Oroonoko

Oroonoko has entails a very interesting hint of a gender role reversal. It seems as though some of the conventional patriarchal feminine attributes of the past such as ignorance and the inability to act upon a situation. One of the reasons that I believe this is because of the attempted rape scene of Imoinda. She tries to tell him so many times, 3 If I am not mistaken, and each time it's like he isn't even in the same play, he does not catch on! Finally after being very blunt about it and basically spelling it out for Oronooko he realizes the seriousness of the situation. And throughout the play, when it comes to Oronooko taking action, he is forever and a day trying to figure out the problem and then it takes him another eternity to decide if he will act upon it, and most of the time he is so slow about taking any action that things are kind of dropped. It's nice to see a male have those problems for a change and for there to be women such as Charlotte and Imoinda to give women an unconventional role. I know that I am being very hard on Oroonoko, and I'm sure that he is generally a nice guy, but sometimes as a reader it is frustrating to see his lack of action.