APHRA BEHN:
TRANSLATING NEW WORLDS
Written by Sarah Patricia Sones
Thursday 11 May 2017
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Abstract
This dissertation explores Aphra Behn’s writing on the basis that she has created microcosms from paper to the stage to discuss gender and sexuality within Restoration England. Behn’s writing is torn between conflicts of authority and autonomy, which is representational of women in late seventeenth-century England. Aphra Behn used translation to uncover and imagine experimental new worlds where she could reveal how society can be reshaped, by breaking down the walls that categorise gender and sexuality into set conditions or codes. Behn anticipates masculine dominated fields, such as writing by using feminine masks, such as translation, which is then transpired to her staged farces with comedy, thus, subverting conventional notions of authority in gender. Behn’s translation or paraphrasing of the classical poems of Ovid’s Metamorphosis and Theocritus’s poetry influences her pastoral convention to focus on the social identity that categorises binary oppositions in gender. The landscapes in her pastorals appeal to her readers to take their hand and subvert her society to reveal new possibilities on the perspectives on gender. The second chapter focuses on Behn’s personas in her pastoral, as a representation of the hermaphrodite figure demonstrates the deconstruction of these oppositions in gender. The final chapter explores Behn’s experimentation with her scripted pieces, where she demonstrates new concepts and ideas of authority for women before the audience’s eyes. Behn expresses gender in a multiplicity of ways, conveying women’s autonomy.
Introduction
But why should you, who can so well create,
So stoop, as but pretend, you do translate?
Could you, who have such a luxuriant Vein,
As nought but your own Judgment could restrain;
Who are, your self, of Poesie the Soul,
And whose brave fancy knocks at either Pole;
Descend so low, as poor Translation […].[1]
Charles Cotton in his preface, “To the Admir’d Astraea” (1706), questions why a talented writer, such as Aphra Behn (Astraea), condemned herself to the art form of translation, which is unmatched by her ingenuity. Cotton acknowledges Behn’s contribution to literature beyond her status as a woman. However, like translators, women are subjugated by their hierarchies; translators are the tenants of authors, while women are subjects of men. These similarities fortify the relationship between translation and women, which brand them together with discursive inferiority. Therefore, the power relations of the original as superior to the translation are replicated through the connotations of the masculine and feminine. The power hierarchy of translators and women is the basis of feminist translation theory, which aims to assess the foundations of how women and translation find themselves perceived as inferior. The relation between author and translator is feminised and sexualised. Lori Chamberlain suggests that translation unsettles the balance of hierarchical structures within gendered identities. Translation “threatens to erase the difference between production and reproduction which is essential to the establishment of power.”[2]There is a power struggle between the meanings of the original to the translated, which establishes anxieties with individuals who wish to strengthen the divide between the spaces of masculinity and femininity.
How does this influence the social and historical balance of female writers in seventeenth-century England? Mary Poovey explains the concept of self-representation: “The location and organization of difference are crucial to a culture’s power self-representation and the distribution of power.”[3]Therefore, constructed gender differences was heavily influenced by Christianity and the Bible teaching of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden where Eve condemned humanity into a world of sin, while also condemning women as weak and feeble minded.[4] Angeline Goreau explores the concept of “chastity” as an “infinitely expanding architecture of self-restraint”[5],explaining that a public identity did not exist amongst women as they had to remain pure within a private self. The role of a woman in seventeenth-century England was to maintain a chaste and modest identity through their actions and thoughts. If a woman were to act immodestly, it brought their honour into question and suggested sexual behaviour, as connotations of immodesty paralleled promiscuity. A woman’s thoughts and actions had to be chaste and there was no acceptance in allowing a woman to publish her thoughts.[6]
A woman’s mind was to be as chaste as her body, which meant publishing her thoughts would brand her promiscuous. This immodesty dishonoured a woman’s image alongside her family, thus, writing would risk their position in society. Anne Finch’s rhetoric presents this issue of the power struggle in identifying as an independent writer when one’s image is at peril.
Alas! a woman that attempts the pen,
Such an intruder on the rights of men,
Such a presumptuous Creature, is esteem’d,
The fault, can by no virtue be redeem’d.[7]
Finch’s emphasis on the noun, ‘intruder’, highlights the fear of power in written word and how it can imbalance men’s authority over women, especially in a time where the printing press was advancing the access to knowledge. Tina Krontiris argues, “A woman translator could thus hide behind another author (usually male) and protect herself against accusations pertaining to ideas and content”[8].The fear of the capabilities of educated women, particularly Behn’s established success in the 1680s from nine successful plays and various publications of poetry, resulted in a “resent[ment] that a woman had achieved what they had failed to”.[9]
Behn is provocative in her language and position on gender and sex equality.[10]Behn understood this disadvantage and persevered to convey her androgynous state of accepting the duality of femininity and masculinity. Behn demonstrates this duality by changing the rhetoric of her poetry to one that is in touch with feelings and self-reflection, unlike her counterpart writers. Behn’s “masculine stroke”[11]permits the reader to understand the importance of acknowledging the advantageous perspective of women. In her poetry, she is distinctive by emerging the female perspective within the rhetoric of a man. Hence, by this subversion, Behn is advocating for an understanding of the competent capabilities of a woman. Behn creates a radical shift in the perception of the ideal forms of femininity and masculinity.
Aphra Behn, in the preface to The Lucky Chance,exposes to her readers “such masculine strokes in me are not allowed.”[12]Behn defines her work to change the perspective on sexual and gender identities. She does not wish to write to appease men by writing in a “womanly” manner but instead, as Kate Aughterson argues, she “display[s] a consciousness of the masculine control of discourse.”[13] Behn knows her limitations as a female writer and voices them throughout her career, which made herself a controversial figure despite her writing’s popularity. Although Behn’s dedicatory prefaces all made a justification for her work, she would be open about her right to have authority and autonomy to be taught in masculine fields. Behn’s infiltration into the art of literature enabled her to simulate perseverance for other women to also write and share new experiences in many possibilities of worlds.
This research aims to examine how Aphra Behn authorises herself as a female writer through the ‘feminised’ art of translation within a seventeenth-century society that crowned knowledge as a masculine field. Margaret Cavendish also defended women by explaining that their inferiority in intellect grew from a denied access to education, an incentive Behn also advocates in her writing. Janet Todd argues that the art of translation allowed Behn “to enter into controversies on science, religion, and philosophy which, as an unlearned female, she apparently had to eschew her poetry.”[14]Sarah Goodfellow states that Behn’s role as a translator allowed her to present gender as a construct of equality, where access to education for women was equally as important as men being allowed to show emotion.
Behn can be understood as a “translator” in the largest sense, as someone who endeavours to make the contents of one discourse comprehensible to speakers of another. A translator must be proficient in multiple “languages,” and Behn served as a mediator between various discourses.[15]
Language in Behn’s poetry is not used to replicate her culture but to contribute to it. This manipulates a text through translation to express an intervention of the gender politics within her society to modify linguistic expressions of masculinity. Sherry Simon presents translation “as a kind of literary activism”[16]where Behn reframes “gender, identity and subject-positions within language”[17]. The aim of this dissertation is to evaluate how Behn translates her contemporary construction of gender within masculine discourse to reshape constructions of gender and sexuality. This dissertation will discuss three main areas of translation, which include: how Behn interacts with classical literature through the pastoral tradition in translation to subvert the authority of male dominance on gender and sexuality; the influences of the pastoral to demonstrate alternative views on gender and sexual politics with the figure of the hermaphrodite and lastly, Behn’s translations and its influences on the stage where she again emphasises women as autonomous. Within her poetry, Behn experiments with the creations of different worlds where gender and sexuality are discussed and imagined in ways to explore even her identity.
Chapter one will focus on Aphra Behn’s poetry from Poems Upon Several Occasions, with A Voyage to the Island of Love (1684)[18].I will focus on ‘The Golden Age, A Paraphrase from French’[19]and ‘On a Juniper-Tree Cut down from Bough Busks’[20]. This will explore how the pastoral uses the landscape to shape the autonomous female through the theme of power. ‘The Golden Age’ is known to exist as an adaptation of the opening chorus of the play, Aminta(1573), by Torquato Tasso. However, in both poems it is evident Behn imitates Ovid’s pastoral conventions of using the landscape to present a psychological state, yet exploring sexuality and gender. Young brands Behn’s classical translations as “a triple art:from original poet-poem via English language translator-translation to English poet-poem”[21]. This form of paraphrasing allowed Behn to present her radical ideas; John Dryden stresses, “’tis much more pardonable than that of those who run into the other extreme of a literal and close translation”[22].
Chapter two will address two more of Behn’s pastoral poems, ‘The Willing Mistriss’ from Poems Upon Several Occasions(1684) and ‘To the Fair Clarinda, who Made Love to Me, Imagin’d More than Woman’[23]published in A Miscellany of Poems by Several Hands, (1688).‘The Willing Mistriss’ is from the “carpe dium”, seize the day trope, another sensual category that brings a light on the masculine notions of “carpe dium”.However, these pastorals discover many different representations of the body as the hermaphrodite. Gender is a fluid construction and may represent a more personal experimentation of Behn’s sexuality and gender.
In the final chapter, the focus will move onto Behn’s work with the stage by analysing The Emperor of the Moon (1687)alongside her translation of the Bovier de Fonentelle’s Conversation of a Plurality of Worlds (1686),renamed as A Discovery of New Worlds (1688). This chapter explores the ideas of the public and private self, demonstrating how the public world is a masquerade of masks, and how privately, underneath those masks, our constructs of gender are not up to scratch. The farce addresses gender by satirising preconceived views on femininity and masculinity through the motif of learning.
The Pastoral
[O]nly the poet […] lifted up with vigour of his own intention, doth grow in effect, into another nature, in making things either better than Nature bringeth forth, or quite anew, forms such as never were in Nature.[24]
In his theory on poetry, Sir Philip Sidney describes how poetry can reproduce better versions of the world we are placed in. The pastoral in Behn’s poetry acts in a similar way; it is not a form of escapism but a general retreat and return from the countryside to make a judgement on the urban or court life. Behn’s pastorals displace the reader from the landscape to reconstruct them into a different state of mind, and to continue with those thoughts once the poem has ended. Behn’s complex personifications of the landscapes ask metaphysical questions about the construct of gender. Therefore, Behn uses the pastoral to break from gender restrictions, which she enforces with the unity of her pastoral poems.
When reading Behn’s poetry from Poems Upon Several Occasions, one cannot resist noticing the poetry’s intratextuality, where the pastoral intricately weaves each poem into a network exploring the constructs of femininity and masculinity. The collection of poetry is a microcosm experimenting with contrasting notions of sexuality and gender. Behn interweaves each poem to examine a possibility of allowing the restrictions of gender to be broken. This chapter will focus on the poems, ‘The Golden Age’ and ‘Juniper-Tree’. Therefore, I shall argue that the collaborative nature Behn’s poems hold is to explore the possibilities of gender.
The application of Ruth Levitas’ description of female utopias assists in our understanding of Behn’s poems from a microcosm perspective. Levitas argues, the “desire for a better way of being and living”[25]“may mean the pursuance of spiritual or psychological states”[26], consequently, there is “a withdrawal of utopia from the social to the personal.”[27]The typical structure of a utopia, that Plato suggests after the Golden Age where everybody can be free within a structured hierarchy, collapses with Behn’s presentation of unity. Oddvar Holmesland suggests, “Behn’s unity should not be observed”[28]as conformity to a system, as Behn’s “concerns are more with freedom, and self-fulfilment, and how an order can nourish human growth”[29]rather than sustain it. Therefore, the importance of “conflicts between dominants and subversives”[30]in Behn’s pastoral poetry are crucial to present the growth needed, which is a convention typical of the pastoral. Behn allows the poems within this collection to create a dialogue about human nature with the pastoral, questioning our perspectives on gender.Henceforth, the pastoral is an intentional mask to expose the mask of society, allowing gender restriction. Pastoral was another lower-class style of writing which, like translation, allowed Behn the position to explore such notions.[31]Women protested the conventional pastoral and applied themselves to discuss gender restrictions.[32]
James Turner argues that in the pastoral tradition, the ‘”Landscape was often used for specifically political purposes. “Land” and “country” were synonymous with “nation”‘[33]. However, Turner also describes “the new landscape [as] composite. It is not a portrait of an individual place but an ideal construction of particular motifs.”[34]Behn uses the landscape in her pastoral poetry to present motifs on the roles of desire and honour.[35]
Behn’s pastorals are seductive and incite the reader to recognise her stance on the constructs of gender. In ‘The Golden Age’, Behn challenges our experience with nostalgia and time to demonstrate how power has morphed and changed throughout history. The nostalgic tone claims fluidity in the distribution of power. The fluidity is represented through an unusual experience of time. Behn invites the reader to journey into the golden age, followed by a return to her contemporary society. This aligns Behn and the reader together into a space that is neutral, bringing the reader into a space that is historically unknown, as is the writer’s experience. Behn exclaims:
BLEST age! when ev’ry purling stream
Ran undistrubed and clear,
When no scorned shepherds on your banks were seen,
Tortured by love, by jealousy, or fear;
When an eternal Spring dressed ev’ry bough,
And blossoms fell, by new ones dispossessed […].[36](Stanza I, Lines 1-6)
Immediately, Behn protests the conventional use of the pastoral; this space is created to break away from the traditional lovelorn shepherd and instead emphasises the autonomous, feminine eroticisation of the landscape. The landscape is a motif of power and autonomy that is constructed by the extended metaphor of water. The tranquillity brought by the imagery of water represented by the stream and spring demonstrates fluidity and freedom, which is inherent from the land. The land is fertile and is in abundance, as displayed by the imagery of the blossoms. The scene appears to be set in the past. However, the imagery represents a state of timelessness, which is reinforced by the enjambment in the stanza. The timelessness element is derived from the “purling stream.” (Stanza I, line 1). The symbolisation of the water is a construct of spirituality in which people are equal. The rippling effect of the stream is coining on the hope that this past construct of society can transcend through time. The water is then personified by the spring, which emphasises the water’s identity and spirituality shared with humanity. Water is admired as a door to the soul and is a sacred symbol of purity and the sustenance of life. Water is also a metaphor for the spirit, where it connects “All Nature, and all sexes” (Stanza III, line 36), which the fluidity of power may transform to conform to an equal society. Michael Foucault argues the relationship dynamic of power as a reproducing transferal:
What makes power hold good, what makes it accepted, is simply the fact that it doesn’t only weigh on us as a force that says no; it also traverses and produces things, it induces pleasure, forms knowledge, produces discourse.[37]
If we apply Foucault’s discussion of power to gender, there is the same suggestion that power does not have to run on suppression, but a fluid network that nourishes the growth of society. While Behn discusses desire in the poem, she is demonstrating our true nature of prosperous balance in gender and society.Therefore, Behn advocates that through time, if power changes through different constructs of conformity and hierarchy, gender can also morph into a similar model.However, what makes this opening stanza about the golden age increasingly important is its emphasis on the landscape being feminine; the landscape is autonomous without any interference, paralleling Behn’s own view that a woman is inherently autonomous:
The stubborn plough had then
Made no rude rapes upon the virgin Earth;
Who yielded of her accord her plenteous birth,
Without the aids of men;
As if within her teeming womb […]. (Stanza III, Lines 31-5)
The landscape is classified as female and the plough is a metaphor for men, distinguishing that the relationship between each gender in Restoration England were of a similar nature. The man was Behn instead with the personification of the landscape, we as readers can determine how women wield their authority.Men cannot pillage Behn’s world, as it is more successful holding the characteristics of a feminine nature. Subsequently, the landscape or femininity is the brave hero. The shepherd, on the other hand, foreshadows humanity’s imminent downfall, which subverts conceptions from the fall where we blame Eve for the punishment of Adam and the rest of humankind. Behn foreshadows: “T’adorn the careless shepherds’ grassy beds/ While still young opening buds each moment grew” (Stanza III, lines 41-2). These shepherds are growing notions of honour and Behn alludes to their eventual disillusion with power.
Beneath whose boughs the snakes securely dwelt,
Not doing harm, nor harm from others felt;
With whom the nymphs did innocently play,
No spiteful venom in the wantons lay[…] (Stanza III, Lines 45-8)
The phallic imagery here is not used in its common nature, in representing the devil pursuing the sinful woman, but it is a celebration of a woman’s anatomy. The nymphs that play have no repercussions of losing their virginity, as the snakes have no venom. The snake can represent the clitoris instead of the penis. Behn is withholding female authority over men. In this stage in time, before the introduction of the modern society, the world was equal. Behn is presenting a female utopia, where the world is peaceful and prosperous because it has a feminine identity. However, once honour and hierarchies are established, which are masculine qualities, the once flourishing world is altered.
Of the ill-natured busy Great,
Nonsense, invented by the proud,
Fond idol of the slavish crowd,
Thou wert not known in those blest days,
Thy poison was not mixed with our unbounded joys […]. (Stanza V, lines 76-81)
Time is beginning to shift to Aphra Behn’s present day. Honour is a personified into a chaotic and treacherous figure. The structure of the stanzas become more abrupt than in previous stanzas, the enjambment reduces and the caesuras increase; the piece becomes more militaristic and has a march-like beat. Honour[38]is matched as the enemy and a war-mongering murderer sending”A woman to the sin of shame” (Stanza VIII, line 120). The land and honour are two binary oppositions of gender. However, it takes the lovers to join and unite harmony once again.[39]The relationship between desire and honour [40]or the feminine and the masculine, are destructive and are based on dominance. However, as Behn brings the setting back to her own time, she ushers to implicate better standards for women.
Be gone! and let the Golden Age again
Assume its glorious reign;
Let the young wishing maid confess
What all your arts would keep concealed:
The mystery will be revealed, (Stanza X)
Behn resolves her poem by focusing the reader on the present once again, transporting them to their own setting by demonstrating how to achieve harmony. The retreat from what the future of honour can bring is given to the reader to decide. The choice given at the end represents the reader as their own power and their own deity to change the future for themselves and live in a world of equality. However, the relationship between Sylvia and the persona is one of equality as seen with the use of collective pronouns, such as “us”.
Then let us, Sylvia, yet be wise,
And the gay hasty minutes prize:
The sun and Spring receive but our short light,
Once set, a sleep brings an eternal night. (Stanza X)
Behn gives authority and power to the reader to realise the way gender is presented in society; she demonstrates an experience of disestablishing gender barriers. However, in ‘The Golden Age’, there is a challenge to power; the ending leaves the reader the opportunity to implement a power change. Heidi Laudien compares Theocratic pastoral to Behn’s and highlights the “structural and conventional characteristics are reminiscent of Theocritus, such as the incorporation of nostalgia and metaphor.”[41]In this way, Behn is depicting nature with idyllic language expressing the setting’s longevity and lusciousness.[42]
The representation of the self is infused in all within the universe; the landscape can also be an effective representation of gender, for example in ‘Juniper-Tree’ Behn personifies the tree. The tree is an embodiment of society’s identity. However, the tree is not completely human as Behn builds irony as she mimics the hypocrisy of society’s treatment of gender and sexuality. This is presented by the tree’s ability to claim authority. The landscape is not static, however in this instant, the landscape isn’t shifted through time, but through gender. The poem is first person narrative and begins on a confident tone:
Whilst happy I Triumphant stood,
The Pride and Glory of the Wood;
My Aromatick Boughs and Fruit,
Did with all other Trees dispute.[43](Lines 1-4)
The tree is confidently encompassing two genders: the wood is a reference to its masculine prowess, and the tree’s fruits refer to its feminine glow. The tree alone presents itself as a piece of artwork standing triumphantly, while the landscape around the tree dispute among themselves on this asceticallydifferent looking tree. The ability of the tree to withhold two separate gender margins emphasises its aesthetic appeal.
My Wealth, like bashful Virgins,
I Yielded with some Reluctancy;
For which my vallue should be more,
Not giving easily my store.
My verdant Branches all the year
Did an Eternal Beauty wear;
Did ever young and gay appear. (Lines 9-16)
The opening stanza claims autonomy for the juniper tree. This is characteristic of a masculine pastoral role where the tree launches its authority in its position in the world, while it hypnotises the reader to stay in the countryside alongside them. However, this is juxtaposed by the tree admitting to its admiration of desire; Behn uses a simile to present the tree relieving its feminine side by yielding its virginity. The tree’s authority and egoism are shifted by the tree’s continuous confessions: “to the touch I must confess, / [I] Bore an Ungrateful Sullenness” (Lines 7-8). Behn is now protesting the pastoral tradition and creating a juxtaposing side to the tree. The tree is now characterised as holding leaves that are ungrateful and hostile, and the reader may respond to how the tree can morph into different characteristics very quickly. The identity of the tree is unknown, and its immediate self-confidence is twisted by its struggle that is produced by an external force. The tree is infatuated by two lovers who find shade under the tree. The lovers, Philocles and Cloris, are presented to confuse the gender identity of the tree. The tree, although autonomous, has shown its susceptibility to the lovers. The tree finds identity and each is dependent on each other.
Upon my Root she lean’d her head,
And where I grew, he made their Bed:
Whilst I the Canopy more largely spread
My Grateful Shade I kindly lent,
And every aiding Bough I bent. (Lines 26-30)
The pastoral scenery creates a setting to introduce the relationship between the tree and sexuality as we are exposed to the young lovers. Behn uses a traditional pastoral convention where nature assists with the seduction, and also demonstrates the tree being seduced alongside Cloris. The heterosexual relationship is disrupted by the tree, not resisting as a bystander, but becoming the third party in their sexual act. The tree is determined to enjoy pleasures from the lovers:
And every aiding Bough I bent.
So low, as sometimes had the blisse,
To rob the Shepherd of a kiss,
Whilst he in Pleasures far above
The Sence of that degree of Love:
Permitted every stealth I made,
Unjealous of his Rival Shade. (Lines 30-6)
The interweaving of the pastoral setting and the two lovers becomes a centrepiece of artwork, where each body and naturalistic element forms into an expression of diverse sexuality and gender. The creative, sensual act instructs the tree to also escape in their desire:
I saw ’em kindle to desire
Saw the approaches of their joy
Saw how they mingled melting
Rays Now like the Phenix, both Expire,
While from the Ashes of their Fire,
Sprung up a new, and soft desire.
Like Charmers, thrice they did invoke,
The God! and thrice new vigor took. (Lines 20-7)
The tree morphs into a hermaphroditic identity as the tree fondles with the lovers: “The Shepherdess my Bark carest, / Whilst he my Root, Love’s Pillow, kist” (Lines 81-2). Behn emphasises the metaphor of the tree’s root, and the pillow accentuates its hermaphrodite identity and the erotic nature of the tree, establishing autonomy with the disestablishment of oppositional genders. Behn’s aesthetic appeal in the poem erotises the action surrounding the tree and the image of the tree. There is a dynamic movement from the tree as an independent figure to a figure based on autonomy through sharing desire with the lovers. Behn, like in ‘The Golden Age’, is requesting the reader to join in in this pastoral seduction, as the tree also seduces the reader alongside the lovers. This participation of the reader is crucial as Behn highlights once again that our humanistic desire is natural and expands the reader’s perspective to imagine a new experience of gender or sexuality. The reader becoming involved with the scene allows Behn to embellish the importance of making the landscape fluid and not static like Theocratic pastorals. However, when the tree shifts from its autonomous position to its dependency on the lovers, Behn demonstrates the freedom one can feel letting their desires override their strict sense of society:
My Grief must be as great and high,
When all abandon’d I shall be,
Doom’d to a silent Destinie. (Lines 85-9)
The tree has now lost its freedom of self-expression as the tree loses its new purpose. However, Cloris cuts down the tree to send it out of misery; Behn here is restructuring the static tree. The tree has now become a more important part as it continues its independence:
At the altar of love, and
My body into Busks was turn’d:
Where I still guard the Sacred Store,
And of Loves Temple keep the Door. (Lines 104-7)
The tree’s role is shifted to become a busk, which was a piece of wood or material that would be situated in the front of a corset to support the shape of the body. Therefore, the tree becomes a servant to Cloris, protecting her body and ensuring her temple or womb is guarded. The tree is fulfilled as it can spend its life touching the bosom of Cloris while fondling with any lover she may have. The tree can position itself as a hermaphrodite figure, and Behn establishes the deconstruction of gendered boundaries with the recognition of sexual autonomy. The tree and the lovers open new concepts on relationships created on equality rather than differences. Thomas Gartaker states:
[T]he man is as the head, and the woman as the body[…]And as it is against the order of Nature that the body should rule the head: so it is no less against the course of all good order that the woman should usurp authority to herself over her husband, her head.[44]
If we draw back this conclusion to the tree, the hermaphroditic tree felt it could no longer be alone in his thoughts and was made to support the woman’s body. The tree with such authority is cut down by Cloris and made to protect her body. Behn argues that the female body is an independent space that allows her true nature to shine through her sexuality. This is presented, as the tree is a hermaphrodite symbol of sexual desire and freedom, which now guards the woman from evils such as honour.
Ambiguous Identities
[M]ake me believe myself infinitely belov’d, I may chance, from the natural Inconstancy of my Sex, to be as false as you wou’d wish, and leave you in quiet.[45]
In Behn’s letters to John Hoyle, she distinguishes her sex as inconsistent, a proclamation which is prevalent in her pastoral work. Nature is incompatible with it is a function on whether it refers to the geographical nature or psychological nature; however, Behn intertwines these two concepts together. Therefore, the progression of Behn’s work is not only a microcosm for the reader to experience but also one of self- expression, investigating her voice and how far she can stretch the gender boundaries within herself. Alike in “Juniper-Tree” nature manifests as a representation of the body the tree, which is an ostensible central focus for the discussion on sexual and gender definitions. Subsequently, our revised perspectives on what we conceive as natural relations between the body, gender and sex need to be reformed to discover their multiple meanings and connections. In exploring Behn’s work, it is necessary to express gender without the assumption it is synonymous with sex, although Judith Butler explains most discourses depict a gender binary opposition, we “presuppose that the categories of female and male, woman and man, are similarly produced within the binary frame”[46]Subsequently, it’s imperative, the body in Behn’s work is represented by an interchanging loop of genders and sexes are attempting to break down the walls of binary gender. Binaries of desire are reflective of either homosexuality or heterosexuality, which enlists complications when we add bisexuality into the mix, a term which diminishes the categorical outlook on desire. Therefore, to highlight Behn’s expression of gender identities, experiences and experimentations it is not a matter of distinguishing which gender she has decided to represent, however, how this gender or sexuality explores the implications of a world based on this perception of identity. This chapter will present this argument through the poems, “The Willing Mistriss” and “To My Fair Clarinda” both being seductive poems which embody the role of the hermaphrodite. Therefore, Behn places many personas in her poetry as transitional between different genders and sexualities.
In “To the Fair Clarinda”, the trope of the hermaphrodite is crucial in exploring the issues of gender. The poem is contested on the identification of the subject, “Clarinda”, Maureen Duffy argues, “it was the last time a woman was to write with witty eroticism about such a subject in English for two hundred years, But what (or who) exactly is the “subject” of Behn’s poem?”[47] The title is ambiguous, as Clarinda is classified as “imagin’d more than Woman” which regards the persona of the poem to own an indeterminate gender as it immediately asks the reader to demolish any conceived ideas of heteronormative relationships. Consequently, our first encounter with Clarinda does not allow the reader to categorise the character’s gender.
“To the Fair Clarinda” imposes ambiguity onto both participants in the seduction, there is a performance of many identities outside of the realms of female and male. The natural distinctions of male and female are disregarded through the exploration of the human body and its sexual differences. Behn presents Clarinda as an embodiment of the hermaphrodite; the poem undergoes change where Clarinda encompasses a multiplicity of bodies. Behn challenges the identity of Clarinda through the erotic tension between these identities. [48]
This style of relationship is reflective in Behn’s characterisation of Clarinda where her identity is purposefully fluid. It is important to acknowledge Behn’s lack of gendered pronouns in the clarification of Clarinda; the second person always classifies Clarinda as “you” which structures this character as hermaphroditic. This assumes that defining Clarinda in the binary gendered constructs that we align ourselves in, should not be used to conceive the identity of Clarinda:
Fair lovely Maid, or if that Title be
Too weak, too Feminine for Nobler thee,
Permit a Name that more Approaches Truth:
And let me call thee, Lovely Charming Youth.
This last will justifie my soft complaint,
While that may serve to lessen my constraint; (Lines 1- 6)
Behn arranges the seduction with an enterprise of definitions of multiple genders, between the persona and the seduced Clarinda. The poem expresses “constraints” in classifying their desire from the complications of gender, firstly by distinguishing Clarinda as a “Maid”, a term for women but then destroying that imagery with a “Youth” which is not gendered specific; a term describing a young man or woman. Gender in the life of Behn also played a strong connection to social ranking, by presenting Clarinda with a transcendent authority by making her the focal point of the poem. This fluctuation between a masculine and feminine presence allows Behn to justify her approach to Clarinda as her hermaphrodite status claims this is not the same-sex relationship.
The linguistic performance between the transformation of Clarinda from female to less female gives Behn justification to indulge in her homoerotic desire. The poetic persona can be reflected as Behn herself; Behn also experimented with her definition of gender. Therefore, this infuses more ambiguity to the notion of the hermaphrodite.
The title of the poem implies that Clarinda is the seducer by her active position, “who made more than love to me”. The poem implies the persona is taking ownership of her sexual prowess and desire, the persona, although is apprehensive on accepting Clarinda’s invitation to intercourse. The persona is presenting Clarinda as the hermaphrodite by applying more masculine connotations to Clarinda; the poet can feel less apprehensive about her proposition. However, the persona still admires her feminine attributes. Henceforth, the poet can make peace with her masculine traits also. Therefore, Clarinda’s embodiment of both masculinity and femininity is the turning point of the poem which draws a strong attraction for the poet to Clarinda. Gender in the poem belongs to Clarinda, her ability to shift through different constructs of maleness and femaleness, makes her an incredibly strong character. Clarinda becomes the desire of not only the poet but the reader also which is distinguished later as Behn uses the collective pronoun:
Against thy Charms we struggle but in vain
With thy deluding Form thou giv’st us pain,
While the bright Nymph betrays us to the Swain.
In pity to our Sex sure thou wer’t sent,
That we might Love, and yet be Innocent:
For sure no Crime with thee we can commit;
Or if we shou’d-thy Form excuses it.
For who, that gathers fairest Flowers believes
A Snake lies hid beneath the Fragrant Leaves. (Lines 9- 17)
The first person references earlier in the poem is now emphasised collectively between all women who are too attracted to all entities of desire. The consummation of desire is only agreed with society itself and Behn pleads with the reader to withhold condemning desire. Behn uses the pastoral tradition of nymphs and swains, where she ultimately alludes to the fact it is a poem on the idea there are many multiple ways to describe gender and sexuality. The plurality of “we” and “us” can refer to the multiplicity of different genders they find while also talking to the reader.
The poet is encapsulated by their desire for the hermaphroditic love Clarinda, her ambiguous gender and “deluding form”. Roberta C. Martin questions, “Is Clarinda a hermaphrodite who seduces in one gender and finishes in another?”[49]Therefore with this synopsis, Behn is proposing same-sex love is more powerful as if there is no penetration, there is no loss of purity. Behn claims women homosexuality is purer by subverting the normally used snake as a metaphor for the penis, as a metaphor for the clitoris, as used in “The Golden Age”. However, the poet is betrayed by the Nymph meaning that Clarinda is a male, making the seduction conventional.
Young argues “it is Clarinda’s capacity to destroy the binary opposition of gender that most appeal to Behn“.[50]Therefore, the poet and Clarinda are both swapping gender roles with each other, avoiding the consequences of heterosexual relations and avoiding the unwelcome stigma of homosexuality. The snake makes the embodiment of all genders by referring to either sex’ genitalia. The role of the hermaphrodite is confirmed with the pastoral convention of the snake. However, it is also exaggerated using mythic gods and goddesses.
Soft Cloris with the dear Alexis join’d;
When e’r the Manly part of thee, wou’d plead
Thou tempts us with the Image of the Maid,
While we the noblest Passions do extend
The Love to Hermes, Aphrodite the Friend. (Lines 19-23)
The God, Hermes who is known as the god of transitions and boundaries who shares the fluidity with the goddess of love. Behn represents love beyond any boundary; if it cannot become any more obvious the word, a hermaphrodite is a direct association with Hermes and Aphrodite’s son who is both sexes. The poet makes love to both genders in one person. The poem becomes a space with gender being unidentifiable due to its complete shift from one to the other. The hermaphrodite as a role is the motif to determine the way Behn envisions the construct of gender which is the most natural way of self-expression and human nature.[51]
This poem presents a space where readers can admire themselves in the poem, as both lovers, the poet and Clarinda encompass both genders there are no legal restrictions. The space of art is one that can be imagined, as claimed in the title, where desire can transform the expression of form in gender and sexuality. The subversion of the constructs of gender, into ambiguity, demonstrates we do not categorise or create hierarchies based on gender. Lanser implies in this androgynous state the speaker and Clarinda are friends and lovers – which shows their relationship has a stronger compatibility if it were a heterosexual relationship.[52]
“The Willing Mistriss”, also published within Poems Upon Several Occasions, presents another pastoral setting which acts parallel to the lovers. This is another poem where the pastoral is not static as nature provides shelter for the lovers allowing them to naturally experience their deepest passions of desire beyond the control of nature itself. Behn is presenting human nature as stronger than the natural world. The poem begins in a seductive manner:
Amyntas led me to a Grove,
Where all the Trees did shade us;
The Sun it self, though it had Strove,
It could not have betray’d us:
The place secur’d from humane Eyes,
No other fear allows,
But when the Winds that gently rise,
Doe Kiss the yeilding Boughs.[53](Stanza 1, Lines 1-8)
Behn anticipates the desire within the foreshadow of the pastoral; between the lovers and the landscape which demonstrates a correlation between the two. The metaphor of the wind forcing the boughs to yield describes a susceptibility to desire through delicate nature of seduction. However, the landscape of the poem proposes an imbalance which demonstrates uneasiness – there is a threat to the natural order of the pastoral world. Regarding pastoral poetry there is an absolute sense of hierarchy; however, Behn from the beginning presents the world as shielding the lovers meeting which elaborates on the way Behn’s society presented themselves. The outside placed a mask on the public sphere to act in accordance to your sex and social standing. The natural world has given her the opportunity to explore her true desires by shielding her from the social constructs of the outside world. The lovers explore their desire using the pastoral as a euphemism:
Down there we satt upon the Moss,
And did begin to play
A Thousand Amorous Tricks, to pass
The heat of all the day.
A many Kisses he did give:
And I return’d the same. (Stanza 2, Lines 9-14)
The continual alliteration of the naturalistic imagery which flows from ‘shade’11on the second line onto line three which explains, ‘The Sun it self, though it had Strove,’12It is interesting the alliteration is with the letter “S.” It appears Behn creates a snake and serpent-like sound to create an onomatopoeic allusion to The Fall. The allusion to The Fall diminishes its biblical meaning. Behn is separating the preconceptions about The Fall, which blame the women for humanity’s eternal sin by establishing sexuality and sex as an important part of life to embrace. As Behn follows the onomatopoeia of “S” by writing “It could not have betray’d us.” We get the impression that giving in to the temptation of what the snake was offering was, in fact, a liberation rather than a betrayal to humankind.
This brings another interesting argument about sexuality as if nature and the lovers are at one and in their embrace mimicking each other, it can be translated as a homoerotic piece. Homoerotic love is further established by the next lines where nature is sexualised itself.[54]With the apparent sensuality to the poem, although the provocation is ambiguous to what they are making, the insinuation shows an inevitable ending where they enjoy the pleasures of sex. It is evident the sexual innuendo establishes moss as a metaphor for the lover’s pubic hair, comparing to the soft textures they both feel. Behn is attempting to open the mind of the reader to homosexuality by using imagery of the natural world. The emphasis that Behn used a collective pronoun ‘we’ further implies that both lovers are of the same sex and the sexual activity is of mutual consent and willingness. The persona, a woman, interprets her pastoral world as the restriction of human imagination. The duality of the Behn’s consciousness, through the comparisons of the definition that nature is innocent, with Behn’s definition that nature is full of desire, of human nature. Her fear of desire forms Behn’s duality, and the necessity of it; the willing mistress is “willing to receive/ That which I dare not name”(Stanza 15-16). The fear of revealing the sexuality of her natural body represents the fear of revealing notions of sexuality in a world where women are enforced to embody a modest, pure nature. The persona indicates she’s hidden in a society that places stereotypical constructions of a pure woman upon her which contradicts the identity she wishes to pursue. The landscape allows Behn to represent how a woman’s identity is based on performance, masking their inner self which is opposed by the landscape that surrounds her.[55]
Behn combines the freedom of identity within the acceptance of sexual intercourse. The lovers and the pastoral demolish the protectiveness that was once voiced in stanza one and two. Behn directly involves the reader, in the end, enforcing the situation to include anyone who reads the poem. The actions of the lovers become more focused on their human nature, rather than the pastoral, where the lovers have an intimacy together where “his thoughts Exprest” (Stanza 3, Line 23). Until the last two lines where there is a mockery of human nature. Behn anticipates their sexual intercourse: [He] lay’d me gently on the Ground; / Ah who can guess the rest?” (Stanza 3, Lines 24-5) The rhetorical question subverts what Behn was doing previously; the way Behn has demonstrated the falseness is questionable within the social world at the very end. Behn’s use of the rhetorical question presents the falseness of the reader’s life as she reveals the unspoken actions that are consistently happening in society that people purposely ignore or prosecute.
The willing mistress does not pretend to be coy and embodies the true nature of desire.[56]The pastoral represents the conventions of society that mask the true intentions of people bound by a society of rules. Behn persists in making the audience a participant in the exchange by questioning their sense of morality and pleading with the reader to assist in destroying this superficial masquerade that dictates the freedom of the mind and ultimately the body. Behn is empowering the reader where they can represent the woman as a free loving being.[57]The division of binary opposite genders is constructed by the lack of free will to enact on human desire. Carolyn Heilbrun argues the opposition between women and men is only culturally learned, which is what Behn presents in this poem, that differences between men and women are only created by society, not by inherent expression of identity.[58]
A Discovery of New Worlds
No ravishing thoughts approach our Ear,
Thus Fulsom Gingle of the times,
Is all we are allow’d to understand or hear.
So thou by this Translation dost advance
Our Knowledge from the State of Ignorance,
And equals us to Man! Ah how can we,
Enough Adore, or Sacrifice enough to thee.[59]
Behn focused her final years on producing literature that presented ideas of natural philosophy and the sciences to a wider, feminised audience, which in the Restoration Period had been predominantly masculinised fields. In “To Mr Creech (under the Name of Daphnis) on his Excellent Translation of Lucretius,” Behn recognises the importance of translation for women for the enhancement of knowledge about the ‘masculine world’ where they were restricted. The restriction leads us to contemplate Sherry Simon’s argument on the impact of translation for women. “We are led to wonder whether translation condemned women to the margins of discourse or, on the contrary, rescued them from imposed silence.”[60]Bovier de Fonentelle’s Conversation of a Plurality of Worldswhich unlike many scientific works of the period, written in the common language, French instead of the dominated scientific language of Latin. A common language enabled access to educated women to translate, learn and contribute to these new fields as they would be more likely well read in contemporary languages, such as French, Italian and Dutch. The work entails
a series of conversations between a courteous philosopher and a beautiful young Marchioness who remarkably indulges her curiosity about the natural world. In Fontelle’s preface, there is an apparent admission that his attention was to educate a wider audience, indicating knowledge should be accessible to everyone who can learn. Fonentelle explains in the preface to Conversations of the Plurality of Worlds:
I’ve placed a woman in these conversations which is being instructed, one who has never heard a syllable of such things. I thought this fiction would serve to make the work more enticing, and to encourage women through the example of a lady who, having nothing of an extraordinary character, without ever exceeding the limitations of a person who has no knowledge of science, never fails to understand what’s said to her, and arranges in her mind, without confusion, vortices and worlds.[61]
The placement of a learned lady in his novel demonstrates the necessity to feminise a masculinised space. A liberalised view that Behn wished to radicalise. Behn translated Fontenelle’s work into English and utilised her authorial voice to illustrate several arguments on the relationship between Scripture and natural philosophy, which poses issues with the dominant masculine discourse. Behn’s understanding of the importance of societal norms, allowed her to engage and challenge these aspects of natural philosophy within the constraints of gender by referring to religion as her evidence.
Behn’s preface to A Discover of New Worlds is not as radical in her attempt to mark herself as a worthy author in her right despite her gender; Behn makes instead a justification which is more typical of women writers in seventeenth-century England. The tone is apologetic as she dedicates distinguished names within their society.
If it is not done with that exactness it merits I hope your Lordship will pardon it in a woman who is not supposed to be well versed in the terms of philosophy.[62]
This is uncharacteristic of Behn as she asks forgiveness for her sex. However, Behn’s her gender as irrelevant; a tactic Behn demonstrated well throughout her career. However, it was not necessary to act so boldly in her preface as the voice of the Marchioness already encompassed a hermaphroditic personality; the character’s unmatched beauty and capacity to understand concepts dominated by men presented Behn an opportunity to challenge the known binary position on gender. The marchioness is both competent in femininity and masculinity. Therefore, Behn in the translation writes herself into the Marchioness, attributing the persona’s natural duality while adding her own more fortuitous assumptions on natural philosophy. Behn claims herself that the woman speaker prompted motivation to contribute her own understandings of these topics. This alludes to some disagreements she has with the learned lady character stating: “he makes her say a great many very silly things, tho’ sometimes she makes Observations so learned, that the greatest Philosophers in Europe could make no better.”[63]Subsequently, by adopting the Marchioness persona, Behn creates a character who not only understands the natural philosophy and scientific methods but also contributes to it. [64]
Therefore, the importance of the Marchioness as a character provided Behn with the perfect opportunity to write as motivation and justification for the translation. Behn writes “I thought an English Woman might adventure to translate anything, a French Woman may be supposed to have spoken.”[65]Behn’s expected rhetoric of subversion dramatically changes in this translation; rather she extends further into the field by acknowledging the woman and diverting the reader’s attention to demonstrate how most of these works are accessible to a French woman in their own language, where an English woman like herself must translate. Behn is simultaneously able to promote this fictional educated woman and place this notion into the real world by associating Fontenelle’s educated woman character with herself. This association hopes to authorise women to adopt a professional, or ‘masculine’ position in society; Behn demonstrates if a distinguished intellectual approves of a learned lady, in turn, Behn should also be approved. Therefore, Behn presents the character and herself as synonymous.
This establishment of Behn’s intelligence gains access to criticise Fontenelle’s work with authority; ironically, Behn critiques Fontenelle’s imaginative work, detailing his discussion of astronomy and other planets lack specific scientific or mathematical evidence. These flights of fancy are predominantly an attribute besotted amongst women, another technique Behn does to subvert norms on gender.
If he had let alone his learned Men, Philosophical Transactions, and Telescopes in the Planet Jupiter, and his Inhabitants […] and only stuck to the greatness of the Uni- verse, he had deserved much more Praise.[66]
The criticism is exceptionally rebellious from a female writer; however, it allows Behn to take claim over her authority on her perspectives on the original writing. The focus on gaining access to education and different perspectives presented an opportunity for Behn expand on her concept of different worlds. Cavendish argued for the connection between science and imagination; imagination is essential to allow us to picture different microcosms and to discover new knowledge.
Cavendish explains within the realms of imagination presents the eye of knowledge[67]; arguing that how could the rational mind theorise about atoms or forces such as gravity and not see these truths. Behn presents this concept to demonstrate the need for a dual mind in science and philosophy of imagination and reason. Behn’s ability to sway the reader with her hermaphroditic pen conceptualised an opportunity to present these ideas about the role of the woman. In the previous chapter, I argued Behn’s poetry created an idealised world, where gender can be easily constructed and deconstructed by societal norms. These standards are tangible and have fluctuated through time as a reference to before the Fall, or the golden age where there was equality among gender. The focus of Behn’s writing was to deconstruct the silent woman and reinvent the codes of femininity and masculinity. The Restoration period enhanced opportunities to express what a woman’s role is, especially when staging methods in theatre began to radicalise. The stage inverted this by using the private space to of Doctor Bailado to distinguish how public spaces are formed. Behn goes into the depths of critiquing a society that is heavily based on male presence Brian Cowan argues, “The ‘authentic public sphere’ was ‘constituted by private people’, and it stood in contrast to the inauthentic public that was located in the state and court society.”[68]The physical appearance and dress of actors were clearly depicted by exaggerating the extremities of Restoration fashion and led to any audience member to marvel at its extreme nature.[69]Performances carefully depicted scenes where characters were exposed in their private space, whether in their bedroom or on the toilet. Therefore, Behn had a beautiful opportunity to expand her world created for the equality of women and men to the stage where she could explore notions of gender in front of an audience.
This chapter move on to how the influences of Fonentelle’s presentation of new philosophy and the sciences approach the plays, The Emperor of the Moonand its influences of new philosophy and science. Christa Knellwolf indicates Behn’s “carnivalesque elements structuring the plots of these plays are noticeably opposed to reason, and they not only introduce a discussion of objectivity and its logical implications but also engage in an analysis of society.”[70]
Al Coppola elaborates, the “improper spectating”[71]within the play introduces to the audience a ridicule of the intellectual public space of society. The play presents Cavendish’s notion that imagination and reason come from one truth. This seventeenth-century farce illustrates a pair of girl’s resistance to their strict, controlling father or uncle who prohibits them from meeting with their lovers. These girls, knowing of their father’s/uncle’s fascination and borderline obsession with astronomy, the daughters align themselves to persuade him that their lovers are galactical princes from the Moon sent by its Emperor. The importance that Behn’s presentation of power and strength in women is not unnoticed. The image of the moon is prominent throughout the play, it is a symbol of feminine authority, by conducting the imagined emperor to be from the Moon Behn is directly linking imagery to womanhood and fertility. Therefore, Behn is symbolically reiterating the woman has an enormous amount of autonomy; this mimicry of the fascination of women can be radicalised away from the truth. As women have been from the radical readings of the Bible, have been forced to live in a private space, quiet, pure and chaste. This play links natural philosophy to reconstruct how each gender should conduct themselves in a private and public space.
In Act, I Scene I we meet Elaria’s character who is rather blunt and straight to the point, unlike her male counterparts. The conversation with Scaramouch where Elaria learns of the farce to trick her father deploys the fancy when it is explained to her, frankly stating she is “impatient.”
SCARAMOUCH. Such a Conundrum, —well if there be wise Men and Conjurers in the World, they are intriguing Lovers.
ELARIA Out with it.
SCARAMOUCH You must know, Madam, your Father, (my Master, the Doctor,) is a little Whimsical, Romantick, or Don Quick-sottish, or so.
ELARIAOr rather Mad.[72](Act I Scene I)
It is unmistakable that Behn has written the female leads to represent stronger personalities as intelligent rather than shrew. Baliardo becomes irrational as the lines between reality and imagination blur. The comic buffoonery of Doctor Baliardo is explicit in the stage directions where he enters in the Garden in Scene II. “Enter Doctor, with all manner of mathematical instruments hanging at his girdle; Scaramouch bearing a telescope twenty (or more) foot long.”[73]Doctor Baliardo is obsessive over the timing to watch the King from the moon, hastily rushing Scaramouch to “Mount, mount the telescope”[74]. Aside from the sexual innuendos using the telescope as phallic imagery, Behn procures an element of politics that erotises and sexualises the presentation of public life. The Baliardo is not only expecting life on the moon but a whole Kingdom which could rival Earth’s own culture and technology. The telescope is used as a symbol of how rational thought can invade the internal imagination, highlighting its uncertainty. Behn uses this image to present a masculine area demonstrated by the phallic telescope, invading the fertile moon, a feminised area which creates a metaphorical connection between these two areas of thought. This infuses dramatic irony within the performance as Behn is acknowledging immediately in the play that what we believe to know is only one perspective that is as passionate and deluded as the character Baliardo. Behn is advocating for a holistic approach where fancy and rationale can complement each other.
DOCTOR BAILARDO. Uncivil, it were flat Treason if it shou’d be known, but thus unseen, and as wise Politicians shou’d, I take Survey of all: This is the States-man’s peeping-hole, thorow which he Steals the secrets of his King, and seems to wink at distance.[75](Scene II, The Garden)
Behn’s commentary on this play mainly attempts a cultural perspective rather than political. Behn advocates dramatising a scientist completely obsessed with a spectacle that is not real. This links in with the political instability of the period through the cultural implications of? As Behn comments on the irony of natural philosophy being dominated by male perspectives, the play suggests the consequences of not having a balance in its education and advancement.[76]
However, attempting to indicate how the play changed the opinion of the audience in the Restoration period is difficult. The incredible amount of songs and dance routines, extravagant costumes, bejewelled masks and shocking mechanical props dazzled the audience. Therefore, Coppola demonstrates that this stimulation was to retrain the uncritical gaze of the public.[77]This concept is born from Behn’s translation of Fonentelle’s work, as Behn attempts to turn natural philosophy into its act of spectatorship which is evident by the philosopher’s representation of the opera.
Nature is a great Scene, or Representation, much like one of our Opera’s; for, from the place where you sit to behold the Opera, you do not see the Stage, as it really is, since everything is disposed there for the representing agreeable Objects to your sight […].[78]
Behn presents the differences between a spectator and an engineer and distinguishes the engineer like the philosopher. This rhetoric implies the more a person inquires and learns the workings of nature the more likely a person to enjoy its glory. Popular philosophers such as Descartes depicted a purely observational outlook in their philosophy to establish a rationalised means of nature. However, Behn argues that to understand philosophy is to understand not only the seen but of the unseen.
In Behn’s play, the role of the naive virtuoso is to be publicly shamed. However, Doctor Bailardo is instead solved at the allowance of his friends and family. The final scene presents an opportunity for the character’s forgiveness as the Doctor Bailardo finally understands of the masquerade that the other characters have conducted around him. The ending does not insist on fooling Doctor Bailado any longer as the physician insists, “You are only cured, sir, of a disease / That has long reigned over your nobler faculties.”[79]The farce is a success, and Bailardo declares:
DOCTOR BAILARDO.Burn all my Books, and let my Study Blaze,
Burn all to Ashes, and be sure the
Wind Scatter the vile Contageous Monstrous Lyes.[80]
This ending targets the audience to explain that his foolishness can be easily seen in the seats of the audience, which is extended further when he invites all to “see my happy recantation of all the follies fables has inspired till now”.[81]Behn proposes through this character that the addiction to a public sphere and its constructs are as preposterous as this character. The audience is expected to find Bailardo hysterical. However, Behn also enforces the audience to see themselves within the character. The exaggeration of spectacle and performance is important in this play, and Behn does not fail to disappoint. In Scene, The Last Behn directs, “(The Gallery richly adorn’d with Scenes and Lights.)”[82]to begin the culmination of the final spectacle. The descent of the Moon Emperor and the Prince of Thunderland followed by a chorus of the twelve zodiacs which is a “deus ex machina” moment where this transcendent moment is a setting device that enriches foreshadowing imagery that Bailardo will have a moment where he realises the farce. The technique of “deus ex machina” is the last ploy by Behn to disengage with constructs of power or the semblance of authority by laughter. Behn is revealing to the audience on their anticipation and obsession of empty spectacle, however like her dealings with A Discovery of New WorldsBehn actively illustrates to the audience that we should have an intellectual curiosity and not get overwhelmed and too enthusiastic like Bailardo.It’s important to acknowledge the final words of the play; in epilogue, the final voice is Elaria, now Mrs Cooke:
Some fruitful drops may on the Muses fall;
Since honest Pens do his just cause afford Equal
Advantage with the useful Sword. (Epilogue) [83]
Therefore, the last voice of the play is a woman demonstrates that throughout the farce, the women are the ones who do not perform in the spectacle. Behn here shows that gender is also a spectacle, the differences and social codes they must follow finds them in situations where they must mask any intentions that aren’t deemed feminine. Behn here admits woman’s strongest weapon is writing, and it’s imperative that women write to circulate their own views into society.
Conclusion
Alas! a Poet’s good for nothing now,
Unless he have the knack of conjuring too;
For ’tis beyond all natural sense to guess
How their strange Miracles are brought to pass. [84]
At the end of Behn’s play The Lucky Chance, in the prologue, Behn presents the audience with an incentive to respond to what they have watched. Behn argues that the artist’s role is insignificant, whether male or female what matters is how we as an audience or reader respond to this specific presentation of art. Alongside the argument that art mimics life, Behn presents the notion that life can be represented through art which then we must respond and learn. The experimentations of worlds Behn creates in her literary work is meaningless unless we as the audience or reader can bring a plurality of possibilities to them. Therefore, this excerpt categorises what this dissertation is defining, from the perspective this dissertation aims to demonstrate the literary world of translation allowed Behn to mark her way through a mainly masculine dominated society. Restoration England was a period of instability and presented an opportunity for women to infiltrate the “masculine” fields within their feminine restraints, like a translation. The theme that links Aphra Behn’s writing is her interception of translated texts to present her own ideas. This mask that shields her from complete restriction is the ability to manipulate and explore the uses of different genders and sexualities. Analysing Behn’s writing it has often occurred that she is wielding a performance, as she cross-dresses through masculine and feminine masks, even creating characters who cannot be distinguished by binary genders. Therefore, this dissertation has discussed how Behn has explored through poetry and performances the irony behind her restrictions as a woman. The emphasis on her writing is to deconstruct boundaries upon gender and sexuality by placing masquerades in a coy ensemble. These masks Behn places within the personas of her poetry and plays only exacerbate the need to destroy them. Goodfellow argues Behn“was not only aware of her anomalous presence as a learned lady in a masculine discipline,but was also adept at manipulating her perceived gender status.”[85] Gallagher argues Behn was aware of this manipulation and believed it necessary to play with these masks to claim her autonomy as a woman.
[Behn] introduced to the world of English letters the professional woman writer as a newfangled whore. […] The author-whore persona also makes of female authorship per se a dark comedy that explores the bond between the liberty the stage offered women and their confinement behind […] masks.[86]
This dissertation has addressed the mixtures of identities that can take shape in the forms of gender and sexuality but has limited its research in the Behn’s art of masking her gendered discourse. This dissertation has explored her writing as constructing new worlds, but needs to explore further the masks Behn uses to address issues on gender. The Lucky Chancechallenges these notions on woman writers by subverting the authority onto men. The challenge correlates with the preface to The Lucky Chance:
I lay down my Quill, and you shall hear no more of me, no not so much as to make Comparisons, because I will be kinder to my Brothers of the Pen, than they have been to a defenceless Woman; for I am not content to write for a Third day only. I value Fame as much as if I had been born a Hero; and if you rob me of that, I can retire from the ungrateful World, and scorn its fickle Favours.[87]
Behn demonstrates her fame is unimportant, it is a mere result of her attempt to engage with her audience and experiment with gender and sexual socio-political issues. Behn is proclaiming her self-worth and importance to not only the literary field but also in the progression of changing the concept of femininity and what the role of a woman is. Behn radically presents her case about the comedic irony of the place of a woman by highlighting regardless of a woman’s actions men enterprise woman on their virginity. The Lucky Chanceexposes the selling of young woman to older men in arranged marriages is more like prostitution than female publication. Catherine Gallagher analyses The Lucky Chancein respect to the representation of the publication of woman’s writing as nothing better than prostitution. Gallagher presents The Lucky Chanceas “representational economies” where “playful challenges to the very possibility of female self-representation”.[88]To explore constructs of society, Behn must manoeuvre her way into double standards of society to subvert their meanings.
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[1]Charles Cotton, “To the Admir’d Astraea,” on Behn’s Translation of The Lover’s Watch, in Summers,The Works of Aphra Behn, 6: 6 (1889).
[2]Lori Chamberlain, ‘Gender and The Metaphorics Of Translation’, in Lawrence Venuti, ed., The Translation Studies Reader (London and New York, 2000), p.66.
[3]Mary Poovey, Uneven Developments: The Ideological Work of Gender in Mid-Victorian England: Women in Culture and Society(University of Chicago Press, 1988), p.199.
[4]Tina Krontiris examines women and their self-representation by translating biblical texts, demonstrating the role of writing as contextual.Krontirishas suggested that when considering publishing in seventeenth-century, ideas on modesty mostly affected women of aristocratic birth where women born in lower classes did not have as great of a burden to uphold their reputations. Tina Kronitiris, Oppositional voices: Women as writers and translators of literature in the English renaissance (New York: Taylor & Francis, 1992), p. 21.
[5]Angeline Goreau, Reconstructing Aphra: a social biography of Aphra Behn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980), p. 13.
[6]John Dryden accuses such rhetoric from women in selling their written love sonnets, epistles, lyrics and other works, disgraced with the same contempt as prostituting themselves.“Who would excel, when few can make a Test, / Betwixt indiff’rent Writing and the best? / For Favours cheap and common, who wou’d strive/ Which, like abandoned Prostitutes, you give?” John Dryden and John Sargeaunt, “Epilogue to Aureng-Zebe”, The Poems of John Dryden(Oxford: OUP, 1948), p. 226.
[7]Anne Finch and Katharine Munzer Rogers, “The Introduction”, Selected Poems of Anne Finch, Countess of Winchilsea(New York: Ungar, 1979),p. 5.
[8]Tina Kronitiris, Oppositional voices: Women as writers and translators of literature in the English renaissance (New York: Taylor & Francis, 1992), p. 21.
[9]Angeline Goreau, Reconstructing Aphra: a social biography of Aphra Behn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980), p. 231.
[10]Women like Katherine Phillips understood this fear and felt it best to avoid the hate of men. In a production of Pompey, performed in Dublin where Katherine Phillips was then living, the couplet warned of women and writing: “Yes, that bold work a Woman dares Translate, /Not to provoke, nor yet to fear Men’s hate.” Later, Phillips translated her version of Pompey and Horace for the English audience and demonstrated this powerful incentive. Katherine Philips, ‘To the Excellent Orinda’, The Broadview Anthology of Seventeenth-Century Verse, (Canada: Broadview Press, 2001), p. 431.
[11]Aphra Behn and Jane Spencer, “The Rover” And Other Plays(Oxford: Oxford Paperbacks, 1998), p. 189.
[12]Aphra Behn and Jane Spencer, “The Rover” And Other Plays(Oxford: Oxford Paperbacks, 1998), p. 189.
[13]Kate Aughterson, Renaissance woman: A sourcebook: Constructions of femininity in England, (New York: Routledge, 1995), p.231
[14]Janet Todd, “Textual Introductions to Translations” in The Works of Aphra Behn(Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1993).
[15]Sarah Goodfellow, “”Such Masculine Strokes”: Aphra Behn as Translator of “A Discovery of New Worlds“”,Albion: A Quarterly Journal Concerned with British Studies,28: 2 (1996), p. 233.
[16]Sherry Simon, Gender in Translation: Cultural Identity and The Politics of Transmission(London: Routledge, 1996), p. ix.
[17]Ibid.
[18]This book will now be referred as Poems Upon Several Occasions.
[19]This poem will now be referred as ‘The Golden Age’.
[20]This poem will now be referred as ‘Juniper-Tree’.
[21]Elizabeth V. Young, “Aphra Behn’s Horace.” Restoration: Studies in English Literary Culture, 1660-1700, 23: 2 (1999), p. 76.
[22]John Dryden, Paul Hammond, David Hopkins, “Dedication to Examen Poeticum”, The Poems of John Dryden 1693-1696 (Harlow: Pearson Education Limited, 2000), p. 220.
[23]This poem will now be referred as ‘To My Fair Clarinda’.
[24]Sir Philip Sidney and Jeffrey Shepherd, ed., Apology for Poetry or A Defense of Posie1595(Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1973), p. 85.
[25]Ruth Levitas, TheConcept of Utopia (Bern: Peter Land AG, 1996), p. 8.
[26]Ibid., p. 221.
[27]Ruth Levitas, TheConcept of Utopia (Bern: Peter Land AG, 1996), p. 222.
[28]Oddvar Holmesland, Utopian Negotiation: Aphra Behn And Margaret Cavendish(Syracuse University Press, 2013), p. 3.
[29]Ibid., p. 8.
[30]Ibid., p. 9.
[31]Elizabeth Young argues Pastoral is perhaps a “ladylike” form, categorically disempowered by the critical generic hierarchy. But it is also a particularly subversive form that, in the hands of such an accomplished female poet as Aphra Behn, challenges conventions of both genre and gender. Elizabeth V. Young, “Aphra Behn, Gender, and Pastoral”, Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900, 33: 3 (1993), p. 523.
[32]Margaret Cavendish’s poem invites the radical changes and the pastoral shifts as it progresses through centuries, challenging the contemporary society. “The Shepherdesses which great Flocks doe keep /Are dabl’d high with dew, following their Sheep; /Milking their Ewes their hands doe dirty make, /For, being wet, dirt from their Duggs doe take. /The Sun doth scorch the skin, it yellows growes; /Their eyes are red, lips dry with wind that blowes.” Mary Cavendish in ‘A Description of Shepherds, and Shepherdesses’ is directly protesting the traditions of the pastoral. The harsh connotations of the shepherd bring repulsion to the reader for using such a grotesque creature as a technique for the romanticised pastoral. The alliteration describing the shepherd’s awful sun dried skin on line fiveis followed by a caesura. This comma breaks the rest of the line presenting that the realities are hidden behind deeper respects than just the outer layers of the shepherd.The shepherd is a main pastoral convention that initiates the truth about the natural order of the world where the shepherd is at the disposal of nature. The pastoral tradition is an investment in power, an incredible web of political criticism hidden within contexts of hierarchy. Cavendish’s protest to the pastoral exposes the harsh realities that hide behind a picturesque scene; the characters involved in pastoral poetry are indefinitely holding a double meaning. Importantly, Cavendish knew the effects of the nation and the landscape where the shepherd does not truly hold any power.Mary Cavendish, ‘A Description of Shepherds, and Shepherdesses’, in Jonathan F.S Post, ed.,Green Thoughts and Green Shades
(London: University of California Press, 2002), p. 214.
[33]James Turner, The Politics of Landscape: Rural Scenery and Society in English Poetry 1630-1660, (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1979), p.9.
[34]Ibid.
[35]Heidi Laudien argues, “Behn uses the form of the pastoral for self-exploration, dramatisation, and expression, and her pastorals offer a powerful revision of the pastoral in terms of constructing a space for the articulation of female desire and for their challenges to heteronormativity in the pastoral tradition and culture at large.” In Heidi LaudienLadies of The Shade: The Pastoral Poetry of Aphra Behn, Anne Finch and Elizabeth Singer Rowe(unpublished Ph.D., University of Maryland, 2004), p. 2.
[36]Aphra Behn, ‘The Golden Age’ in ‘Poems Upon Several Occasions With A Voyage To The Island Of Love: also The lover in fashion, being an account from Lydicus to Lysander of his voyage from the island of love’, Early English Books, <http://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/eebo/A27316.0001.001/1:13.1?rgn=div2;view=fulltext> (accessed 10 October 2016).
[37]Michael Foucault, Power. In the Essential Works of Foucault 1954-1984(New York: The New Press, 2000), p. 120.
[38]Molly Rothenberg suggests, “alienation, labour and repression are not the consequences of original sin but are continually being reproduced by the repression of desire, or by ‘Pride and Averice.'”Robert Markley and Molly Rothenberg, ‘Contestations of Nature: Aphra Behn’s The Golden Age and The Sexualizing of Politics’, in Heidi Hutner, ed., Rereading Aphra Behn: History, Theory and Criticism(Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1993), p. 310.
[39]Holmesland proposes, “The hardened, glory-seeking conqueror is decrepit, while the heroic quality deriving from the soul’s greatness must be preserved in charitable form. Accordingly, “The Golden Age” mellows heroic conquest into a gentle battle between equal lovers.”Oddvar Holmesland, Utopian Negotiation: Aphra Behn and Margaret Cavendish (Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press, 2013), p. 188.
[40]Heidi Laudien argues, “Behn uses the form of the pastoral for self-exploration, dramatisation, and expression, and her pastorals offer a powerful revision of the pastoral in terms of constructing a space for the articulation of female desire and for their challenges to heteronormativity in the pastoral tradition and in culture at large.” Heidi Laudien, ‘Ladies of The Shade: The Pastoral Poetry of Aphra Behn, Anne Finch and Elizabeth Singer Rowe’, (unpublished Ph.D., University of Maryland, 2004), p. 2.
[41]Heidi Laudien, ‘Aphra Behn: pastoral poet’, Women’s Writing, 12: 1 (2005), p. 44.
[42]Thomas Rosenmeyer argues, “Theocritus avoids the temptation of allowing nature full play”; where Theocritus’ landscape is “lightly sketched in”.
Thomas G. Rosenmeyer, The Green Cabinet: Theocritus and the European Pastoral Lyric(Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1969), p. 191.
[43]Aphra Behn, ‘On A Juniper-Tree: cut down to make Busks’ in ‘Poems Upon Several Occasions With A Voyage To The Island Of Love:also The lover in fashion, being an account from Lydicus to Lysander of his voyage from the island of love’, Early English Books, <http://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/eebo/A27316.0001.001/1:13.1?rgn=div2;view=fulltext> (accessed 10 October 2016).
[44]Thomas Gartaker, Marriage Duties Briefly Couched Together (London, 1620), pp. 9-10.
[45]Margaret Cavendish and James Fitzmaurice, Sociable Letters,(Toronto: Broadview Press, 2004), p.322
[46]Judith Butler,Gender Trouble, Femininism and the Subversion of Identity: Tenth Anniversary Edition, (New York: Routledge, 2014), p.31
[47]Maureen Duffy, A Passionate Shepherdess: Aphra Behn,(London: Cape, 1977), p. 11
[48]Jennifer Frangos explains this relationship through the metaphor of the stage: “[A] gesture suggesting that the boundaries between stage and off-stage, actress and role, and thus, between appearance and identity, were fluid and permeable.” Jennifer Frangos, “Aphra Behn’s Cunning Stunts: ‘To the Fair Clarinda.’”The Eighteenth Century, vol. 45, no. 1, (2004), pp. 21–40, (p. 23)
[49]Roberta C. Martin, “‘Beauteous Wonder of a Different Kind’: Aphra Behn’s Destabilization of Sexual Categories.” College English, 61: 2, (1998), p. 208
[50]Elizabeth V. Young, “Aphra Behn, Gender, and Pastoral.” Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900, 33:3, (1993), p.539
[51]As Susan Lanser argues: “Like discourses by men, women’s writing often stressed the superiority of friendship over marital ties. As men had based a homosocial exclusivity on the claim that women were unfit, now women held up men’s poor treatment of them and the unequal system of marriage as evidence that in female intimacy lay women’s best hope.” Susan Lanser, “Befriending the Body: Female Intimacies as Class Acts.” The American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies.(1999), p. 3
[52]Ibid, p. 124
[53]Aphra Behn, “The Willing Mistriss”,Poems Upon Several Occasions With A Voyage To The Island Of Love: also The lover in fashion, being an account from Lydicus to Lysander of his voyage from the island of love, Quod.Lib.Umich.Edu, 1684, <http://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/eebo/A27316.0001.001/1:13.6?rgn=div2;view=fulltext> [accessed on 10 October 2016]
[54]The nature is a direct reference to fertility, femininity, and wildness, it can very much then reflect upon who the two lovers are, which goes as far to say Behn is dabbling with ideas of lesbianism.
[55]Harold Toliver presents this situation as “characteristic of a worthwhile pastoral” which he distinguishes as a “dialectical, tensive structure”. This demonstrates the pastoral directly opposing the structure of the social world. Harold Tolliver, Pastoral Forms and Attitudes, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971), p. 5
[56]The presentation of gender and heteronormative relationships are extended in the poem if we explore Bernard Duyfhuisen’s argues, “The Willing Mistriss” is “a homoerotic poem, written to another woman” [Bernard Duyfhuizen, “‘That Which I Dare Not Name’: Aphra Behn’s ‘The Willing Mistress.’” ELH, 58:1 (1991), p.125 explaining the character Amyntas is a synonym for John Hoyle, who was speculated to be Behn’s lover. Duyfhuisen and Duffy argue “To the fair Clarinda” is about John Hoyle in drag who was known to be one of Behn’s lovers. This argument is extremely radical and where it is backed up by historical references on Behn’s life, the transcendent meaning of the poem is that the gender of Clarinda and the persona are ambiguous. The poem does not allow the reader to resolve a specific construct of gender or sexuality onto the lovers, however, shares that gender can reshape the forms of society and aren’t rigid forms. Maureen Duffy, A Passionate Shepherdess: Aphra Behn,(London: Cape, 1977), p. 115
[57]Ros Ballaster argues Behn “provides her reader […] with a series of feigned identities, withholding her ‘true’ self, or rather putting the ‘truth’ of selfhood into question.” This is what Behn aims to do in both poems, by creating hermadophritic figures she can loosely bend the constructs of gender in relationships. Ballaster, Ros, “Seizing the Means of Seduction: Fiction and Feminine Identity in Aphra Behn and Delarivier Manley,” in Women, Writing, History 1640-1 740, eds Isobel Grundy and Susan Wiseman (Athens: Univ. of Georgia Press, 1992)
[58]Carolyn G. Heilbrun, “The Politics of Mind: Women, Tradition, and the University,” in Hamlet’s Mother and Other Women (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1990), pp. 216-17
[59]Aphra Behn, “To Mr Creech (under the Nameof Daphnis) on his ExcellentTranslation of Lucretius,”, quod.lib.umich.edu/e/eebo, 1684, <http://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/eebo/A27316.0001.001/1:13.11?rgn=div2;view=fulltext> [accessed on 10 March 2017]
[60]Sherry Simon, Gender in Translation: Cultural Identity and The Politics of Transmission, (London: Routledge, 1996),p. 43
[61]Bover de Fonentelle, Conversations on the Plurality of Worldsed. Jerome De La Lande, trans. Elizabeth Gunning (London: J. Cunde, 1803), p. viii, <http://passagenproject.com/Conversations%20on%20the%20plurality%20of%20worlds%20%20Bernard%20le%20Bovier%20de%20Fontenelle.pdf> [accessed on 3 April 2017]
[62]Ibid, pp. 9-10.
[63]Ibid.
[64]Goodfellow argues,“Behn recognised that authority in natural philosophy could not be established by simply claiming it. Nor could it be won with the argument that as a woman she had as much ability as any man.” Goodfellow, Sarah, “Such Masculine Strokes,” Aphra Behn as a Translator of A Discovery of New Worlds, Albion 28:2, (1996) p. 230
[65]Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle, A Discovery of New Worlds, trans. Aphra Behn (London: William Canning, 1688), p. 11
[66]Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle, A Discovery of New Worlds, trans. Aphra Behn (London: William Canning, 1688), p. 9
[67]Magaret Cavendish, Philosophical and Physical Opinions, 1655, eebo.chadwy.com> <http://eebo.chadwyck.com> [accessed on 12 April 2017]
[68]Brian Cowan What was Masculine about the Public Sphere? Gender and the Coffeehouse Milieu in Post-Restoration England, History Workshop Journal 51 (2001) p. 130
[69]Maureen Duffy, A Passionate Shepherdess: Aphra Behn,(London: Cape, 1977), p. 11
[70]This performance strategy in The Emperor of the Moon, Behn extends the meaning of a text to appropriate its meaning and how this idea could play out, highlighting a new dimension to the field of literature.Knellwolf, Christa. “Aphra Behn and the Performance of Alternative Worlds.” Spell: Swiss Papers on English Language and Literature, 11 (1998), p.75
[71]Coppola, Al, “Retraining the Virtuoso’s Gaze: Behn’s ‘Emperor of the Moon,” the Royal Society, and the Spectacles of Science and Politics.” Eighteenth-Century Studies, 41:4, (2008) p.481
[72]Aphra Behn, The Emperor of the Moon, 1688, digital.library.upenn.edu <http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/behn/emperor/emperor.html>, [accessed on 3 April May]
[73]Ibid.
[74]Ibid.
[75]Ibid.
[76]Coppola argues the spectacle of the performance itself is a critique of the la comedia dell’arte style and the audience’s resistance to think for themselves, believing in everything they see. “The Emperor of the Moondiagnoses what appears in this play as a linked network of social abuses that all derive from proper peeping, what we might call a “culture of spectacle.” Behn lampoons an excessively credulous virtuoso only to direct the audience’s untrustworthy gaze toward the threat posed by enthusiasm to domestic and civil harmony; toward the debased condition of the theatre.”Al Coppola, “Retraining the Virtuoso’s Gaze: Behn’s ‘Emperor of the Moon,” the Royal Society, and the Spectacles of Science and Politics.” Eighteenth-Century Studies, 41:4, (2008), p. 481-3
[77]Ibid. p. 484
[78]Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle, A Discovery of New Worlds, trans. Aphra Behn (London: William Canning, 1688), pp. 9-10.
[79]Aphra Behn, The Emperor of the Moon, in ed. Jane Spencer, The Rover and Other Plays, (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1999), p. 334
[80]Ibid.
[81]Ibid.
[82]Ibid.
[83]Ibid.
[84]Aphra Behn, prologue to The Lucky Chance, in Summers, The Works of Aphra Behn, 3: p. 208
[85]Goodfellow, Sarah, “Such Masculine Strokes,” Aphra Behn as a Translator of A Discovery of New Worlds, Albion, 28:2, (1996) p. 230
[86]Catherine Gallagher “Who was That Masked Woman? The Prostitute and the Playwright in the Comedies of Aphra Behn,” Women’s Studies: An inter-disciplinary journal, 15:3(1988), p. 66
[87]Aphra Behn, preface to The Lucky Chance, in Summers, The Works of Aphra Behn, 3: p. 187
[88]Catherine Gallagher “Who was That Masked Woman? The Prostitute and the Playwright in the Comedies of Aphra Behn,” Women’s Studies: An inter-disciplinary journal, 15:3(1988), p.29
