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xi . ..
:§§.‘-:-' 

T e Mysterious
Aphra Behn

phra Behn (1640-1689) is

considered the first female

professional writer in
England. She wrote plays. comedies
mostly. novels and poetry. Not much
is known about her life. She called
herself Mrs. Behn. apparently mar-
ried and widowed by the age of 25.
but whether there was a Mr. Behn is
disputable. A few sure facts are
known. but for the most part. Aphra
Behn remains a mysterious figure.

She was active in the peri-
od of the English Restoration.
between the mle of the staid. Puritan
Oliver Cromwell and the reign of
William and Mary. The flamboyant
Restoration was a reaction to the
misery of the English Civil War that

. put the Roundheads in charge. and to
the asceticism of their leader
Cromwell. who closed all the tits-
aters on religious grounds.

Aphra’s work was suited
for her era; characterized by a frank
bawdiness that sometimes shocked
even her contemporaries. She lived
for herself, and wrote what she
thought. However, she was, by her
own admission, writing for money.

Her love life, like just
about every other aspect of her life,
is almost all conjecture. She seems
to have had an affair or at least an
intrigue in her youth with a man
named William Scot during a trip to
the New World. Her biographers
consider the trip to have actually
happened because of the richness of
detail in a few of her works that are
set in America.

She is also often linked to
a lawyer named John Hoyle, another
shadowy figure, but Hoyle was a
homosexual and doesn’t appear to
have been much interested in women
sexually. Aphra appeared to have
had intense feelings around him. Her
biographers either can’t or won’t
mention any possible female lovers
for her. ‘ .

“You left me to torments,”
Aphra wrote. “You  left me love
and rage, furies and calentures, even
madness itself. Indeed, indeed, my
soul, I know not to what degree I
love you; let it suffice I do most pas-
sionately.” Maybe. The lines come
from the introduction of a 1950s edi-
tion of her works whose author quot-
ed it from a book by Vita Sackville-
West, who quoted it from Charles
Gildon. Gildon was a friend of
Aphra Behn, but is completely unre-
liable as a biographer; he “apparent-
ly” found the letter among her
papers, or maybe in among Hoyle’s.

Even the primary sources of her life

 

are suspecz.

What is known is that E1’.
the age of tweiity-five or so Aphra
was sent to Holland to work as a spy
(using the code name Astrea) for the
English government while the l\\ -J
countries were warring with L‘LtCl‘.
other. The English governmen. ‘I: :

 

. not pay her enough to return. ’dIl;l

when she did manage to get back to
England she was thrown into
debtors‘ prison.

By I670. she was out of
prison, a seemingly
respectable widow,
and a fixture on the
writing scene as a
poet, editor and play-
wright. The theaters
had been re-opened
by King Charles II,
who decreed that
women should play
female roles instead
of boys as had been
the convention.

Women
playwrights were
having their plays
produced, although
most who did turned
out one or two.
Aphra made a career
of it and wrote more
than twenty. Her
plays were peopled
by lively, cross-
dressing heroines. In her last play,
The Widow Ranter, set in Virginia,
the title role is a woman who drank,
smoked, cross-dressed and “took her
man with her breeches on.”

Aphra addressed such
issues as gender roles and forced
marriage. Her stories and plays often
did not have the conventional ending
of a marriage between the hero and
the ingenue.

Her poetry, often political,
often sexual, was always frank. She
not only described lesbian love, but
got right to the point: “Show thy
Coral Lips, my Love,/ Kiss me soft-
er than the Dove,/ Till my Ravished

Inh

Soul does lie/ Panting in an
E\'stasie.“ In a poem titled "To the
fair Clarinda. who made Love to
me." she put forth the widely held
idea of the time that sex between
women w as not really sex‘ and the}
could therefore have their pleasure
and innocence too: “...Thul we might
Love. and yet be Innocent./' lror sure
no Crime with thee can we commit,
or if we should —— thy Form excuses
l". "

Her love poetry was often
addressed to a mysterious androgy-
nous figure. In a verse titled "To
l.\'saiide"" she wrote oi‘ watching ii
tenow member of a concert audience
whom she described as having it
‘.‘Vl\/louth all full of Sweetness and
Content/ And your fine killing Eyes
o:”i-2ingtiislinien1:, Your Bosom nov
and then a sigh would move.“ Her
obiect had an “easy and all tempt-
ing“ body. The person to whom it
was addressed was given a male
name. Lysander. but the terms used
usually described women.

er last play, The

Widow Ranter,
set in Virginia,
the title role
is a woman

who drank, smoked,
cross-dressed and
“took her man with
her breeches on.”

Aphra Behn died in 1689.
The boisterous Charles II was dead.
and the proper and more sober
William and Mary ruled England.
People in general were becoming
more concerned with propriety and
good manners. If Aphra’s work and
life had shocked her contemporaries,
it had no place at all in the new set-
ting, and was regarded as
‘indecent.’ V

F rancesca Susannah is a writer
interested in lesbians through histo-
ry. She lives in Burlington.