Aphra Behn: Restoration Playwright and Champion of Women’s Sexuality
The English Restoration of the late 1600s was a time of change for English women. Where they had previously been excluded from the theatre in the Elizabethan era, they were now both the players and the audience members. One woman in particular from this era whose name you should know: Aphra Behn. She was one of the first women playwrights and the first Englishwoman to make a living from writing. She was also a poet, a spy, and a feminist for her time.
Behn was most likely born in 1640 in Kent, England, though details of her early life are largely unknown— because she allegedly hid these details herself. She probably traveled to Suriname, a Caribbean country (and a then colony of England), in the 1650s or 60s, with her family. It was on this trip that Behn got the inspiration for one of her most famous works: her book Oroonoko, published in 1688, about an African Prince tricked into slavery— considered to possibly be the first anti-slavery novel.
Upon returning to England in 1664, Behn married a merchant whose fate might have gone one of two ways: either he died, or they separated shortly after the marriage. Whichever it was, she used “Mrs. Behn” as her professional name from that point on.
Behn was a staunch Royalist and was said to have served as a spy in the Netherlands during the Second Anglo-Dutch War in 1665 for King Charles II. Her efforts weren’t very profitable and some sources say that Behn spent a brief amount of time in debtors’ prison after this.
After this, Behn began writing for the King’s Company and the Duke’s Company. Her plays were comedies and often political in nature, some even serving as propaganda. She spoke freely about sex, particularly women’s sexuality, which (no surprise here) caused some scandal in her time. Behn advocated for sexual freedom for women and men as a result of spending time with famous libertines of her day. She was criticized for her personal life, including taking a bisexual lover, for her morals and of course for being a woman, against which she fought back.
Behn died at age 48 in 1689 and though she was one of the most prolific writers of Restoration England and a celebrity of her day, her works were largely ignored up until the mid-20th century for being considered as too immoral and corrupt. Nevertheless, Behn was a major influence, proving early on in Western culture that women deserve a place as successful playwrights – something that we still struggle with today.
Virginia Woolf put it best in A Room of One’s Own:
“All women together, ought to let flowers fall upon the grave of Aphra Behn... for it was she who earned them the right to speak their minds... Behn proved that money could be made by writing at the sacrifice, perhaps, of certain agreeable qualities; and so by degrees writing became not merely a sign of folly and a distracted mind but was of practical importance.”
Sources:
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/aphra-behn
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Aphra-Behn
https://writersinspire.org/content/who-aphra-behn
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/behn_aphra.shtml