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“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.”

— Virginia Woolf

Aphra Behn

● Traditionally known as the first professional woman writer in English, Aphra Behn has
now emerged as one of the major figures of the Restoration. During the 1670s and 1680s,
she provided more plays for the stage than any other author, and greatly influenced the
development of the novel with her ground- breaking fiction, especially Love-Letters
between a Noble-Man and his Sister, and Oroonoko, the first English novel set in
America. Behn’s work straddles the genres: beside drama and fiction, she also excelled in
poetry and she made several important translations from French libertine and scientific
works.

● Aphra Behn is a remarkable literary figure. She was the first English woman to support
herself as a professional writer, and she had success as a poet, a playwright, a translator
and as a writer of fiction

● Aphra was a poet by choice, but unfortunately poetry didn't pay any better in the late 17th
century than it does now, so to earn her living she had to turn to other forms of writing.
She began writing plays and had considerable popular success. However, as with
actresses, there was an automatic assumption that any woman connected with the stage
was immoral, and she was repeatedly attacked and slandered for her work. In the mid-
1680s, with the political situation in England becoming more and more dangerous, new
plays were no longer being commissioned, and Aphra had to find yet another way to earn
some money. From 1684 onwards she published a series of short fictions that were either
based on real events or claimed to be.

● Aphra Behn was, politically, a committed Tory---meaning that she supported the
traditional rule by monarchy and deplored contemporary attempts to limit the powers of
the king. Like the vast majority of English writers of her time, when she started writing
fiction she used it as a way of expressing her political beliefs and supporting her side of
the political argument. Part of the brilliance of the first volume of Love-Letters Between
A Nobleman And His Sister is her recognition that the true story on which she based it
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fed into both of the English reading's public's main passions, sex and politics: the scandal
in question was even more scandalous for crossing the political divide.

● Love-Letters between a Noble-Man: Aphra Behn was a 17th century restoration

playwright. She was one of the first European female playwrights. Her marriage, if it
existed at all, lasted only a few years. She was known to be bisexual which played a
major role in her writing. Behn used her position at court to become a spy. Love-Letters
Between a Nobleman and His Sister was published in 1687. Originally published in 3
volumes, it was an epistolary work centering on the Mommouth Rebellion in 1685. James
II was Roman Catholic and many people were opposed to a Catholic king. James Scott,
1st Duke of Monmouth, was the illegitimate son of Charles II. James Scott tried to
disgrace James II so he could inherit the throne

● The three shorts novels that comprise Love-Letters Between A Nobleman And His Sister
are:
○ Love-Letters Between A Noble-Man And His Sister (1684)
○ Love Letters Between A Noble Man And His Sister. Mixt With The History Of
○ Their Adventures. The Second Part By The Same Hand (1685)
○ The Amours Of Philander And Silvia: Being The Third And Last Part Of The
Love-Letters Between A Nobleman And His Sister (1687)

Background to the LOVE- LETTERS BETWEEN A NOBLEMAN AND HIS SISTER:

The early English novel:

● The English novel, as we would understand it, emerged in the second half of the 17th
century. The English were a bit slow in this respect: other countries, particularly Spain
and France, had adopted fiction as an acceptable form of literature quite early, but in
England it seems that the Puritan streak made people uncomfortable with outright fiction:
telling stories = telling lies. Most early English fiction is allegorical; that was okay,
because it was not pretending to be "real" or "true". When people began writing fiction as
such, the stories tended to be first-person accounts of adventures that claimed to be true,
whether they were or not (and the vast majority were not). People were wary of fiction
that admitted to being wholly made up. This tendency persisted well into the 18th
century, with devices such as the "found manuscript" or the author posing as the editor of
a set of letters remaining a common way of working around the discomfort of fiction.

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● During the 1680s, two forms of "true" stories were hugely popular in England. It became
common practice to publish people's letters---particularly the correspondence of
prominent public figures. This form of literature was so very popular, that many
publishers began hiring writers to fake sets of letters, which were then supposedly
"discovered" in the wake of someone's death. (Aphra Behn herself was a victim of this.)

● Publishing letters was another form of literature that got its start outside of England, and
in the late 1660s a short set of letters were published in France as the Lettres Portugaises.
These subsequently appeared in England as Five Love-Letters From A Nun To A
Cavalier, and are known today as The Love Letters Of A Portuguese Nun. These letters,
supposedly written by a nun to the French officer with whom she had had an affair, and
who had abandoned her, were a stunning success across Europe; arguments persist to this
day over whether they are authentic or a clever literary ruse, and in either case, who
wrote them. Either way, they kicked off a secondary stream of published letters: in
contrast to the "public" sort of letter, dealing with current events and politics, private
letters dealing with personal, intimate matters became popular; though these, even more
than the public letters, tended to be faked.

● Meanwhile, the complicated and dangerous political situation in England that coincided
with the reign of Charles II saw the roman à clef, the "romance with a key", become
popular. Stories dealing with the political situation, and often violently attacking various
public figures including the royal family, were set in a different country and presented
real people in disguise, as a way of getting around the censor. Writers from both sides of
the political divide used this method to publish propaganda which would have had
serious legal ramifications if written straight.

● For more than twenty years, from the 1660s through the 1680s, these two forms of "true
fiction" ran in parallel in English publishing. Then, in 1684, Aphra Behn had a stroke of
genius: she blended together the two literary forms, the (supposedly) private letters made
public and the political roman à clef, and in doing so invented the epistolary novel.

History and politics:

● Briefly---or as briefly as I can---when Charles II was invited back to the throne of

England in 1660, it was on the understanding that he would rule a Protestant country as a
Protestant. Charles may have been a closet Catholic but he was a pragmatist and wanted
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to be king, therefore he presented himself as a Protestant. However, Charles had no
legitimate heir; the heir to the throne was his brother, James, who was Catholic. This
became a matter of increasing contention, and there were attempts made to force Charles
to exclude James from the succession in favour either of James' daughters, Mary and
Anne, who had been raised Protestant, or in favour of Charles' illegitimate son*, James
Scott, the Duke of Monmouth ("the Exclusion Crisis"). These failed, and when Charles
died early in 1685 he was succeeded by James. There was an attempt to overthrow James
in the early months of his reign ("the Monmouth Rebellion"), which was a disastrous
failure.

● During this time there was violent conflict between the Tories, who supported the
monarchy and believed in the divine right of kings, and who therefore supported Charles
and James even though the latter was a Catholic, and a new political party known as the
Whigs, who (in the earliest instance of "an opposition" as we would now understand it)
fought to reduce the power of the monarchy and increase the powers of Parliament, and
tried but failed to keep James off the throne.

The scandal:

● The true story at the heart of Love-Letters Between A Nobleman And His Sister is the
affair between, and subsequent elopement of, Forde, Lord Grey of Werke, and the Lady
Henrietta Berkeley, the seventeen-year-old daughter of the Earl of Berkeley, who also
happened to be the sister of Grey's wife, Lady Mary. Technically, therefore, under the
laws of the time, the affair was incestuous.

● The Berkeleys were passionate Tories and supporters of the monarchy, while Lord Grey
was a Whig involved with the attempts to put Monmouth on the throne.

● The two were lovers for a year before Henrietta's family discovered what was going on
and "imprisoned" her at a family estate in the country. Henrietta managed to escape, and
she and Grey lived together secretly in London. The matter became public when the Earl
posted a series of advertisements in the London Gazette:

● “Whereas the Lady Henrietta Berkeley has been absent from her Fathers house since the
20th of August last past, and is not yet known where she is, nor whether she is alive or
dead; These are to give notice, That whoever shall find her, so that she may be brought

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back to her Father, the Earl of Berkeley, they shall have 200 Pounds Reward. She is a
young Lady of a fair Complexion, fair Haired, full Breasted, and indifferent tall.”

● The Earl later brought charges against Grey - that he “…did conspire the ruin and utter
destruction of the lady Henrietta Berkeley, daughter of the right honourable George earl
of Berkeley…and solicited her to commit whoredom and adultery with my lord Grey, who
was before married to the lady Mary, another daughter of the earl of Berkeley, and sister
to the lady Henrietta…”. During the trial Henrietta claimed that she had married William
Turner, a servant of Grey's, and was therefore no longer subject to her father's authority,
but Grey and the servants who helped him elope with her were convicted anyway. Setting
a pattern for the rest of Grey's life, he bought his way out of trouble while his servants
went to jail.

● Subsequently, Grey involved himself in a plot against Charles and James ("the Rye
House Plot") which failed, and he was convicted of treason and sentenced to death.
However, before his execution he escaped from the Tower of London, probably by
bribing his guards, and when he fled England he took Henrietta with him.

● These events took place across 1681 - 1683, and in 1684, Aphra Behn published Love-
Letters Between A Noble-Man And His Sister.

● Oroonoko (1688): Oroonoko is narrated in the first person. The narrator plays a role in
the action during the second half of the story. The book shares a name with its
protagonist, a fictional African prince who is sold into slavery in South America. The
name Oroonoko may be derived from the South American river called the Orinoco.

● Truth and Fiction: The subtitle of Oroonoko includes the phrase "A True History."
Behn's narrator assures the reader she's recounting true events involving a real hero.
Many details may reflect Behn's own time in Suriname, and she references historical
personalities and events. However, almost all the main characters are fictional, and so is
the plot. Oroonoko is fiction described as truth, combining elements of storytelling and
memoir.

● Oroonoko: Later in her life Behn branched out into novel writing. Her novella Oroonoko
(1688), which is based on her visit to Suriname, tells the story of an African prince forced
into slavery. Though Oroonoko is fictional, Behn includes several real English colonists

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as characters, and the narrator is based on Behn. The novel is also known as Oroonoko:
or, The Royal Slave, a True History or Oroonoko: or, the Royal Slave.

● Oroonoko was revolutionary in both form and subject. It serves as a foundational text in
the development of the English novel as modern readers know it. Oroonoko engaged
topics such as racial inequality, gender inequality, and slavery more candidly than most
writing of its time. Some readers considered it the first novel to argue for abolition.

● "The pictures of the pen shall outlast those of the pencil, and even worlds themselves."—
Narrator: In Behn's epistolary dedication, she promotes the power of stories to preserve
lives. She wants to immortalize the character of Oroonoko through her book. The
reference to "worlds themselves" implies that a good book has a timeless message that
outlasts the culture of its creation. Behn wants Oroonoko's story to be as enduring as an
epic.

● Behn Paved the way for Female writers: Behn died on April 16, 1689, a year after
writing Oroonoko. She's buried in England's Westminster Abbey. Her work's quality
stands strong on its own, but Behn's most enduring legacy is as a trailblazer for women
writers. Critics in the 17th and 18th centuries initially dismissed her work, accusing Behn
of disgracing womanhood by writing about lewd topics. However, other female
playwrights began to make a living from their work after Behn. English writer Virginia
Woolf (1882–1941), a well-known 20th-century modernist, honors Behn in her
nonfiction work A Room of One's Own (1929). Woolf feels Behn was the first woman to
take writing seriously as a career, giving future women permission to do the same. "All
women together ought to let flowers fall upon the tomb of Aphra Behn," Woolf says.
Behn's own revolutionary attitudes toward gender in her work make her a foundational
feminist figure.

● Literary Models for Oroonoko: Though Oroonoko's story takes place in Africa and
South America, it reflects western European literary traditions. Behn borrows from
genres such as medieval courtly romance, heroic drama, and travel narrative.

● Medieval prose romances, written for aristocratic audiences and often based on Arthurian
legend, were popular in England at the beginning of the 17th century. These romances
often took place in a royal court, giving rise to the term courtly love. Noble knights
pursued ladies in distress. Lovers were separated and then reunited. Oroonoko and his
love interest, Imoinda, have a similar story in many respects.

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● Oroonoko is a prince in an African court. His goals include victory on the battlefield and
reunification with his lover. Like a medieval knight, he's conflicted between his duty to
the king and his love for Imoinda. His actions are guided by a strong sense of honor, like
the chivalric code of Western medieval romances. Behn describes Oroonoko as having
"refined notions of true honor" and "softness ... capable of the highest passions of love
and gallantry," phrases recalling a romantic hero or knight in a medieval romance.

● Behn, a playwright, was also inspired by the heroic drama of England's Restoration
period (1660–88). These dramas featured themes of courage, love, and honor, which
Behn adapted for Oroonoko. The larger-than-life traits of Behn's protagonists Oroonoko
and Imoinda may have been borrowed from characters of heroic drama that display
extraordinary virtue and valor. Heroic plays took cues from ancient epics with clear
heroes and villains. Noble heroes perform sacrificial good deeds and face down
monstrous enemies. Behn similarly depicts Oroonoko as a courageous warrior and
Suriname's colonizers as evil cowards. Heroes of heroic drama may also deliver long
speeches, such as Oroonoko's speech calling his fellow slaves to rebel.

● The Transatlantic Slave Trade in Suriname: In 1688 when Oroonoko was published,
African slavery in North and South America was growing as a viable economic system.
England was among the European nations to play a major role in the slave trade. Slavery
sustained the nation's economy. Food production in colonies such as Suriname ensured
robust trade, and plantation owners needed labor for the harvest.

● In the 16th century, English colonizers started exploring the potential of the "New
World" across the Atlantic Ocean. African slavery was already an established practice in
other European colonies, with Portuguese and Spanish colonizers enslaving Africans for
sugar production. By 1624 England had its own sugar colonies in the Caribbean.

● Behn's Attitude toward Slavery: Was Behn against slavery? Though Oroonoko bears
graphic witness to the physical and emotional brutality of slavery, its narrator does not
condemn the practice. She lives on a plantation with slave owners. Even Oroonoko
himself is a slave trader in his African nation, working closely with an English ship
captain.

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● The book's attitude toward slavery as a larger global system is ambiguous. Behn depicts
slavery as an economic reality despite its injustice to the enslaved. She observed the
commercial gains England could make as a nation through the slave trade. There is
evidence Behn believed slavery was good for England's economy, though this belief
wasn't universally held. She wishes England had kept the colony of Suriname and
increased the power of the British Empire.

● Behn differed from her contemporaries in her attitudes toward African and South
American people. Behn depicts colonized tribes in Africa and South America as
admirable, innocent, and sincere. Her narrative shows no desire to convert Africans and
Native Americans to Christianity or suppress their cultural traditions, unlike most English
settlers of Behn's time. Nonetheless, her writing still reflects a racist concept of European
dominance. She portrays Oroonoko, an English- speaking prince with a Western
education, as superior to other Africans. Oroonoko helped popularize the idea of the
"noble savage" who was closer to nature than the supposedly civilized Europeans.

● Oroonoko: Oroonoko's courage, battle skills, and strong moral code resemble those of a
hero in epic literary traditions. His education, wit, and love for his wife Imoinda resemble
the traits of a medieval literary hero. He's an African general beloved by his people,
retaining his dignity in slavery. White settlers are impressed by Oroonoko's Western
education, innate intelligence, and diplomacy. Oroonoko becomes a tragic hero toward
the book's end when he is executed after leading a failed rebellion.

● Imoinda: Imoinda is well mannered, gentle, and modest. She is exceptionally physically
attractive, inspiring desire in every man she meets, including both Oroonoko and the
king. She is also respected by the settlers and slaves in Suriname. In Suriname she reveals
herself to be a courageous fighter who has an honor code almost as strong as Oroonoko's.
In many ways her positive qualities mirror those of Oroonoko's.

● Oroonoko: Oroonoko is an African prince from the fictional country of Coramantien. He

is sold into slavery in South America and executed after a failed rebellion. The narrator
calls him Caesar, the name given to him by his slave masters in the second half of the
book.

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● Imoinda is a young African woman of noble birth. She is sold into slavery in South
America, where she is reunited with her husband Oroonoko; she later lets Oroonoko kill
her and her unborn child to escape a life of slavery. Imoinda's slave masters give her the
new name Clemene, but the narrator soon reverts to calling her by her African name. The
narrator is a British woman living in Suriname. She gets to know Oroonoko and relays
details of his life to the reader.

● The Trope of the "Noble Savage": Through her depiction of the native people's virtue,
Behn promotes another popular cultural trope: the noble savage. Oroonoko is one of the
earliest instances of the "noble savage" character. John Dryden, Behn's contemporary,
was the first to use the term. A noble savage comes from a culture that's considered
uncivilized, but he or she displays natural goodness and virtue. Books such as Oroonoko
argue Western civilization corrupts this innate virtue in colonized people.

● Behn emphasizes her characters' nobility by idealizing Oroonoko and Imoinda. They
resemble character archetypes, or models, such as a flawless knight and lady in a
medieval romance.

● The narrator's reverence toward native populations, however, comes with fear. White
settlers have power in colonized countries, but they're in unfamiliar territory. They rely
on the native population to find food. They're also outnumbered. If the native population
or enslaved Africans rebel, the settlers might be defeated. Behn's narrator is constantly
aware of this danger, noting the measures ship captains and plantation owners take to
suppress potential rebellions.

● "These people represented ... the first state of innocence, before man knew how to sin."
— Narrator: Behn describes the native South Americans in the language of the Christian
religion. In many mythologies, including the biblical story of the Garden of Eden,
humans lived in an early period of happiness before evil entered the world. According to
the biblical story, once humans learned to sin and commit evil acts, they left Eden behind
at their own peril. Behn uses this myth to contrast the dishonesty of English slave traders
with the purity of native populations.

● The Narrator's Ambiguity: The narrator's support for the slaves or the masters remains
ambiguous. Her allegiances and loyalties shift throughout the book. These shifts are
partially indicated by the narrator's choice of pronouns. Sometimes she uses the first-

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person plural we to refer to the colonists in Suriname. Other times she uses the third-
person plural they. When Europeans are being deceitful and cruel, the narrator
distinguishes herself from the group. When Europeans feel their livelihoods threatened by
a possible shift in power, she's more likely to join the group. She's both observer and
participant. For instance, when the narrator calls the African slaves "those ... whom we
make use of," she acknowledges herself as part of a group with slave owners.

● The slave trade between Coramantien and England represents a common 17th-century
procedure. Coramantien, which Behn uses as the name of a country, was a West African
trading post off the coast of present-day Ghana.

● "Why ... should we be slaves to an unknown people?" — Oroonoko: In Africa, Oroonoko

was a slave owner. Slavery was the agreed-upon consequence of losing to another tribe or
country in battle. The winning armies earned the right to slaves through their superior
battle skill, but the slaves in Suriname have been taken captive by foreign powers most of
them have never seen before. They labor to make money for these foreigners. The
English slave traders have done nothing to earn slaves; they've simply taken them. This
deceit has no place in Oroonoko's code of honour

● "We are bought and sold ... to be the sport of women, fools, and cowards." — Oroonoko:
This quote, part of Oroonoko's speech to his fellow slaves, shows his true opinion of the
colonizers. Keeping slaves is "sport," or a low-stakes game, for the English in Suriname.
Women are entertained and impressed by the educated Oroonoko—he kills animals they
won't touch. The slave masters, the "fools" and "cowards," profit from slave labor so they
can live an easy lifestyle in the colonies. Since Oroonoko has seen the world of the white
settlers up close, he knows what they really think of their slaves.

● European Colonialism and Power: Colonialism, or the process of occupying and

controlling another country, extended the British Empire around the world. Behn doesn't
condemn colonialism—she accepts England's domination of other countries as an
essential part of trade. Still, she examines colonialism's impact on native populations and
on the colonizers themselves.

● Behn's narrator imagines the native population living in blissful harmony with nature
before colonists arrived in Suriname. Their innocence means they don't have any concept

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of dishonesty, vice, or evil. She compares them to Adam and Eve in biblical legend, who
lived in peace before knowledge was introduced to the world. With knowledge came sin.
Behn compares the colonizers' attempt to civilize native populations with the devastating
introduction of knowledge to people who were better off without it. Colonizers introduce
religion and laws, practices the Europeans consider necessary to preserve order.
However, Behn's narrator argues that these practices only teach native people to lie,
scheme, and manipulate. The African country of Coramantien has strict laws, but the
citizens follow these laws and respect them. Even the cunning king, who abuses his
power to marry Imoinda, feels guilty he didn't give her an honorable death. Behn portrays
Coramantien as more civilized and self-regulated than the European society that enslaves
Coramantien's people.

● Colonialism may sustain England's economy as a whole, but it can also corrupt
individuals. Behn's narrator observes how power reveals the vicious nature of settlers
such as Byam. The council of English colonizers, with whom Byam discusses Caesar's
fate, consists of lawless men who swear and fight with one another. They are encouraged
to govern their slaves with fear and intimidation; Byam sends quarters of Caesar's body
to slave masters so they can scare their slaves into obedience. Behn portrays some slave
masters, such as Trefry and Colonel Martin, as essentially decent men, but they don't
have as much power as those who are willing to govern through violence. They can't stop
Caesar's punishment and death.

Sources/ Bibliography:

1. The Novels of Mrs Aphra Behn by Ernest A Baker

2. The Works of Aphra Behn by Janet Todd
3. The Discovery of Slavery from Aphra Behn to Toni Morrison by Carl Plasa

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