aphra behn

George Scharf's 1873 sketch of an unidentified painting of Mrs Behn.


I've been reading lots of Aphra Behn (1640-1689) recently, an author whose mind was "tainted to the very core" (Julia Kavanagh, 1863), "a mere harlot who danced through uncleanness and dared them [i.e. male authors] to follow" (John Doran, 1864). Obviously this is attractive, though I need to point out that nineteenth-century condemnations of Restoration uncleanness are always grossly overstated.

Besides, she was a fourth-rate dramatist (i.e. according to Harold Bloom) and it's not so often I get a chance to read fourth-rate plays, at least not old ones.

I read The Rover, Part I initially, then The Rover, Part II (conveniently available here).

Blunt. Oh you know not how a Country Justice may be improved by Travel; the Rogue was hedg'd in at home with the Fear of his Neighbours and the Penal Statutes, now he's broke loose, he runs neighing like a Stone-Horse upon the Common.

Then Janet Todd's Penguin selection, e.g.

The Widow Ranter, Aphra Behn's final play, set in Virginia.

Love-Letters to a Gentleman. Personal letters, presumably addressed to Hoyle, published after Behn's death. Not to be confused with Love-Letters Between A Nobleman and His Sister, her multi-part novel.

The Fair Jilt, docufaction about sensational goings-on in Holland.

Oroonoko I reserved for listening to in the car, courtesy of Librivox, and thus had the pleasure of discovering for myself the artistry of the famous Elizabeth Klett.

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Criticism of the looseness of Behn's writings goes back to her own time. Alexander Pope's judgment (if that's the right word) was distinctly unoriginal:

The stage how loosely does Astraea tread,
Who fairly puts all characters to bed!

(The First Epistle of the Second Book of Horace (1737), 290-291)

Evidently the criticism was stimulated by the signal fact of her being a woman writer: male contemporaries of far greater coarseness escaped censure. In her lifetime she was a topic for men's gossip; after her death she could be treated, not so much as a creative author, but as an objectified spirit of the age, an unclean muse, a symptom.

Sir Peter Lely's portrait of Aphra Behn.

Sarah Belchetz-Swenson has an interesting article about the portraits.