is a proportional relation between size of
people and magnitude of the problem. This same situation is clearly reverted when the roles
change. When Gulliver becomes a diminutive person in Brobdingnag, his problems instantly
turn into insignificant to the King of the giants. The readers, who have identified themselves with
Gulliver and have shared his point of view, now feel that their problems – Gulliver’s problems →
English problems → Humankind’s problems – are insignificant. The readers are in a way
ridiculed and their problems are minimised to just whether break the egg in the big or in the little
end.

3.2.2 Book III

1
Swift, J. (1941-68) Prose Works, edited by Herbert Davis, 14 vols, Oxford: Blackwell

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 Audience and Genre in Oroonoko,
The Country Wife, and Gulliver’s Travels
In the third book, “A Voyage to Laputa, Balnibarbi, Luggnagg, Glubbdubdrib, and Japan” , Gulliver
visits the island of Laputa. This flying island is crowded with scientists who are not practical in
any way. In fact, they think in such an abstract way that they could not engage in a conversation
without their flappers:

“servants with a blown bladder fastened like a flail to the end of a short stick, which
they carried in their hands.[...] With these bladders they now and then flapped the
mouths and ears of those who stood near them, of which practise I could not
conceive the meaning ; it seems the mind of these people are so taken up by
intensive speculations, that they neither can speak, nor attend to the discourses of
others, without being roused by some external taction upon the organs of speech and
hearing” (Swift, 1994: 171-172).

Swift criticises scientists, who are so absorbed in their own thoughts that they cannot interact
with other human beings. It has also been suggested that Swift is especially criticising Sir Isaac
Newton who was said to be characterised by his “absence of the mind of the great” (Sir Walter
Scott in Degategno and Stubblefiel, 2006: 177). Moreover, it is also worth noticing that Gulliver’s
portrait of the first edition of the book has a remarkable resemblance with portraits of Newton
(Edwards, 1996: 191).

Swift is also aiming at the Royal Society of London, currently presided by Newton (Degategno
and Stubblefiel, 2006: 181). Every project is ludicrous and hopeless such as making gunpowder
out of ice or turning human faeces into the original food. The criticism towards the Royal Society
can also be seen in the experiments related to language which are expected to be contrasted
with the endeavours of the Royal Society in enhancing the English Language.

3.2.3 Book IV
Gulliver’s last voyage was to the island of the Houyhnhnms. This island was inhabited by two
main species: Houyhnhnms and Yahoos. The land was clearly ruled by the Houyhnhnms,
horses endowed with reason. These creatures that represent an extreme vision of reason are
contrasted with Yahoos which do not have reason but behave instinctively following their
passions. The most striking feature is that Yahoos are human shaped with characteristics of
monkey. Gulliver feels closer to Houyhnhnms intellectually speaking; he learned their language,
lived among them and, like them, he despised Yahoos. Nevertheless, as Brown points out,
there is identification “between the Yahoo and the human, despite Gulliver’s own resistance and
disgust” (Brown, 2002: 360). When Gulliver arrives to Houyhnhnms land, he is closer to
Houyhnhnms and reason, but the more he stays in the island the more he moves towards

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 Audience and Genre in Oroonoko,
The Country Wife, and Gulliver’s Travels
Yahoos and passion. Finally, he is expelled from the island and there is total identification with
Yahoos.

A way of seeing this distinction between reason (embodied in Houyhnhnms/horses) and passion
(embodied in Yahoos/humans) is to think that Swift wants to show the difference between being
an animal rationale and rationalis capax (capable of reason) (Rawson, 2005: xxxiv). To say that
men are capable of having reason is not the same as saying that men are reasonable or behave
according to reason. This can be seen in a letter from Swift to Pope “I have got Materials
Towards a Treatis (sic) proving that falsity of that Definition animal rationale, and to show it
should be only rationalis capax. Upon this great foundation of Misanthropy [...] the whole
building of my Travels is erected” (Swift2 in Rawson, 2005: xxxiv).

It could also be said that Swift is satirizing the men from the Enlightenment who believed that
the best weapon to combat ignorance and tyranny was reason, upon which a perfect world
would be built. Swift makes fun of that view and demonstrates how a really rational animal is
like. In fact, Swift endows horses, beasts of burden which blindly follow what their masters order
them to do, with reason.

In Book IV, humans are presented in an elevated position from Yahoos because, unlike them,
they can reason.

“He [Gulliver’s master] observed in [Gulliver] all the qualities of a Yahoo, only a
little more civilized by some tincture of reason, which however was in a degree as
far inferior to the Houyhnhnm race as the Yahoos of their country were to
[Gulliver]” (Swift, 1994: 301)

However, this is not altogether favourable. It also helps Swift to worsen the image of human
beings, because even if Gulliver’s master hated Yahoos,

“yet he no more blamed them for their odious qualities than he did [...] a sharp stone
for cutting his hoof. But when a creature pretending to reason could be capable of
such enormities, he dreaded lest the corruption of that faculty might be worse than
brutality itself. He seemed therefore confident that instead of reason, we were only
possessed of some quality fitted to increase our natural vices” (Swift, 1994: 273-
274).

Swift gives mixed signals as regards human reason: on the one hand humans are lowered to
the status of the reasonless Yahoos, showing that both of them do not posses reason compared
to Houyhnhnms; but on the other hand, humans have reason but that makes them worse.
2
Correspondences II 607.

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 Audience and Genre in Oroonoko,
The Country Wife, and Gulliver’s Travels
This “either-way-you-loose” (Rawson, 2005: xxxviii) atmosphere which Gulliver creates is critical
to Swift’s intentions: “vex the world rather than divert it” (Degategno and Stubblefield, 2006:
p157). “Swift’s way is to disconcert and destabilise, creating a quarrelsome ambience in which
the reader is treated as belonging to the enemy” (Rawson, 2005: xxxvii – xxxviii). However, not
every reader realises that is being taunted, and this can be seen throughout the Travels and in
satires in general. As Swift affirms: “Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally
discover everybody’s face but their own; which is the chief reason for that kind reception it
meets in the world, and that so very few are offended with it” (Swift 3 in Douglass Leyburn, 1948:
323-324).

4. Conclusion
After analysing these three contemporary texts we can appreciate in what ways the audience
can influence them. First, in Oroonoko we see that the audience’s need to read something true
made Aphra Behn constantly include references to the veracity of the story. The current
audience’s literary tastes also influenced the text that is why there are many genres present in
Oroonoko: oriental romance, travel writing, adventure, tragedy and novel. In The Country Wife
we observe that the text is based on and reflects upon the characteristics of the audience, that
is to say, of the court. In Gulliver, we move a step further; not only does Swift reflect on the
characteristics of the audience but he also criticises it. He took the elements of society that he
did not like and with dexterity he transformed them into a satire of the English society that could
also be applied to any society of the world.

3
Swift’s preface to The Battle of the Books.

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 Audience and Genre in Oroonoko,
The Country Wife, and Gulliver’s Travels

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