APHRA BEHN 1640 - 1689
I first came
across Aphra in a book entitled “Female
Playwrights of the Restoration.”1
We are relatively used to female playwrights today, our longest running
West End play is by Agatha
Christie. In those days however it was a
great novelty. During the Commonwealth (1649-1660) Cromwell and his puritans
closed the theatres. With Charles II and the Restoration they reopened and
playwriting flourished. For the first
time female actresses played female roles.
Virginia Woolf
writes “All women together ought
to let flowers fall upon the tomb of Aphra Behn, which is, most scandalously,
but rather appropriately, in Westminster Abbey, for it was she who earned them the right to
speak their minds.” And – “with
Mrs Behn we turn a very important corner on the road. We leave behind….those solitary great ladies,
who wrote without audience or criticism, for their own delight alone. …..Mrs Behn was a middle class woman with all
the plebeian virtues of humour, vitality and courage; a woman forced by the death of her husband
and some unfortunate adventures of her own to make her living by her wits.”2
Rather than
being a “feminist” writer, Aphra earned her living by writing plays, novels and
poetry and thereby scored a first for women. We know little of her personal
life, born in Kent she probably spent some of her childhood in what is now
Surinam, Dutch Guyana. The surname may
indicate marriage to a Dutchman. At one
time she was a spy for King Charles in the Netherlands at a time when we were
at war with them. Restoration writing is
noted for its bawdy themes and language and Aphra was as good as the male
writers in this although, because female, criticised for it. This is why Virginia Woolf finds it strange
but appropriate that she is buried in Westminster Abbey with the literary greats.
Predictably at
first it was said that her work must have been written by a man, because no
woman would be so capable. Otherwise it was rubbished because she was a woman.
In her collected works3 we find a play “The Rover” in which
the central Cavalier character is wooed by Angellica Bianca, a courtesan and
Hellena, a cross-dressing virgin. “The Widow Ranter” is the first drama to be
set in the American colonies (Virginia).
Her novel “Oroonoko” is the first novel detailing the evils of slavery
which she would have witnessed in Surinam and written over a hundred years before
Wilberforce’s anti-slavery legislation. Her play “The Feigned Courtesans” is
dedicated to “Mrs Ellen Gwynn” i.e. Nell Gwynne, actress and mistress of
Charles II. The king attended some of her plays.
George Woodcock has written a comprehensive account of Aphra, warts and all,
acknowledging that much of her writing is excellent but some not. His book is entitled “Aphra Behn – The
English Sappho”.4 The blurb states that- “Aphra
Behn holds a unique place in history.
Pioneer of women’s emancipation, anticipator of abolitionism, advocate
of free marriage,-….and author of some of the best songs and plays in English.” His reference to Sappho reminds us of Aphra’s
poetry. About a critic she wrote –
Ah, rot it – ‘tis a woman’s comedy,
One, who because she lately chanced to please us,
With her damned stuff will never cease to tease us,
What has poor woman done that she must be,
Debarred from sense and sacred poetry?
1. Female Playwrights of the Restoration Ed. Paddy Lyons and Fidelis Morgan 1991
2. A Room of One's own Virginia Woolf 1929 p.64
3. Aphra Behn Penguin Classics 1992
4. Aphra Behn The English Sappho George Woodcock 1989
