a b c d e f g h i j k Stiebel, Arlene. "Aphra Behn". Poetry Foundation . Retrieved 30 October 2015. Duffy, Maureen (1977). The Passionate Shepherdess. The first wholly scholarly new biography of Behn; the first to identify Behn's birth name.

Another version of her life says she was born as Aphra Johnson, daughter to Bartholomew and Elizabeth Johnson of Harbledown in Kent; her brother Edward died when he was six and a half years old. [2] She is said to have been betrothed to a man named John Halse in 1657. [10] It is suggested that this association with the Halse family is what gave her family the colonial connections that allowed them to travel to Suriname. [2] Her correspondence with William Scot, son of parliamentarian Thomas Scot, in the 1660's seems to corroborate her stories of her time in the American Colony. [2] Education [ edit ] Behn is believed to have been born in England in 1640 and to have spent a period of her life in what was then Dutch Surinam before returning to her homeland aged 25 or so. Then, apparently widowed, she worked as a spy in the Netherlands for King Charles II and later fell into debt to pay after her passage home. To clear that debt, she became an extremely brilliant literary gun for hire, writing coruscating plays, poems, and stories.

38. Poetic Justice

In Angeline Goreau's 1980 biography of Behn, Reconstructing Aphra: A Social Biography of Aphra Behn, Behn's biography symbolizes the lives of feminists in 1980, who, like Goreau, long to be free, and must suffer because of that desire. The minimal facts that are available about Behn's life need to be reconstructed to form a tale that projects the predicament of the modern feminist scholar onto earlier women writers. Both the bawdy and self-reliant Aphra Behn imagined by the Bloomsburies and the confident radical of Woodman's work have been replaced: Behn is depicted as a defensive woman, beset by critics, who must suffer for her art. Todd, Janet (1997). The Secret Life of Aphra Behn. Rutgers University Press. ISBN 0-8135-2455-5. Most recent and comprehensively researched biography of Behn, with new material on her life as a spy. Lizbeth Goodman; W.R. Owens (2013). Shakespeare, Aphra Behn and the Canon. Routledge. p.142. ISBN 978-1135636289. Of Behn's considerable literary output only Oroonoko was seriously considered by literary scholars. This book, published in 1688, is regarded as one of the first abolitionist and humanitarian novels published in the English language. [36] In 1696 it was adapted for the stage by Thomas Southerne and continuously performed throughout the 18th century. In 1745 the novel was translated into French, going through seven French editions. It is credited as precursor to Jean-Jaques Rousseau's Discourses on Inequality. But from the 1690s onwards attitudes towards the Restoration became more and more critical of its excess and libertinism. Behn came to represent the licentiousness that readers were keen to put behind them. By the end of the century, moral disapproval had forced Behn out of the literary canon. Both male and female anthologists and historians of women routinely condemned her.

One evening Lysander comes across Cloris in the woods. They are in love, and he makes sexual advances. She resists and tells him to kill her if he must, but she will not give up her honor, even though she loves him. He persists. She swoons. He undresses her. She lies defenseless and fully exposed to him, but he cannot maintain an erection. He tries self-stimulation without success. She recovers consciousness, discovers his limp penis with her hand, recoils in confusion, and runs away with supernatural speed. He rages at the gods and circumstance but mostly directs his anger at Cloris, blaming her for his impotence. Bloomsbury Group member Virginia Woolf. By George Charles Beresford [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons No wonder he was fascinated by her, there was enough material for several novels about her protean life. Her biographer Janet Todd called her a “shapeshifter” and described her as ‘playwright, poet, fictionist, propagandist and spy’ who hid her true self behind a series of masks. Of course, Behn might have been unknown to a callow teenager like me, but she had already been re-discovered and hailed a proto-feminist role model who lived life on her own terms at a time when for most women those terms were laid down by men. Virginia Woolf famously wrote in A Room of One’s Own: ‘All women together ought to let flowers fall upon the tomb of Aphra Behn …. for it was she who earned them the right to speak their minds.’ The criticism of Behn's poetry focuses on the themes of gender, sexuality, femininity, pleasure, and love. A feminist critique tends to focus on Behn's inclusion of female pleasure and sexuality in her poetry, which was a radical concept at the time she was writing. Like her contemporary male libertines, she wrote freely about sex. In the infamous poem " The Disappointment" she wrote a comic account of male impotence from a woman's perspective. [22] Critics Lisa Zeitz and Peter Thoms contend that the poem "playfully and wittily questions conventional gender roles and the structures of oppression which they support". [39] One critic, Alison Conway, views Behn as instrumental to the formation of modern thought around the female gender and sexuality: "Behn wrote about these subjects before the technologies of sexuality we now associate were in place, which is, in part, why she proves so hard to situate in the trajectories most familiar to us". [40] Virginia Woolf wrote, in A Room of One's Own: Hutner, Heidi, ed. (1993). Rereading Aphra Behn: History, Theory, and Criticism. University of Virginia Press. p.3. ISBN 978-0813914435.Sometime in the early 1980s I joined a queue outside a sci-fi bookshop in London to have my copy of The Magic Labyrinth signed by its author, the celebrated sci-fi writer Philip José Farmer. When I reached the head of the line, I asked him which of the many characters (the book features the entire human population being resurrected) was his favourite, expecting him to nominate Richard Burton, Alice Liddell (of Wonderland fame) or Mark Twain. But he hesitated, thought for a moment, and said: ‘It changes, but at the moment, I find myself fascinated by Aphra Behn.’ I wasn’t sure how to answer that. I had never even heard of this person (was this a man? A woman?). I mutely collected my inscribed copy and went home to read it. Eventually I came across the character and when she is introduced, Farmer gives a pithy and accurate summary of her importance: Love-Letters Between a Noble-Man And his Sister, 2 volumes (London: Printed by Randal Taylor, 1684, 1687). Hutner, Heidi, ed. (1993). Rereading Aphra Behn: History, Theory, and Criticism. University of Virginia Press. pp.2–3. ISBN 978-0813914435. His biography was governed by the thesis that adherence to social and political progress makes for aesthetic worth. In proving Behn to be not only a substantial writer but a political radical, he provided further evidence of this belief, but he also vindicated his own valuing of a previously obscure and minor writer. Shortly after her supposed return to England from Surinam in 1664, Behn may have married Johan Behn (also written as Johann and John Behn). He may have been a merchant of German or Dutch extraction, possibly from Hamburg. [7] [13] He died or the couple separated soon after 1664; however, from this point the writer used "Mrs Behn" as her professional name. [8] In correspondence, she occasionally signed her name as Behne or Beane. [2]

Another theory claims that Aphra Behn’s husband never existed. Some historians theorize he was just a cover story for her spy work. After all, who wouldn’t trust a young widow? Or a bride left at the altar? As one expert wrote, Behn "is not so much a woman to be unmasked as an unending combination of masks." Sounds about right. Friendship" that is "Too Amorous for a Swain to a Swain" is the basis for one section in the long poem describing Behn's social circle, "Our Cabal." The verses on "Mr. Ed. Bed." describe the relationship between Philander and Lycidas as conventionally androgynous, with implicit overtones of sexuality. Philander, she writes, "nere paid / A Sigh or Tear to any Maid: / ... / But all the Love he ever knew, / On Lycidas he does bestow." Wikipedia articles incorporating a citation from the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica with Wikisource reference In 1692, fate caught up to Behn's beloved John Hoyle. He apparently never listened to her advice, and was stabbed to death after getting in yet another bar fight.

Alexander, William. The history of women, from the earliest antiquity, to the present time; giving some account of almost every interesting particular concerning that sex, among all nations, ancient and modern. By William Alexander, M.D. In two volumes. ... Vol. 2, printed by J.A. Husband, for Messrs. S. Price, R. Cross, J. Potts, L. Flin, T. Walker, W. Wilson, C. Jenkin, J. Exshaw, J. Beatty, L. White, M, DCC, LXXIX. [1779]. Eighteenth Century Collections Online, link.gale.com/apps/doc/CW0101002305/ECCO?u=maine_orono&sid=bookmark-ECCO&xid=b35feb3c&pg=1. Accessed 20 September 2021. Information regarding Behn's life is scant, especially regarding her early years. This may be due to intentional obscuring on Behn's part. One version of Behn's life tells that she was born to a barber named John Amis and his wife Amy; she is occasionally referred to as Aphra Amis Behn. [7] Another story has Behn born to a couple named Cooper. [7] The Histories and Novels of the Late Ingenious Mrs. Behn (1696) states that Behn was born to Bartholomew Johnson, a barber, and Elizabeth Denham, a wet-nurse. [7] [8] Colonel Thomas Colepeper, the only person who claimed to have known her as a child, wrote in Adversaria that she was born at " Sturry or Canterbury" [b] to a Mr Johnson and that she had a sister named Frances. [3] Another contemporary, Anne Finch, wrote that Behn was born in Wye in Kent, the "Daughter to a Barber". [3] In some accounts the profile of her father fits Eaffrey Johnson. [3] Although not much is known about her early childhood, one of her biographers, Janet Todd, believes that the common religious upbringing at the time could have heavily influenced much of her work. She argued that, throughout Behn's writings, her experiences in church were not of religious fervour, but instead chances for her to explore her sexual desires, desires that will later be shown through her plays. In one of her last plays she writes, "I have been at the Chapel; and seen so many Beaus, such a Number of Plumeys, I cou'd not tell which I shou'd look on the most...". [9]