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In a time when very few writers could support themselves through writing, Aphra Behn was a well known and highly regarded writer in London. She wrote many plays for the London stage, penned poetry, and wrote what some consider the first English novel (though others consider it a novella, and it might even be considered a longish short story). Much of her work cries out against the unequal treatment of women in her era, and she suffered the consequences of these claims by enduring harsh criticism and even arrest. Not much is known about the early life of Aphra Behn. During Behn's childhood, a civil war broke out in England between the Parliament, led by Oliver Cromwell, and the British monarch, Charles I, and it ended with the king's beheading in 1649. In 1658 the monarchy was restored (this time became known as the Restoration). More than likely, she was born in 1640, possibly to wet nurse Eaffry Johnson, according to baptismal records in Harbledown, a village near Canterbury. Her father was probably a barber. Because her mother cared for the upper-class Colepepper children, chances are that she received some sort of education. More than likely, she left England for Surinam in 1663 when her father was appointed to a military outpost in South America. One can hardly imagine such a journey today, and it is possible that her father did not survive. The short time she spent at the English settlement in the company of her mother and sister provided her with the material for Oroonoko; or, The Royal Slave, which chronicles the story of an African prince who is brought to Surinam as a slave. After England surrendered Surinam to Holland, she returned to England in 1664. She probably married a Dutch merchant named Hans Behn. Some scholars speculate that this wedding might not actually have occurred and that Behn invented it so as to be viewed as a respectable widow. A favorite at the Court of Charles II, Behn was greatly admired by the King for her outgoing personality and great wit, and she was perhaps employed by him as a spy in Antwerp during the war from 1665 to 1667. Here she renewed her relationship with her former lover, the spy William Scot, an Englishman expatriate intent on once again overthrowing the monarchy. Behn, whose secret name was Astrea, was to send reports back to Charles II in invisible ink. Although she was enormously helpful in exposing the secret plans to exterminate the English fleet in the River Thames in 1667, she was abandoned by the English in Holland with no money--a highly dangerous situation for a woman alone at that time. Somehow she borrowed money but, despite many letters, was still left unpaid by the King and consequently cast into debtor's prison in 1668. Thankfully, someone paid her debt and she was allowed to leave. At this point, Behn took up writing to support herself financially. It should be remembered how monumental a move such as this was during a time when women could not even sign a contract and were completely reliant on men for financial security. Her entry into a writing career coincided with the opening of the London theatres which had been closed during the Interregnum. Behn began writing for Duke's Company at Dorset Garden. Her 1670 The Forc'd Marriage; or, The Jealous Bridegroom was her first play, a romantic comedy, which proved successful. Most of her plays were romantic comedies, including The Amorous Prince; or, The Curious Husband, I{The Dutch Lover, and her most successful play, The Rover; or, the Banish'd Cavaliers, which dealt with an exiled English regiment living in exile in Italy during the Puritan era. Behn became notorious in 1682 when she was arrested for writing a polemic centering on the Duke of Monmouth, Charles II's illegitimate son, who thought he had a claim to the throne since Charles II had failed to produce a legitimate heir. At this point Behn began to write narrative fiction. Her first such work, the three volume Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister (1684-1687) was successful, and The Lucky Chance; or, An Alderman's Bargain, draws from the time she spent as a female spy in Holland. Her 1688 heroic love story, Oroonoko, was very well received and became her most popular work. Behn still suffered financially, however, and her health began to fail. She died in 1689, was buried in the cloisters at Westminster Abbey, and for a while rested in obscurity. In the twentieth century, the novelist Virginia Woolf wrote in A Room of One's Own that "all women together ought to let flowers fall upon the tomb of Aphra Behn--for it was she who earned them the right to speak their minds." |
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