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Aphra Behn Biography |
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Aphra Behn (July 10, 1640 – April 16, 1689) was a prolific dramatist of the English Restoration, and is considered one of the first England professional woman writers. Her writing participated in the amatory fiction genre of British literature.
The personal history of Aphra Behn, the first Englishwoman to earn her livelihood by authorship, is unusually interesting but very difficult to unravel and relate. Information regarding her, especially her early life, is scanty, but she was almost certainly born in Wye, near Canterbury, on July 10, 1640 to Bartholomew Johnson, a barber, and Elizabeth Denham. Aphra's parents were married in 1638 and Aphra, or Eaffry, was baptized on December 14, 1640. Elizabeth Denham was employed as a nurse to the wealthy Culpepper family, who lived locally, which means that it is likely that Aphra grew up with and spent time with the family's children. The younger child, Thomas Culpepper, later described Aphra as his foster sister. In 1663 Aphra visited an English sugar colony on the Suriname River, on the coast east of Venezuela (a region later known as Suriname). During this trip Aphra is supposed to have met an African slave leader, whose story formed the basis for one of her most famous works, Oroonoko. The veracity of her journey to Suriname has often been called into question; however, enough evidence has been found that most Behn scholars today believe that the trip did indeed take place. Life in England, writing career, work as a spy Shortly after her return to England in 1664 Aphra married Johan Behn, who was a merchant of German people or Dutch people extraction. Little conclusive information is known about Aphra's marriage, but it did not last for more than a few years. She was reportedly bisexual, and held a larger attraction to women than to men, a trait that, coupled with her writings and references of this nature, would eventually make her popular in the writing and artistic communities of the 20th century and present day. http://www.acs.ucalgary.ca/%7emamaes/17a.html http://feminism.eserver.org/theory/papers/memoir-of-aphra-behn.txt/document_view http://www.aestheticrealism.net/aesnyc141/Aphra_Behn_NH.htm By 1666 Behn had become attached to the Court, possible through the influence of Thomas Culpepper and other associates of influence, where she was recruited as a political spy to Antwerp (city) by Charles II of England. Her code name for her exploits is said to have been Astrea, a name under which she subsequently published much of her writings. The Second Anglo-Dutch War had broken out between England and the Netherlands in 1665. http://feminism.eserver.org/theory/papers/memoir-of-aphra-behn.txt/document_view She became the lover to a prominent and powerful royal, and from him she obtained political secrets to be used to the English advantage. http://feminism.eserver.org/theory/papers/memoir-of-aphra-behn.txt/document_view Aphra's exploits were not profitable, however, as Charles was slow in paying (if he paid at all) for either her services or expenses whilst abroad. Money had to be borrowed for Aphra to return to London, where a year's petitioning of Charles for payments went unheard, and she ended up in a debtor's prison. By 1669 an undisclosed source had paid Aphra's debts, and she was released from prison, starting from this point to become one of the first women who wrote for a living. She cultivated the friendship of various playwrights, and starting in 1670 she produced many plays and novels, also poems and pamphlets. Her most popular works included The Rover, "Love Letters between a Nobleman and his Sister", Oroonoko. Aphra Behn died on April 16, 1689, and was buried in Westminster Abbey. Below the inscription on her tombstone read the words: " Here lies a Proof that Wit can never be / Defence enough against Mortality." http://www.poetsgraves.co.uk/images/behn_aphra.JPG She was quoted as once stating that she had led a "life dedicated to pleasure and poetry". http://www.acs.ucalgary.ca/%7emamaes/17a.html Status among other writers throughout history In author Virginia Woolf's reckoning, Behn's total career is more important than any particular work it produced. After a hiatus in the 19th century, when both the writer and the work were dismissed as indecent, Behn's fame has now undergone extraordinary revival. She dominates cultural-studies discourse as both a topic and a set of texts. http://occawlonline.pearsoned.com/bookbind/pubbooks/damrosch_awl/chapter4/medialib/behn.html Woolf wrote, "All women together, ought to let flowers fall upon the grave of Aphra Behn... for it was she who earned them the right to speak their minds." In an age of libertines, Behn undertook to proclaim and to analyze women's sexual desire, as manifested in her characters and in herself. She has since become a favorite among sexually liberated women, many of bisexual or lesbian orientation, who proclaim her as one of their most positive influences. http://occawlonline.pearsoned.com/bookbind/pubbooks/damrosch_awl/chapter4/medialib/behn.html Today, the affinities between Behn's work and that of Romantic writers seem more pronounced than the different level of publicly acceptable discussion of sexuality. http://hal.ucr.edu/~cathy/behnrev.html It has been written that "Behn's writings unveil the homosocial role of male rivalry in stimulating heterosexual desire for women and explores the ways in which cross dressing and masquerade complicate and destabilize gender relations. Behn also analyzes female friendships and, more rarely, lesbianism". http://hal.ucr.edu/~cathy/behnrev.html http://www.aestheticrealism.net/aesnyc141/Aphra_Behn_NH.htm In several volumes of writings by author Janet Todd, Behn's explorations of some of the key issues in Romantic studies, such as the role of incestuous and homosocial bonding in romance, the correlations between racial and gender oppression, female subjectivity, and, more specifically, female political and sexual agency are detailed. http://hal.ucr.edu/~cathy/behnrev.html The noted critic Harold Bloom calls Behn a "fourth-rate playwright" and notes her resurgent popularity as a case of "dumbing down." http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2003/09/24/dumbing_down_american_readers/ Quotes of Aphra Behn Plays Novels Biographies and writings based on her life 
Courtesy of: http://www.wikipedia.org/ |
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