Getting a slot's value of S4 objects?

Question

So I have a spatialpolygons object in R; but I am not sure why I am unable to retrieve the "area" slot from it.

Here's my R session:

> spatialpolygons
An object of class "SpatialPolygons"
Slot "polygons":
[[1]]
An object of class "Polygons"
Slot "Polygons":
[[1]]
An object of class "Polygon"
Slot "labpt":
[1] 20.50516 57.72918

Slot "area":
[1] 36.85484

Slot "hole":
[1] FALSE

Slot "ringDir":
[1] 1

Slot "coords":
         [,1]     [,2]
[1,] 16.48438 59.73633
[2,] 22.59277 61.14258
[3,] 24.74609 55.03418
[4,] 17.49512 55.12207
[5,] 16.48438 59.73633



Slot "plotOrder":
[1] 1

Slot "labpt":
[1] 20.50516 57.72918

Slot "ID":
[1] "myMultiPolygons"

Slot "area":
[1] 36.85484



Slot "plotOrder":
[1] 1

Slot "bbox":
       min      max
x 16.48438 24.74609
y 55.03418 61.14258

Slot "proj4string":
CRS arguments:
 +proj=longlat +datum=WGS84 +no_defs +ellps=WGS84 +towgs84=0,0,0 

> spatialpolygons@bbox
       min      max
x 16.48438 24.74609
y 55.03418 61.14258
> spatialpolygons@area
Error: no slot of name "area" for this object of class "SpatialPolygons"
> slotNames(spatialpolygons)
[1] "polygons"    "plotOrder"   "bbox"        "proj4string"
> names(spatialpolygons)
[1] "myMultiPolygons"