Wastrel’s Reviews > The Secret Life of Aphra Behn > Status Update

The context for that is that Hoyle was 'finally' arrested and prosecuted for buggery. However, as with the murder charge, nothing came of it in legal terms: Hoyle confessed his guilt, but the teenage boy in question retracted his allegations, probably due to bribery, and the jury refused to convict.

[a case that should remind us not to leap too quickly to the defence of those charged under obnoxious laws: as with Wilde, a sodomy prosecution was often pursued when rape or child abuse charges couldn't be brought because of the victim's gender. It should also remind us of the difference between the attitude of the government and that of the people: just because the government of a day brought a certain sort of charge doesn't mean the public of the day were eager to convict on it. In this case, Hoyle was publically mocked and scorned, and yet the jury still wouldn't convict him of something he'd confessed to.]

The broader context, which unfortunately Todd doesn't bring up here, but did mention in passing much earlier in the book, is that this prosecution is taking place at a time of change in the perception of male homosexuality. In the 1660s, cultural ideology denied male 'homosexuality' per se, and explained same-sex attraction as a surfeit of horniness: the general idea was that highly libidinous men were naturally bisexual. Same-sex behaviours, therefore, while theoretically immoral, were associated with a certain vigour and healthiness - a flaw of excess manliness. [Todd thinks that this is a big part of Aphra's romantic difficulties: she was drawn to Hoyle expecting a traditionally oversexed bisexual, and found (Todd thinks) a misogynistic homosexual repulsed by her sexual overtures]. In the 1690s, however, a 'gay subculture' begins to develop in London, where the idea of exclusively homosexual men arises, and the popular image of them changes toward unhealthy, effeminate, misogynistic and secretive men, and accordingly social attitudes harden (as of course they did on ALL issues in that era). Hoyle's prosecution (after literally decades of rumours about his gay affairs) takes place in 1687.

Speaking of sexuality, Todd continues to try not to mention Aphra's potential bisexuality. It's striking, because she goes on at such great length in pseudobiographical and speculative-psychological vein about the least incident and what it must mean, while almost completely passing over any opportunity for similar rumination about lesbian subtexts.

For instance, she passes over yet another of Aphra's heroine falling in love with another woman dressed as a man and not being upset when she finds out her error. [the play may be a fake, and in any case it's probably more to do with issues of gender and fluidity and disguise - some of her men fall in love with women disguised as men, or men disguised as women, but even so].

And when a female character has no interest in a man, but suddenly becomes infatuated with him after watching him have sex with her maid, Todd only ties this into a theme of people being attracted to those who are unavailable. This is of course a valid theme - it seems like a dominant aspect of male behaviour in this era, and of course the man in question is instantly disinterested in the woman once she shows herself to be interested in him - but it seems like a glaring omission not to wonder whether "woman previously disinterested in men only gets horny when she's watching a naked woman having sex" might at least suggest something about the character's, and potentially the female author's, sexuality. [it could be particularly significant because this work was published anonymously, so there's less of an element of Aphra projecting a sexier, more libertine image of herself for PR reasons]. Particularly when connected to the recurring way in which Aphra seems to be attracted to men when they're with other women, and the excited way she describes those women.

More broadly, Todd continues to try to make her Aphra as sexless and demurre as possible. This is clearly very difficult. Todd thinks Aphra is, in a way, obsessed with sex and with men, but continually massively downplays the possibility that this obsession was ever more than theoretical. She can't deny the possibility - she admits that she may at times have "flirted" with men, or even that she may have had some unsatisfying sexual experiences occasionally in which the man was inevitably impotent. There's even a sentence where she acknowledges she may have had lots of sex there's really no way to tell I mean anything is possible I guess. But the overwhelming impression we're left with is of an observer at a distance, chaste if not by preference than by happenstance - always busy with work, with a limited social circle, and by this stage in her life far too old to be attractive to anybody, too frightened of the ridicule directed at horny middle-aged women to actually act on her obsessive, tragic desires.

On the other hand, though, there's the souces. Her writings are always risque, and later in life progress to what by the standards of the time is little more than softcore literary pornography [which is why Todd has finally had to acknowledge the possibility of a late sexual awakening, and to theorise that, in her forties, Aphra may have begun to reflect on her body and its sexual impulses]. Her depiction of herself, in prologues and epilogues and above all in her poems, is as bawdy and experienced. Her own literary friends consistently praise her as, in effect, a total slut. Her enemies warn other women away from her on account of her infamous notoriety. Not only her female friends but also her male friends are famed for their sexual excesses; she's a good friend, or at least passionate admirer, of Rochester, whose autobiographical poetry frequently IS (bisexual and orgiastic) pornography, by any age's standard. She dedicates works to scandalous women.

Now, some of this is probably self-promotion; some of it is matey joshing; some of it is the abrasive, misogynistic culture of the day - any woman and any Tory was accused of sexual monstrosity, and Aphra was both (and although she wasn't foreign, she had travelled abroad and translated a lot).

But... it's just a lot. And nobody ever seems to contradict any of it. Aphra occasionally gives a "no seriously, don't boycot me, I'm just misunderstood!" appeal to her listeners, but doesn't seem to go to any effort to seriously alter the public perception of her - the one thing in her oeuvre that doesn't fit the image is a single comissioned poem on the death of an infant, and even that takes a detour halfway through to discuss the nature of romantic love.

And some of it seems pretty specific. In particular, Tom Brown, a young poet who probably knew her (and probably forged posthumous works for her) depicts her as a sort of mentor/predator for young poets: she befriended them all when they arrived in London after university, helped their careers get started, gave them advice, and in return they'd donate some good lines for her own works and, it's implied, often had sex with her. That reads as a fairly realistic situation for a middle-aged female writer famous for her entertaining company, who had built up some connexions. It doesn't read as a viciously misogynistic lampoon, and Brown doesn't read as someone out to discredit her (particularly since he's profiting from selling both her real and forged works after her death). Todd wouldn't want to give any ground to the misogynistic assumption common at the time that Aphra's works must have really been written by men; but at the same time, there's no reason to think there couldn't be a kernel of truth there - she probably did write her own works, with considerable ability, but she wasn't a genius, and nothing about her suggests she'd be above stealing, or buying, a good line from a friend (eg the fact she did continually plagiarise by advertising her translations and adaptations as originals*). She doesn't want to make her Aphra too slutty, but... how do we know she wasn't, when literally everything written by or about her alludes to her healthy appetite? And she doesn't want her Aphra to be too powerful - her Aphra is always struggling and peripheral, marginalised as a Woman In A Man's World, and it wouldn't fit to have her as a minor fixer, a maker of introductions, a woman given respect in her own demimonde, a woman with a measure of power and influence.

[likewise, Todd is quick to emphasise any time Aphra doesn't have money, and de-emphasises the times when she seems to give money away to friends, the times she's praised for her generosity, and the times when her male peers are starving in debtor's prisons while she herself is living comfortably (or, at most, reduced to asking for a raise). To do so would not only make the subtext of Aphra's oppression less univocal, but would also raise questions about HOW a second- or third-rate playwright from a poor background might be so comfortably off, which would return to the whole morality issue...]

Several male commentators compared Aphra to Sappho. At the time, that was considered an insult: Sappho was notorious primarily as the exemplar of female gross immorality, although it's not entirely clear why, other than that she was a woman and not a Christian. [the lesbianism probably didn't help, but that's not the substance of the allegations]. The pious Anne Wharton chastised Aphra to "scorn meaner Themes, declining low desire", so that she could emulate Sappho's "Wit, without her Shame".

[Wharton was the niece of the famously obscene, misogynist and blaspheming Rochester who despite his reputation she adored (as many women did, for some reason) (a panegyric she comissioned after his death explains his appeal as a "curb to impertinence, and the public censor of folly"). She admired Aphra at first as well, untile relatives and clergymen warned her away from her. After Rochester's death, Wharton organised the performance of his last play, and invited Aphra to supply a preface; among the actresses were Elizabeth Barry (his long-time lover and mother of his child, despite the contentious custody issues) and Sarah Cooke (whom he had 'discovered', and possibly had an affair with, in the course of rescuing her from the forceful affections of the 'notorious' Miss Hobart, a lesbian maid of honour to the duchess of york). A reminder that personal piety like Wharton's didn't always mean contempt for the impious.

An intriguing thing Todd points out is that on at least two occasions - when she contributed to Dryden's volume of Ovid translations, and when she contributed to the production and publication of Valentinian - Aphra was conspicuously NOT publically attacked. Both volumes were met, as was the custom, with a vicious lampoon (by a Whig) ridiculing everyone involved with each project - except, on both occasions, Aphra, which would make little sense on political or artistic grounds. Todd suggests this may indicate that Aphra, as a working-class girl made good, who may (she thinks) have spent time making ends meet as a copyist, may have had some friends across the aisle in the circle of hack political lampoonists.

"They that would have no king would have no play"

[from the prologue to the first play presented to Charles after the Restoration - Todd of course doesn't say what it was or who wrote it]

There's certainly a conflict of sympathies here: one side are basically the 17th century equivalent of QAnon (less Bill Gates, more the Pope, same amount of baby-eating) and generally want to outlaw the arts, exile or murder all foreigners and minorities, and lock women barefoot in the kitchen to reflect on Bible verses; the other side are rational, intellectual, liberal, relatively tolerant, cosmopolitan and funny. But the QAnon guys are the ones advocating for democracy and the redistribution of wealth and power to the middle classes, and the hollywood elites are the ones arguing for absolute monarchy and a return to feudalism. Which is a little confusing for the sympathies of modern readers. Particularly when you know that, more or less, the QAnon guys won and established the foundations of modern liberal democracy...

"In this age 'tis not a poet's merit but his Party that must do his business; so that if his play consists of a Witch or a Devil or a Broomstick, so he have but a Priest at one end of the Play, and a Faction at 'tother end of the Pit, it shall be fam'd for an excellent piece." [Thomas D'Urfay]

Anyway, Apha misstepped: as a Tory she was obliged to criticise the Duke of Monmouth; but as Monmouth was the King's son, it was a narrow line to tred. In the wake of a shift in political tides, when Charles reacted to the Exclusionists, refusing to legitimise Monmouth (and stopping Oates' stipend, and prosecuting Shaftesbury), Behn put on Romulus and Hersilia, anonymously. She lambasted the Whigs:

What have ye got ye conscientious knaves,
With all your fancy'd power, and bully braves?
With all your standing t't, your zealous furies,
Your lawless tongues and arbitrary juries?
Your burlesque oaths, when one green-ribbon-brother
In conscience will be perjured for another?
Your plots, cabals, your treats, association,
Ye shame, ye very nuisance of the nation,
What have ye got but one poor word? Such tools
Were knaves before, to which you've added 'Fools'.

And went further in the confession of her heroine, Tarpeia:
And of all Treasons, mine was most accurst;
Rebelling 'gainst a king and father first.
A sin which heav'n nor man can e're forgive

Both Behn and the actress who spoke those lines were immediately arrested, as reported by the True Protestant Mercury (you're not a real whig if you don't stick 'True Protestant' onto all your products), which stated plainly that the lines had 'reflected on the Duke of Monmouth' - not claiming that the play could be interpreted that way, or that it implied that, but simply that that's what the play said.

[the point here being that while we may sometimes question the political subtexts modern historians of literature can tease out of old texts, and wonder whether they're overthinking things, those subtexts were sometimes not just visible in their own time but so visible as to be generally considered as just plain text - here both by the king who had her arrested and by his enemies who reported on it.]

Anyway, fortunately for Behn the king was more interested in showing for his enemies his willingness to impose order even on his own side, rather than in actually imposing order. Aphra's old spymaster employer, Arlington, gave the order for her arrest, but it's not clear that she ever actually was taken into custody, let alone prosecuted, and it doesn't seem to have greatly affected Aphra's loyalty to the regime, or the regime's attitude toward her as a propagandist. Nonetheless, it must have acted as something of a check to her and other playwrights, warning them that the shift in power toward the Tories could not be taken as absolute licence.

A good line from an anonymous curate (allegedly) included in an Apha anthology, describing her reputation for (at least toying with) 'atheism', in the context of Lucretius: due to her influence he

"might e'en beleve the World was made by Chance
The Product of unthinking Atoms dance."

The same curate, lamenting his position in the country, also has a line that's less poetic, but more linguistically fascinating:
Providence it seems design'd t'immure
M'aspiring soul in a poor Country Cure

Now, 'd is standard (in speech if not in writing), and t'immure is something we think of as of the time. But "m'aspiring" isn't something I think I've seen before! The reduction of 'my' to 'm'' is something that to me immediately casts the speaker into the accent of the american deep south and nowhere else. Which in a way makes sense, since the South preserves (or at least did preserve until the last generation or two) many features of early modern english (by virtue of being, from the point of view of english-language civilisation, pretty much the most remote end of the earth). But it's rare to be reminded of that, just as instinctively we forget that Shakespeare and his actors spoke in an American/West Country accent...

An interesting moment on the extent to which sexual inequality was in some ways a form of class inequality: women were socially inferior in high society in part because, unlike men, they could not read Latin. For Behn, as both a woman AND a provincial barber's daughter, the lack of Latin is particularly acutely felt, and something she complained about throughout her life; perhaps it's no surprise that as someone disadvantaged in both ways, she tended to explicitly see one disadvantage in terms of the other (likewise the many discussions of gender relations in terms of financial transactions, where again femininity and its victimisation is seen as an economic rather than philosophical issue).

This is made explicit in Aphra's (fawning) poem of praise for her friend, Thomas Creech, and his translation of Lucretius into English (and hence into the language of women). Writing on behalf of English womankind, Aphra expresses her thanks:
Thou by this Translation dost advance
Our Knowlege from the State of Ignorance,
And equallst Us to Man.

[there's kind of a parallel here with Puritanism, of course. Just as the Puritan Whigs wanted to translate religious Latin into English so that it could be understood by ordinary people, the Tory Aphra, who has no problem with Catholic Latin, wants the Latin of the classical authors translated into English so that it can be understood by women. Both are part of the general impulse toward the democratization of knowledge in this period.]

[but of course the looming question here is: why couldn't a woman learn Latin? They could learn other languages (Aphra supposedly learned French, which was not uncommon for women (romantic novels were written in French)). Would nobody teach them? A woman like Aphra, surrounded by lawyers and poets, knew plenty of people who knew Latin (and who needed cash!), so you wouldn't have thought an adequate understanding of the language would have been impossible for her to obtain. Of course, it's possible that she's lying. While she certainly would have known no Latin early on, it's possible she did learn at least some during her life, and simply pretended otherwise - publically pretending stereotypical femininity (i.e. ignorance of Latin), and publically self-deprecating, are both poses she definitely did embrace in other ways.


Tangential note: the poem praising Creech takes a detour to also praise Rochester some more ("the soft, the lovely, gay and great"), and Wadham College for producing both Rochester and Creech.

And speaking of languages: Todd believes Aphra learned French sometime between 1678 and 1684. Aphra allegedly claims to have been in Paris in the spring of '83 (or '82?), and Todd finds this plausible: after this, Aphra discourses on topics popular in Paris (eg the political importance of drama in defence of the state), talks about linguistic differences between French and English, and about the nature of translation, translates from and refers to minor French authors that were little-known in England at the time, and generally produces a large number of translations from the French (although of course it's always possible that she was still using intermediaries to actually translate in the modern sense).

Todd also points out that from around this point Aphra becomes openly contemptuous of French people, which Todd thinks is probably the result of having now met them.

Rochester on Sunderland: one who would:
bribe us without pence
Deceive us without common sense
And without power enslave.

An interesting biographic titbit: if Behn was in Paris, she would probably have met Mlle de Scudéry, the saloniste. Behn would probably have read Scudéry's romantic novels as a child (although she was mostly a fan of Scudéry's rival, La Calprenède), and by this time had already adapted not one but two satirical lampoons of Scudéry by Molière for her own plays.

[Todd makes the point that salon culture by this time had changed: early 17th century Parisan salons were run by aristocrats and talked about politics, but late 17tth centuy salons were run by middle-class women and talked about literature and philosophy (and boys). Salons were controlled by female intellectuals - précieuses - and although men attended, gender interactions were tightly regulated by complicated social codes developed within salon culture.]

Several English and French male writers who would have been present at the salons around the time Aphra supposedly visited went on to be significant in her personal or literary life, further reinforcing the probability of her having gone there. It's not clear why - Todd suggests either a spying mission or a health retreat.

At this point, Disney enters the story. Well, not literally, obviously. But the Duke's Company finally wins the marketing war against the King's Company, forces it close to oblivion, launches a hostle takeover, and renames the new merged group The United Company.

Why does this matter? The United Company not only benefits from a monopoly over theatre, but also controls the copyright on the entire catalogue of works by both parent companies. With this source of easy money safely in hand, there's no longer a need to innovate: they can simply sit back and put out a diet of revivals, remakes, reboots and the occasional spin-off, without having to try anything risky, controversial or niche. Theatre-goers who get bored with this have no rival to go to, and so instead theatre attendance as a whole just gradually declines.

As a result, where the duopoly had produced between 12 and 25 new plays every season since the Restoration, the United Company only produces 3-4 new works each year. It's a textbook example of the effects of 'consolidation' for the consumer.

For playwrights like Aphra, the result is disaster. With no new commissions coming in, she can no longer make a living in the theatre. She's better off than some, as several of her plays will go through a series of revivals - but of course, since the United Company control her copyrights, and there's no rival company to take them to even if she were able to do so, she's not exactly in a good place to haggle over royalties. As a result, she's forced into poverty, and into other literary endeavours (translation, anonymous semi-erotica, and possibly a return to laborious copyist work). This is echoed across the landscape, with a generation of great writers thrown into penury, debtor's prisons, and in some cases lunatic asylums.

This is, semi-coincidentally, echoed in the politics of the age. With the partisan wrangling between Tory and Whig at a hysterical pitch, but the Whig fever of the proto-QAnon 'Popish Plot' conspiracy mania broken, Charles feels compelled to act, launching a reaction that crushes Whig dissidents and ultimately dissolves Parliament entirely, handing power to the Chits, three young aristocrats. The duopoly of Whig and Tory is suppressed, the former forced underground, into the dissident movement that will errupt as Monmouth's Rebellion. Where the duopoly produced a productive and continually readjusting tension - creating liminal spaces in which social and sexual dissent is able to thrive - royal monopoly of power will stagnate, become unresponsive and reactionary, and eventually lead to the Glorious Revolution.

So although Aphra at this stage doesn't know that she's nearing the end of her biological life (and nor does the reader at this point if they're relying on this biography alone), there's a real sense by this stage that the world that produced Aphra, and that she relies upon, is dying around her.

A lampoon describes Aphra "with bawdry in a vaile / but swearing bloodily, as in a jayle".

The Restoration era: "an Age when Faction rages, and differing Parties disagree in all things".

Aphra's description (taken from Tathum) of London after the wars (trigger warning): (view spoiler)[ like a woman raped and left with legs open to the world. (hide spoiler)]

Aphra's anonymously-published Love-Letters from a Nobleman to his Sister is based closely (in its first part) on celebrity gossip of her day, in the form of a typically convoluted sexual-political affair:

The Duke of Monmouth (the King's bastard son and potential heir*) famously maintained an affair with Mary, the wife of his most ardent supporter, Ford Lord Grey. Ford was to some extent OK with this - he was wiidely mocked not as a cuckold but as a pimp - but also rather frustrated, so instead HE begain an affair with Mary's sister, Henrietta Berkeley. As a gossip columnist wrote at the time, "he married the eldest sister expecting a maidenhead and, not finding it, he resolved to have one in the family, if any be left".

This was a bit of a problem, because this was legally and theologically incest (a man and a wife being one body, a sister-in-law was literally, in law, a sister). But everyone was subject to some sort of gossip: a little incest or adultery would tarnish a reputation in certain circles, but wasn't yet the sort of social catastrophe it would become in later centuries.

Shit got real, however, when Henrietta disappeared. Ford was assumed to have eloped with her and hidden her somewhere, so he was condemned to the Tower on a charge of "conspiring to commit whoredom, fornication and adultery" (covering all the options there). As one gossiping woman excitedly explained in a letter to a friend: it is serting he has delewded her and entised her from her father, but wheare she is is not yet knowen... he must soon produce her or his Lordship must remain a prisoner! He did not produce her, and he was placed on trial, coincidentally presided over by The Hanging Judge, George Jeffries, who would become notorious in history for their latter interactions...

During the trial, however, Henrietta re-appeared, heavily pregnant (having been staying at a milliner's house near Charing Cross). This was not the end of the surprises. It was a dramatic trial: Ford infuriated everyone by looking smug and unrepentant, while Henrietta's father had to be repeatedly restrained and her mother was inconsolable in tear throughout. Henrietta, confused, asked the Judge if she couldn't be allowed to speak, but the Judge denied this, and instead commanded her to return to her father's house. She defied him, and.... announced that she was married to another man, William Turner.

Swords were drawn 'on both sides' and there was 'a great scuffle about the lady'. Ford was reluctantly released on the spot - if Turner had debauched the poor girl (Henrietta was a teenager), there was no evidence against Ford. Instead, William and Henrietta were imprisoned, but they in turn produced a valid marriage licence and had to be released. The great celebrity court case had ended up with nobody to convict. [the trial had been serialised in the papers, and subsequently published in full, the Tiger King of its day...] But public opinion still wasn't satisfied...

...particularly when everyone realised that the "grizly" old William was none other than Ford's valet, and that Ford had brazenly arranged for his sister (-in-law) to marry his servant so that she could be sexually available for him without legal punishment. Surely, something could be done to punish him!?

Yes, but not for that. A few months later, supporters of Monmouth hatched the Rye House Plot, to assassinate the King. It failed, thanks to a fire that brought about the early cancellation of the Newmarket Races. The Earl of Essex killed himself in the Tower, and others were executed with or without trial. Judge Jeffries successfully prosecuted the (probably innocent) Lord Russell, and as a reward was promoted to Chief Justice, whereupon he convicted and executed Algernon Sidney, on the grounds that Sidney's unpublished, unshared private notes on political theory could be called as a 'witness' against him. Monmouth fled to ANOTHER mistress, confusingly also called Henrietta (this one was Baroness Wentworth); everyone knew where he was (her mother, Philadelphia, had very proudly and publically encouraged the liaison), but her house had so many secret passages built into it that he could not be found. Eventually he emerged, confessed, and then unconfessed when the king's brother demanded the confession be printed in the newspapers.

Meanwhile, Ford was arrested, but got a secret message to his Henrietta. His guard 'fell asleep', Ford escaped, via a thrilling boat chase across the Thames, before landing at the Pickled Herring pub. He fled London, and hid out in the woods with a rogue former customs agent improbably named Ezekiel Everest. Ford, Ezekiel, Henrietta and Williams were then able to hitch a ride out of England on the Hare Pink, captained by a wooden-legged Dissenter, while Monmouth and his own Henrietta made their own way to the Netherlands (as did others implicated in the plot, such as John Locke).


You can see why Aphra didn't have to try that hard to make a novel out of this.



[Todd thinks she was influenced by the works of Gabriel de Bremond, whom she might have met in France. Bremond had made something of a career out of writing sensational novels about Charles II's mistresses: Hattige, about Barbara Villiers, and a work that claimed to be the autobiography of Mazarine's elder sister (Mazarine (the bisexual, cross-dressing, promiscuous gambler) was co-heroine). The latter was published in English by Aphra's usual publisher, and the publication carried adverts for three of Aphra's plays; it's conceivable that Aphra might have translated the work herself. In any case, she was certainly made aware that the sexual and political misfortunates of celebrities could be turned into blockbuster novels...]




*Monmouth was the son of Lucy Walter, grand-niece of the Earl of Carberry. When she was 14, her castle was destroyed by Parliamentarians, and she decided to travel to the Netherlands to work as a professional mistress (somewhere between a prostitute and a demanding girlfriend). She enthralled the teenage, exiled Charles, and bore him a son; but unfortunately, while he was briefly out of the country trying to overthrow Cromwell, she had an affair with a nobleman twice her age and bore him a daughter - leading Charles to break up with her. This displayed a combination of short-term cunning and long-term foolishness that she was known for. She was sent to England, where (after a time living with the royal child in a flat over a barber's shop) she was arrested and briefly sent to the Tower; on returning to the Continent she spent lavishly and attempted to use her son to extort Charles. In response, after some failed kidnapping attempts, she was persuaded to sell the boy back to the Court, and soon after died of an STD. Although her life was strikingly Tory, she was later adopted by the Puritan Whigs, who argued that she and Charles had secretly been married, rendering their son, Monmouth, the legitimate royal heir. Many people believed the story: on the one hand, no sane man of rank would ever marry someone like Lucy; but on the other hand, Charles at the time had been a very horny teenage boy, so who knew what he might have done...

I've probably mentioned this quote already, but here's Burnett describing Aphra, in two letters to Anne Wharton, who had been corresponding with her:

Some of Mrs Behn's songs are very tender; but she is so abominably vile a woman, and rallies not only all religion but all virtue in so odious an obscene a manner, that I am heartily sorry she had writ anything in your commendation... the paises of such as she are great reproaches... I am very much pleased with your verses to Mrs Behn; but thee are some errours in women, that are never to be forgiven to that degree as to allow those of a severe virtue to hold any correspondence with them. And so many gross obscenities as fell from her come under hat qualification, if I can judge aright.

The first thing to note is how wildly out of proportion such remarks seem to be compared to her actual writings, which tend to be more "naughty" and "risque" than "vile" and "obscene", particularly at this point in her career (the more explicit 'Love Letters' and some poems on sex are still to come, as is the scandal over one of her male characters flashing the audience). While some characters are saucy, and some secondary characters distinctly sinful, the saucy leads don't act on their impulses and settle down respectfully, while the sinful characters generally end unhappily. Later she would make soome barbs about religion and seems to have had a bit of a reputation as toying with atheism, which might explain the "rallying religion" bit, but she was (in her published work) hardly a Hobbesian figure of anti-religion - there were much moe obvious targets for that criticism in her era.

The second thing to note is that Wharton is the doting niece of Rochester, and Burnett is the man who famously persuaded Rochester to convert on his deathbed. Both Aphra's works and what we know of her life are light-years more respectable than the libertine Rochester.

Of course, Burnett is a Whig and a Puritan, so we should expect both an exaggerated prudishness and double standards when it comes to women's virtue. But nonetheless it seems remarkable just how extreme it is to put Aphra in such terms, so far beyond the objectively vastly more objectionable Rochester. Particularly given that Burnett, while a bigot and an ideologue, is not a stupid man or one too hasty to rely on first rash judgments. It sort of feels as though he must know something about Aphra that we don't.

[by contrast, Wharton was also warned off Aphra in verse by another friend, William Attwood, who does so in milder and more understandable terms, worrying that Aphra's provocative work "draws an embroidered curtain over sin and jilts with promises of bliss within". While prudish, this seems an entirely rational complaint: that while not themselves explicit, Aphra's works normalise and even romanticise sinful behaviour and could in this way "debauch the too effeminate age" by tempting people astray. It seems reasonable for a conservative to see her works that way; but this just makes Burnett's hyperbolic response even more surprising, unless Burnett has heard something that the pious Attwood hasn't. ]

Todd believes that the Love-Letters are partly the result of a sudden surge of horniness on Aphra's part. To support this, she briefly mentions the poem 'On Desire', which she says dates from around this time.

I'm not sure, however, that we can be so precise. At this point in Aphra's life, we're in 1683, the year of the Rye House Plot and Fod Lord Grey's exile; she'll publish the first volume of the Love Letters the following year. That's also the year she'll publish her translation of the first part of the Voyage to the Island of Love, accompanied by an anthology of her poetry... which 'On Desire' isn't in. Instead, it was published in 1688, alongside her translation of the SECOND part of the Voyage.

Now, that doesn't mean that she hadn't written the poem earlier. In particular, it's an intimate poem, and maybe she didn't feel it was the best thing to include in her first published anthology (though clearly some of her poems had been informally in publication for a decade or more at that point). She may have felt more secure, or more resigned to fate, four years later. But by the same measure, I don't see why we have to assume it was written at any point in the 1680s at all - if she sat on it for five years before publishing it, why not ten, or fifteen?

There may well be an answer to this, in some letter someone wrote to someone sometime, which Todd has seen and based her judgment on. But, as so often, she doesn't tell us. Todd consistently is vague with dates and times, and doubly vague with sources and attributions: she gives just enough robustly-argued, well-cited evidence in some footnotes that it's easy at first glance to overlook just how many claims, and even quotes, are completely unsupported - the reader has no way to tell which are certain history, which are contested history, and which are the biographer's pure imagination.

[she also quotes people out of both textual and historical context to make her points]

All that being said, it's an interesting poem, and feels more sincere than some of hers [structurally, it eschews the rigid forms of formal poetry; although it's resolutely rhyming, the rhyme scheme within each stanza is almost random, and stanzas vary between 4 and 18 lines. Of course, this could indicate either a genuine impromptu from the heart or a careful simulation of impromptu - as with everything in this era].

Aphra identifies a "new-found pain", desire and laments that it should have come earlier, when it might have inspired either a respectable marriage or another more profitable (financially or politically) relationship:

Where wert thou, oh, malicious sprite,
When shining honour did invite?
When interest called, then thou wert shy
...When thou couldst mix ambition with my joy,
Thou peevish phantom thou wert nice and coy

She emphasises her previously implacable chastity:
Not beauty could invite thee then
Nor all the hearts of lavish men!
Not all the powerful rhetoric of the tongue
Not sacred wit could charm thee on;
Not the soft play that lovers make,
Nor sigh could fan thee to a fire,
Not pleading tears, nor vows could thee awake
Or warm the unformed something -- to desire

[we'll note in passing there Aphra's ever-ambiguous mention of the attractions of "beauty". Is she intentionally contrasting that beauty with the appeals of men in the next line, hinting at her possible bisexuality? Is the beauty the beauty of men, and she is again enjoying the gender-fluidity of the men of her (as Attwood called it, "too effeminate") age? Or just embracing the carnal-visual pleasure of male flesh? Or is she simply adopting the same language that would have been used by a male poet of her era - and, if so, is she doing it because she lacks her own assured voice, or because she is asserting herself as one of the boys, or because she is ironically appropriating and reversing the male gaze? Is it to use the language her audience would be familiar with, or is it to discomfort her audience - or to make them uncomfortable with their own cliches when turned against them? I know it's only one word, but it kind of gets to the heart of the biographical problem of Aphra, trying to deduce a personality from works of art that, even if they can be taken at face value, not only lack the biographical context that might explain them, but also lack sufficient parallels in her own age (we can't simply look to how other female poets in her age wrote for a comparison, as there are so few of them, and none in quite Aphra's class-/professional- position). So many different stories are compatible with what we know.]

[I'll also note that 'desire' is treated ambiguously in the poem, varying from respectable love through just horniness. Of course, it's not clear Aphra would have conceptualised a difference between these two...]

She goes on to lament how she has actively sought out desire, in terms that remind us of her typical arcadian romantic imagery - groves, bowers, flowery beds, sheltering woods, etc. It's unclear to what extent she's talking about her own life now, and to what extent she's talking about how she's used her art to explore something that she didn't herself understand. (and this seems plausible: with its soft-lens cliche imagery and its tendency to undercut with humour or archness - in particular her positive obsession with erectile dysfunction in both comic and dramatic poems - Aphra's romantic poetry does often seem to lack conviction.)

It occurs to me, incidentally, that although Todd accepts Aphra's previous lack of sexual desire, and repeatedly mentions the erectile dysfunction issue, she only ever sees the latter in terms of genuine male inadequacy, both of Aphra's gay boyfriend specifically and of Restoration men generally (we have to note that this isn't something only Aphra complains about: in general, the social belief that female arousal and consent are disgusting and hugely unsexy leads to a lot of frustrating and confusing encounters). This is fair enough, but this poem surely also raises the question: what if Aphra's the one who can't get it up? Maybe it's not a coincidence that Aphra both complains about her own lack of 'fire' in her 'unformed something' and also constantly jokes about men not being horny when you need them to be? Maybe there's a little projection in there too?

And back on the subject of her sexuality... again there seems to be the possibility of bisexuality raised in her lines here: although she first mentions abstract "youth" (a youth being a man) and then imagines non-specific "lovers" lying together, the first concrete, sexed people she claims to have looked for desire with are "sighing maids" - albeit ones who have shepherds racing to meet them. There's nothing really here to specify that it's the shepherds she's into. In fact, it raises the additional possibility that what she's really into (or tries to be into?) is voyeurism: when she talks of looking for desire, her examples are all of watching other women having sex with other men (whether imagined or real - we should remember that she uses the same Arcadian imagery both for an imaginary land before the fall filled with purely imaginary characters, AND for her and her friends having a holiday in Tunbridge Wells). This kind of ties into what I've thought in some of her other works: she often seems more excited by her boyfriend being with other women, or her female friends having male lovers, than she is any any individual herself. And then there's this ambiguous bit:

Yet there, even there, though youth assailed,
Where beauty prostrate lay and fortune wooed,
My heart insensible to neither bowed

'Neither' what nor what? She mentions three things: youth, beauty, and fortune. Which two is she putting up as potentially attractive? And again, let's note that this time 'beauty' is very strongly borrowing the imagery usual for women, and it doesn't sound as though she's talking about herself. If anything, she seems more identified with the assailing youth, presented with female beauty and with fortune yet seduced by neither.


She goes on to say that she had sought desire in its appropriate place, which, obviously, is "courts" (ever the Tory!) - but in court, "loving business" is purely based on interest (i.e. money and power), not desire - interest "invites the youths and wins the virgins too". [placing the court after arcadia may also be autobiographical: the arcadian idyll where she first seeks desire may be standing for her teenage reading of romances, which often shared this setting, and which would later be followed by her career in London on the periphery of the Court itself]

Next she turns in a more conventional direction: she finds the one who is turning her on (explicitly male-coded: "dear shepherd", "charming swain") and waxes lyrical for a while - and here she DOES distinguish horniness from love, comparing her feelings to superstitious religion that mixes idol and god.

But now she shifts, to address other women ("ye fair ones") and ask how they cope with all this. Specifically, she accuses women in general of being instinctively sluts, only temporarily held back from disreputable sex by their frigidity:

Oh! would you but confess the truth,
It is not real virtue makes you nice:
But when you do resist the pressing youth,
'Tis want of dear desire, to thaw the virgin ice.

[and again, the pathology of the age recurs: youths and swains are only romantic when they are "pressing" or "assailing" or the like]

Furthermore, most women are not only sluts but lying sluts, pretending to still be frigid even when they've fallen in lust, so as to be able to look down on other women from a perch of lofty wisdom:

While to th' admiring crowd you nice are found;
Some dear, some secret, youth that gives the wound
Informs you, all your virtue's but a cheat
And honour but a false disguise,
Your modesty a necessary bait
To gain the dull repute of being wise.

Finally, she takes the role of someone finally admitted into womanly secrets, like a man who has crept into a secret female ritual:
But now I've found your feebles on my own,
From me the needful fraud you cannot hide.

(perhaps a strange sentiment from a female poet, but of course Aphra is (when she wants to be) always "one of the lads", as much male as female)

And in case there's any doubt what sort of desire she's talking about she concludes with a classical analogy:

And though with virtue I the world perplex,
Lysander finds the weakness of my sex,
So Helen while from Theseus' arms she fled,
To charming Paris yields her heart and bed.

(of course, this is usually described as Paris' abduction of Helen, but for Aphra (and to a large extent her whole era) there is no distinction between abduction and seduction).


So it's an interesting poem, revealing a middle-aged woman who finally, too late, discovers her own eroticism, in a way that seems to hint both at potential bisexuality (and, incidentally, the continued obsession in Aphra's poetry with the eroticism of the female gaze) and at a culture of misogyny (and Aphra also has an interesting image of men as swooning, lying "all languishing" as "trophies to [women's] chastity"). It certainly seems to tie in to Todd's surprisingly chaste and demure version of Aphra, in its suggestion that all her bawdiness and obsession with sex has just been disinterested, asexual exploitation of the popular weakness...

...but can we believe a word of it? We need to bear in mind that although it reads as unusual personal, it is still expressing formulaic sentiments. The poet is suddenly assailed by an unprecedented attraction to his muse, in a way made even stronger, in this gender-swapped version, by the conventional protestations of chastity from a woman. Likewise, it is hardly novel for a poet to lament the deceitfulness of women and accuse them of concealing their sexual cravings - even if it's more unusual hearing it coming from a woman. And then there's that ending again: for Aphra Behn, in a poem published in the 1680s, to innocently, off-handedly, conventionally describe herself as perplexing the world with virtue is SO ridiculous as to be beyond an accident: whatever the truth of Aphra's personal life, she knew (and both complained and celebrated) that her public image was in reality the exact opposite: even her friends joked about her venereal disease and her willingness to publically expose herself for cash, while her enemies regarded her as monstrous, obscene and vile. So whether Aphra is intentionally taunting her detractors, or simply speaking in another woman's (less notorious) voice, it's not clear that we can really take this at face value as expressing her own genuine autobiographical history...

...much like every other damn thing written by or about her!

(also, she uses the word 'calenture'. Good word!)

Aphra, via Silvia, on the paradoxical position of women: "we are only safe by the mean Arts of base Dissimulation, an ill as shameful as that to which we fall".

Lucretius, via Creech, explaining the role of male sadism in romance:
What they desired, they hurt; and midst the Bliss
Raise Pain, when often with a furious Kiss
They wound the balmy Lip; This they endure
Because the Joy's not perfect, 'tis not pure:
But still some sting remains, some fierce desire
To hurt what ever twas that rais'd the fire

To us, this may read as criticism, but in Aphra's day this seems to have been expected - hence the obsessive depictions of romantic sex as violent and non-consensual. When women did not reciprocate, this turned men on, and they responded with sexual violence; when they DID reciprocate, this was a disgusting turn-off leading to impotence and cold resentment.

Usually Aphra's more into erectile dysfunction and loathing, but in the Love-Letters, where the romance, being epistolary at least at first, is not spoiled by the unsexy threat of consummation, she leans into the violence. Philander's sexy letters to Silvia promise that he will attack her with "no respect or Awe" in pursuit of "excess of pleasure", and that he will "force [him]self with all the violence of raging Love... and Ravish my delight".

Similarly, when Silvia might be forced to marry another man, Philander expresses his love by promising to set fire to her house, stalk her to her wedding, stab her bridegroom to death at the altar in front of her and prove his love by... torturing her in front of the guests.

Even when he's being coy and engaging in the romantic tropes of arcadia, he describes how the wind has sex with the trees by inflicting a "transported violence" upon them.

Needless to say, when they actually meet, Philander fails to live up to his romantic promises. As she intended, he ignores his promises not to ravish her and rushes upon her while she decorously falls unconscious from love for him, but of course (because of course he knows that she is secretly consenting) he's afflicted immediately by erectile dysfunction, and Silvia trying to entice him some more obviously just makes it worse. In the end, he's forced to escape from her bedroom wearing women's clothes, which backfires when he meets her father who, believing Philander to be a woman, immediately sexually assaults her by dropping a bag of money in one of Philander's hands and his penis in the other...


Anyway, this is all rather conventionally romantic by the standards of the day, but Aphra is unusual in extending some of this paradigm to Silvia: when she starts having sexual impulses, she, like a man, becomes more violent and vicious (rather than merely hysterical, as in other authors).


[P.S. an example of my frustration with the scholarship: Todd quotes that passage at the top, but fails to say that it's by Creech. There's a passing mention of Lucretius a paragraph earlier, but the immediate context instead appears to attribute the passage to Dryden. I don't think this is an error exactly - read carefully, she's only attributing a different sentence to Dryden and offering the unattributed paragraph in having a similar sentiment to Dryden, somehow guessing that the reader will make the leap to Lucretius, and then assume that the translation must be by Creech. But given the profusion of endnotes and in-text citations for other things, there's just no reason not to correctly cite Creech here, and it's part of a pattern of missing and misleading attributions (even the phrase she attributes to Dryden does not say which of his works it comes from).

Aphra's dedication (to a young army captain who has been accused of doing something 'unmanly in a love affair) is typically absurdly hyperbolic, but untypically intimate: you are as young as new desire, as beautiful as light, as amorous as a God, and wanton as a Cupid. Possibly Conlon has inspired some of Aphra's purported turn to the erotic around this time. If so, she's not jealous, as she encourages him to put his body and mind into wide circulation, just like her novel...

A quote I found while chasing that one down: To judge of love by most of its effects, one would think it more like hatred than kindness. (Rochefoucault)

Todd compares the silvan Arcadia (this time of The Island of Love ('a realm of gentle pastoral orgy', as Todd puts it)) to the trees of St James' Park, beneath which, in Rochester' less gentle phrasing, "are Buggeries, Rapes and Incests made" on a nightly basis.

Behn explicitly gives some Lucretianism in The Island of Love:

Whilst yet 'twas Chaos, e're the World was made,
And nothing was compos'd without his [i.e. Love's] Aid.
Agreeing Attoms by his pow'r were hurl'd,
And Love and Harmony compos'd the World.

Even in a perfect world in which men and women know neither pain nor cruelty, in which men don't have to complain about the strictness of their girlfriends, and women don't have to complain about the unfaithfulness of their boyfriends, Aphra's view of courtship (or at least, her portrayal of the popular view) is still deeply problematic. [to the extent that you might not want to read on...]

Here's a woman "consenting" - which of course for Aphra is the same as surrendering to the inevitable, with an explicit reassurance that the consent is completely unwilling - and how her tears of defeat are the ultimate reward for a man (Aphra even punctuates to show how her struggling to speak through her 'sighs' (or perhaps we would say 'sobs') of consent):

"Take charming Victor—what you must— subdue-
'Tis Love—and not Aminta gives it you,
Love that o're all, and every part does reign,
And I shou'd plead—and struggle—but in vain;
Take what a yielding Virgin—can bestow,
I am—dis-arm'd—of all resistance now."
Then down her Cheeks a tender shower did glide,
The Trophies of my Victory


Of course, Aphra assumes that the claims of non-consent are at least partly lies, and that, like all women, she wants it eally. Here's how she describes the noises of romance:

The short breath'd crys from faint resistance sent.
(Crys which no aid desires or brings)
The soft effects of Fear and Languishment;
The little struggling of the fair

Or how to interpret women's excuses for not wanting sex:

The pretty Non-sence with which she assails,
Which as she speaks, she hopes it nought prevails.

On the other hand, there is clearly an element honesty in female expressions of non-consent: Aphra assumes that consent, even in the form of resignation, will almost always be regretted. Thus, it's the man's job to force the issue and take advantage of any moment in which a woman's strength to reject him weakens. Thus, once the maid of the story gives in and tearfully accepts that she will have to have sex and there's no way to avoid it (sorry, when she acknowledges her love, rather), another naked woman appears, this time metaphorical - Occasion, her hair loosely flying in the wanton air - and Love tells the lover that if he doesn't seize hold of Occasion (and his girlfriend) right now all his efforts will be in vain, "For she but rarely e're return'd again." In other words, if you don't sleep with a woman immediately when you've broken them down, she'll realise what a mistake she's making and you'll lose your chance with her and have to start again with someone else. So romantic. And expected, in Aphra's age.



In other ways, however, Aphra's eroticism is scandalous not only in terms of decorum, but view of the world. She portrays sexual pleasure "which all human thought exceeds", and claims that this pleasure renders sexual trysts "all Divine". This is even, she says, the purpose of existence, or at least of bodies: in paradise,
Fine Hands and Arms for tender Pressings made,
In Love's dear business always are imploy'd.

[it's also an interesting note that after the maid finally accepts that she has no choice but to have sex (i.e., in Aphra's world, the couple acknowledge that they are in love), they meet the character of "Respect", which had earlier gotten in the way of their courtship, but now Respect looks different, and appears joyful. It is Respect that tells the couple to go and have sex (but then abandons them, because of course "Respect has nothing now to do / He always leaves the Lover here" - respect brings a couple together, but there's no place for respect during sex.]

Needless to say, however, even in paradise men still suffer from erectile dysfunction: the swain, having "conquered" his woman, lies "dead" between her arms, unable to "enjoy" his prize. It's not a pleasant feeling:
Shame and Confusion let me know I liv'd.
I saw the trembling dis-appointed Maid,
With charming angry Eyes my fault up-braid,
While Love and Spight no kind Excuse affords

Yes, even in paradise, sex must still be bound up in shame, confusion, disappointment, anger, and spite.

The difference is, though, that in paradise (unlike on earth) men get a second, and apparently profusely liquid, chance:
vast Seas came rowling on,
Spring-tides of Joy, that the rich neighboring shoar
And down the fragrant Banks it proudly bore,
O're-flow'd and ravisht all great Natures store.
Swoln to Luxurious heights, no bounds it knows,
But wantonly it Triumphs where it flows.

The maid is clearly grateful for all this, as she responds not only with monogamy but by ensuring variety: she continually displays "new charms", and ensures that each and every tryst is "Ravishing and New".

Of course, even in paradise the consequences of a woman having sex are unavoidable: led to the Bower of Bliss, the couple enjoy the Best Sex Ever:
never did the Charmer ere impart,
More Joy, more Rapture to my ravisht Heart:
'Twas all the first; 'twas all beginning Fire!
'Twas all new Love! new Pleasure! new Desire!
—Here stop my Soul—
Stop thy carreer of Vanity and Pride,
And only say,—'Twas here Aminta dy'd

Yes, the sex is so good that the woman just immediately dies. But don't worry! She dies so quickly that it doesn't damage her 'stiffening Face' or 'languishing eyes', so that's OK.

The boy, of course, is upset by this, but one can't help but feel that in the poetic equation he's been rewarded in a way: having experienced love, he now gets to be forlorn, tragic, distractingly brooding for the rest of his life. This, of course, will make him more attractive to girls, which is what matters most in a way - indeed, even his lover's dying thoughts are about her widower getting off with hot chicks: she calls him "a blessing too extreme to be possessed" and acknowledges that his love, returned from her, will soon be lodged "in some new fair breast" (while she lies "neglected" in her tomb). Of course, this is a victory for her as well: a living woman will always be abandoned by a man, but as a corpse, even a neglected one, she knows her beloved will "Remember, oh remember, the fair she / Can never love thee, darling Youth, like me." So he will go about his tragic, brooding way, consoling himself with various fair new breasts, while she has the ultimate satisfaction of knowing that neither he nor his future girlfriends will ever be truly happy, due to the scars her dying will leave upon him.

True romance!

Incidentally, I don't want to keep harping on this point, but once you notice it it's hard to un-notice: oh, what a surprise, when the girl has the best sex ever she... immediately imagines her boyfriend's future girlfriend.

And when Aphra imagines a girl finally 'consenting' to sex, before the sex happens, oh look, it's a beautiful naked metaphorical woman appearing out of nowhere and, yes, it's the naked woman who (at the boy's behest) ultimately persuades the girl to "enter the bower of bliss" (have sex). With the man, that is. Not with the naked woman, nooo, no lesbian subtext here, not at all.


And come to think of it, I just read one of her earlier poems, in which Aphra describes her love for Jack Hoyle, and how incredibly sexy Hoyle is... and oh, what a surprise, she's fantasising about him while talking to a beautiful woman. I'd never have guessed. But no, it's more that that. The first stanza is about how Amoret says Aphra looks sad about Hoyle, but Aphra reassures her that if she looks deeper into her eyes she'll find more love for her. The bulk of the poem is then about Hoyle being sexy, before the final stanza returns to Amoret, on the one hand warning her of how Hoyle steals people's hearts, but at the same time fantasising about how Amoret is so damn sexy - sorry, has such 'charms' - that can in turn render Hoyle, the 'conqueror', a 'captive'.

So yet again, Aphra is shipping her own boyfriend with another woman. She continually seems to express the sexiness of men in terms of how they're so sexy they could even potentially seduce a super-sexy second woman (who Aphra's totally not into, no) - and then to actively fantasise about her man being with another woman. And this time it's not pure literary imagination: she's talking about her own actual (ex?-)boyfriend, named not as Lysander but as "Mr. J.H." (Jack Hoyle). And from her other poems she strongly suggests that Amoret (Elizabeth Barry) is actually into him, so the reassurance to her that she could totally seduce him if she wanted may not be hypothetical.

And I probably wouldn't even be picking up on this sort of thing if it weren't for the fact that Todd doesn't, in the slightest. A huge part of this book is armchair philosophy about what Aphra must have been like, what she must have been thinking, but the idea of homoerotic overtones in some of her themes, while not denied (and very, very occasionally tangentially acknowledged) are almost entirely ignored. And even when acknowledged, Todd won't call them that - instead they're phrased in terms of Behn's attraction to the general concept of beauty, and in terms of her subversive desire to blur the boundaries of gender roles. Both of which do seem to be valid elements of what Aphra is doing. But at this point, not mentioning the other possible element kind of feels like going a long way around the houses to avoid naming something.

This is a female writer who:
- describes attractive men in female-coded terms
- repeatedly inserts thoughts of beautiful women whenever she's talking about sexiness
- seems to delight in fantasising about her male love interests being romantically involved with other, beautiful, women
- writes an awful lot about sexy, beautiful women - whores, transgressive women, feisty young women who fantasise about becoming whores, etc
- repeatedly writes plot-lines that involve beautiful women at least temporarily falling in love with other women (in disguise)
- despite a reputation for unspecified monstrous immorality that other women should be aware of, had only one known romantic relationship with a man, and he was probably gay, and it was probably sexually unsatisfying for both of them
- wrote what at least on the surface appears to be an outright lesbian love poem

...and while any one of these things could be explained in other ways, and even all of them together don't necessarily demand that a biographer simplistically conclude "oh yeah, she was a lesbian", I would kind of expect some sort of discussion about this issue to take place, beyond comments about how she found all forms of beauty (paintings, music, women, Catholic rituals, etc) appealing in a way.

Specifically, according to the index 'lesbianism' is mentioned only 4 times in the entire book. 'Homosexuality' is mentioned a whole 14 times... but only ever in the sense of male homosexuality (if we include one instance where one of Aphra's feisty women crossdresses and gets aroused by a man's homosexual attraction to her-as-a-boy) - which men may have been gay, what people thought about gay men, what Aphra thought, how Aphra depicted gay men. Only 4 mentions of lesbianism. Atomic theory, on the other hand, gets 6 mentions; Barbados (which she visited either never or once), 13; mask-wearing, 7.

It just seems a weird omission, that's all!



[mind you, Aphra's repeated Thing of expressing one attraction in terms of a different person isn't always homoerotic. In one poem about loving two men (at least, two people with male-coded codenames, which I guess isn't necessarily conclusive come to think of it?), she explains how she wouldn't love either without the other, as each, as it were, seduced her on the other's behalf:
Damon had ne'er subdu'd my Heart,
Had not Alexis took his part;
Nor cou'd Alexis pow'rful prove,
Without my Damons Aid, to gain my Love]

A reminder of the times, both the specific year and the general age, in terms of Aphra's contemporaries (/friends):

Otway (who had been given his first stage role in Aphra's play, before stage fright forced him to become a playwright rather than an actor) died in (and probably of) abject poverty at the age of 33, in 1685.

The year before, Nat Lee, 31, had been imprisoned in a lunatic asylum, the result of mental health problems variously blamed on his debauched lifestyle (as a friend of Rochester) and on financial troubles. The accepted cure for mental health problems at the time was starvation, to force people to man up and be sane if they wanted to eat. Wycherley allegedly* noted the poetic irony:
You, but because you starved, fell mad before;
Now starving does your wits to you restore.

Lee himself is reputed (by R Porter in A Social History of Madness) to have had a more philosophical view on his imprisonment: .

Lee survived the asylum, but died of 'a drunken fit' at 39.

Meanwhile, William Wycherley suffered a different sort of mental problem: now in his 40s, a near-fatal fever had left him with permanent brain damage, resulting in poor memory and great difficulty sustaining coherent trains of thought for any length of time - his literary career was suddenly over (he continued to write poetry, but not of a marketable quality). In 1685 he too was engaoled, having spent 4 years imprisoned for his debts.

It wasn't a great time for writers.



*Todd of course provides no citation for this quote, and all three instances of it online that Google could find are from this book itself, so who knows...

Allegedly Aphra somewhere, possibly via Silvia in the Love-Letters: "you that are great, are born the Bulwarks of Sacred Majesty".

Aphra's dedication of an anthology to Sir William Clifton, a rich provincial squire, is a good summary of the Tory worldview:

where else-where for the want of such great patrons and precedents, faction and sedition have overrun those villages where ignorance abounded, and got footing almost everywhere, whose inhabitants are a sort of brutes, that ought no more to be left to themselves than fire, and are as mischievous and destructive. While every great landlord is a kind of monarch, that awes and civillizes 'em into duty and allegiance; and whom because they know, they worship with a reverence equal to what they would pay the King, whose representative they take him at least to be if not of God himself... he's their oracle, their very gospel, and whom they'll sooner credit; never was new religion, misunderstanding and rebellion known in the counties till gentlemen of ancient families reformed their way of living to the new mode, pulled down their great halls, retrenched their servants, and confined themselves to scanty lodgings in the City...

This resolves some of the confusion modern readers might have about the apparent hypocrisies of Aphra's position (and that of much of the writing class of the era)...

How could a peasant (or at best lower-gentry) country girl, daughter of Kentish barber, consistently side with the rich and powerful, if not through some sort of stockholm syndrome? Well, as we see here Aphra locates the immediate source of disruption not in poverty per se, or some inborn inferior of the peasantry, but in "ignorance". Aphra does not see herself as ignorant, in general - though she does pretend it out of humility at times, and does seem to have a pervasive insecurity about her lack of Latin. Aphra sees the powerful (and their coteries of lawyers, clergymen and poets) as a source of education (mostly informal) for the peasants, to rescue them from ignorance in a paternal way; as she herself has managed to educate herself, she sees herself as on the side of knowledge against ignorance. The Tories were often fearful of the (mostly urban) mob, but saw their primary enemies not as the mob themselves but the duplicitous, hate-filled Whig demagogues who lied to them and manipulated them as political tools, spreading "Faction and Sedition", along with "New Religion" [the anthology was published after the accession of James, so there was no longer a need to keep quiet about anti-Protestant sentiment].

[this also brings us back to the question of how Aphra was educated at all. Todd fantasises about time spent at Penshurst, in the library of the Sidneys, and although her evidence for this seems very sketchy, there's certainly a general appeal to the idea of a connexion to some literate aristocrats early in her life. This would help explain how she came into Resistance circles under the Republican regime; but if she herself gained education - was uplifted from the masses! - by a benign nobleman of some sort it would also give more psychological momentum to her Tory instincts.]

How is it that Aphra, a Tory who yearns for rural arcadias both in her politics and in her poetry, and who derides City manners (several of her plays are satires of City life), could spend her life in the City, and at times depict it with affection? Well, she's not a country squire. It's OK, in her view, for poets and artisans to live in the City, and it's probably mostly OK for noblemen like Rochester to spend much of their time there - they're not essential to country life. Aphra's scorn is for the country knights, rural magistrates, lords-of-the-manor, who abandon their posts and traditions and come to the City in search of fashion and money, leaving their people to fend for themselves.

We also see here a connexion to Aphra's theories about the role of poets as supporters of the state: everyone has a role to play in educating and civilising the ignorant, whether that's squires acting as benign intermediaries for the peasantry, or poets acting as propagandists to placate the dangerous City mob.

And while this doesn't have much to do with Aphra herself, it's worth bearing in mind when you next see 18th or 19th century theories of "the white man's" duty of educating and civilising foreigners, black people and/or slaves... this wasn't at first a specifically racial thing, this was (as we see here from the very end of the 17th century) just the general Tory ideology of the duties of the ruler to the ruled wherever they were to be found. Aphra is writing at the time of the foundations of British imperialism and the slave trade, but the things people were writing about the Bahamas or Surinam were not all that different from what she was writing about Nottinghamshire...


Finally, of course, we have to remember that a dedication is a political act, and we shouldn't assume that this is really what Aphra herself thinks - Todd points out that it's pretty much just mainline Tory ideology, and Aphra, although a partisan, was not a doctrinaire. That said, it's probably fair to say that she is outlining a worldview here with which she has a great sympathy in general, whether or not she is precisely describing her own personal beliefs in all details...

"Should Heav'n concern its self with Lover's Perjuries, 'twould find no leisure to preserve the Universe." - Mirtilla, in The Younger Brother

Mirtilla is a particularly bold heroine even by Aphra's standards. Having married for money and ambition, she has taken a lover, but spends most of the play in love with her boyfriend's sister, whom Mirtilla believes to be a man. [to prove that she is not, Mirtilla "opens Olivia's Bosom, shews her Breasts", the sort of stage directions that was popular in Restoration plays, but that would fall wildly out of favour in following generations]. In the end, Mirtilla is publically outed both for her multiple infidelities and for the foolishness of accidentally pursuing a woman - but isn't particularly embarrassed about any of it.

[It's interesting that as Aphra got older, her heroines seem to have tended to graduate from sassy girls who are tempted by vice but ultimately reject it, toward increasingly brazen women. It's tempting to link this to Todd's theory of a later sexual awakening, but it could just be increasing confidence, increasing need to appeal to the audience through sensationalism, or just increasing cynicism]

In any case, Aphra didn't stage the play - perhaps it was too much for the era, or perhaps she was worried about getting typecast as a writer, given her risque French translations and theoretically anonymous erotic novel.

It was staged and published posthumously; since this was by Gildon, who admits to altering it (to remove "that old bustle about Whigg and Tory"), it's possible it's all a forgery. However, Todd points out that if it were a forgery it would probably have been more successful - by 1696 it was terribly out of fashion, and had it been Gildon's creation he would probably have written something more appealing, rather than merely updating something fundamentally ill-judged for the season.


Anyway, Mirtilla gives a stirring defence of Restoration femininity, announcing herself as proud of seducing a prince as a man would be of winniing his sword:
Look round the world and thou shalt see ... ambition still supplies the place of love. The worn-out lady, that can serve your interest, you swear has beauties ... All things in nature Cheat, or else are Cheated ... you never knew a woman thrive so well by real love as by dissimulation.

(the mention of a worn-out lady still patronisingly praised for her beauty by men who want something from her may well, of course, have had an autobiographical resonance, though oddly Todd doesn't comment on it)

"Fire-ship": a contemporary metaphor for a woman suffering from a venereal disease.

In Part II of the Love Letters, Philander abandons Silvia as she is pregnant; Silvia's husband attempts to take his place, but the erectile dysfunction medication he takes gives him embarrassing intestinal problems at an inopportune time; instead, she seduces a rich and heroic man, who foolishly mistakes Silvia's pride in her own marketability for a virgin's innocent self-esteem.

In Part III, Philander returns (seeing his political master heroically falling in love with his mistress again, despite her advanced age and physical decay (she's over 30!), Philander nobly sets himself the task of loving an older woman, so gets back with Silvia) and the couple fall back in love; but inevitably,
Love decayed, and ill humour increased: they grew uneasy on both sids, and not a day passed wherein they did not break into open and violent quarrels, upbraiding each other with those faults which both wished that either would again commit, that they might be fairly rid of one another.

Silvia is so reduced in spirits by this that - along with taking a pension from her heroic plaything (now reduced to monasticism), by pretending to have piously repented her ways - she is even persuaded to seduce her own husband. But mostly she just uses him to seduce another man - which she does by dressing up as a boy (among other things).

He, however, is looking elsewhere, because Silvia has competition. Sure, Silvia SAYS that she'll do anything for cash, and that her own interest will be her entire occupation, but in practice she still shows romantic interest (and/or hatred) for Philander. The Countess, on the other hand, is much more straightforward: 500 pistoles for the night. Alonzo is of course captivated, but then discovers that the Countess' maid is on offer for only 50 (and she's a virgin), so naturally sleeps with her in the interim; the Countess watches, and as a result gets turned on by Alonzo for the first time. [as always for Aphra, nothing's as sexy as a man having sex with a woman who isn't her]. The Countess is so turned on by her voyeurism she offers to have sex with Alonzo for free, which immediately revolts him [nothing's as big a turn off for a Restoration man as a woman who's attracted to him]. (the Countess is, he says "ready to eat my lips instead of kissing them" she's so horny, and thus "much more forward than I wished").

In the end, Silvia ends up trapped into what may either be Aphra's vision of paradise, or her vision of hell: her own master, dressing as a man, but having to have sex with her loving husband as payment for her freedom (and for the provision of more young men):
She continues her Man's Habit, and he supplied the place of Valet, dress'd her and undress'd her, shifted her Linen every day; nor did he take all these Freedoms, without advancing a little farther uon occasion and opportunity, which was the hire she gave him to serve her more Lucky Amours; the Fine she paid to live free, and at ease. She tells him her adventure, which though it were Daggers to his Heart, was however the only way to keep her his own; for he knew her Spirit was too violent to be restrained by any means.

Both are left unable to improve their position, dependent on the other; both are left in a kind of tantalising simulacrum of what they want (for her freedom, but only if she pays with sex; for him, her, but only if he pays with humiliation).

[and of course the underlying Restoration irony: Silvia can only dominate her husband in this way because he's NOT a bold, free-thinking libertine like Philander, but an easily-manipulated, womanish, wimp; but this is precisely why she cannot be attracted to him, and hence cannot be happy in their relationship. If she loved him, this relationship really might be a happy ending for her - but if he were a man worth loving, he would not stay in such a demeaning relationship. In this era, women cannot ever win; it's literally against the rules.]

[also worth stating out loud: Silvia and her husband are effectively an inversion of the usual libertine arrangements, in which it is the man who strays and the woman who washes the linen. It's worth remembering that men in those relationships were also often required to pay for them with unwilling sex - impregnating their wife was often the cost of both their wife's acquiescence and the silence of their in-laws. The difference is that it was expected that a man COULD love a woman who accepted her husband's infidelity, whereas a woman could never love a husband who allowed her to be unfaithful.]

p. 343 - Charles dies.

the King sitting and toying with his Concubines Portsmouth, Cleaveland and Mazarine: &c: A French boy singing love songs, in that glorious Gallery, whilst about 20 of the greate Courtiers & other dissolute persons were at Basset round a large table, a bank of at least 2000 in Gold before them, upon which two Gent: that were with me made reflexions with astonishment, it being a sceane of utmost vanity; and surely as they thought would neve have and End: Six days after was all in the dust. [Evelyn]

Todd: "Prayers were offered throughout the kingdom for his recovery, while his doctors prevented it by purgings, bleedings, head shavings, and a general military attitude to doctoring." One 'cure' involved swallowing a stone taken from the stomach of a rare breed of goat.

He died, as Todd puts it, "with courtesy": demanding that his brother/heir look after his concubines, apologising earnestly to his wife for having concubines (and for everything else), and giving his blessing to his illegitimate children. Charles was obviously a deeply problematic man, even by the standards of his own time (and let's not even get into how many of the literally uncountable encounters with young women leagues below his station and entirely in his power would be considered totally unacceptable today); and yet it's hard to avoid feeling that he may have been the nicest and most honourable man of his era, surrounded as he was by sociopathic vipers. Charles may have done wrong, a lot, but he did at least feel bad about it and occasionally try to make up for it.

Oh, and among his last words: he apologised to spectators for taking so long: I am sorry, gentlemen, for being such a time a-dying. Given that he died four days after the first symptoms appeared, I think he may have been overly harsh on himself there.

It's perhaps no surprise that Charles - flawed, foolish, sinful - was arguably a great monarch, under whom art and literature flourished, and who succeeded in (almost) maintaining peace in a restless kingdom for a quarter of a century; whereas James, certainly a far more pious and upright man, presided very briefly over corruption, repression and neglect before being swept from power within a few years by people who had previously been his supporters, united a disunited realm in hatred of him. Charles recognised both his own true failings and the failings others accused him of; James thought himself without flaws, and could scarcely understand that others might not agree with his own high opinion of himself...

Anyway, Todd doesn't mention it here (though maybe she mentioned it before), but we may as well include the famous 'epitaph' written for Charles, before both their deaths, allegedly by Rochester:

Here lies a great and mighty king
Whose word none could rely on.
He never said a foolish thing
Nor ever did a wise one.

Charles, for his part, retorted that this was because as monarch only his words were truly his own, whereas his deeds were the actions of the state, pressed upon him by his ministers... [a particularly sore point for Charles given how many of his friends he was compelled to imprison or even execute at the insistence of Parliament]

Evelyn, for his part, summed him up as: a prince of many virtues, and many great imperfections.