David Crook

English 420

November 18, 2003

Aphra Behn and Sexual Identity: ambiguity

and Gender Swapping in Poetry

The seventeenth century was a century dominated, as most centuries are, by male authors. The constraints placed on women writers, or would-be writers, made it virtually impossible for acceptance, much less fame and reward. A clear exception to this is the writer Aphra Behn. Though only writing in the last third or so of the century, she was the first woman to earn a living as a professional writer. She was prolific and successful, in some degree, in writing the novel, drama, and poetry. Much of her poems concerned themselves with the explicit recognition of female sexual desire and enjoyment, an area that was, for most of society, deemed immodest for a woman to approach. By investigating a some of her representative poetry, it is possible to assert that by breaking the taboo and speaking aloud the sexuality of her non-traditional personas, Aphra Behn questioned the sources, and the very validity of sexual identity.

Before examining the poetry itself, it is helpful to take a look at some of the criticism that Behn received early on. In an 1872 issue of The Saturday Review an anonymous critic tears Behn’s work apart. Of her collected works, he claims that “it is protected against critics as a skunk is protected against the hunter; it is safe because it is too filthy to handle (109). His main claim is that her work lacks the the artistic substance to justify the indecency of her work. The critic relates that , now that he is in possession of the book, he can not decide what to do with it. He “would be very sorry to find a place for them on (his) bookshelves, and still more to promote their circulation by giving them away” (109). The fact that the works are a reissue of the works, and so there is at least some demand for them, is explained away as being the poor taste of the “morbid” and “artificial.” The critic is angry that during the process of reproduction, the aditors did not see fit to modify the text to make it less “indecent”, but then “realizes” that to take out everything indecent in the works would leave nothing to publish except the empty covers of the volume.

In 1863 views had become softer, if a bit patronizing. In an article titled “England’s First Lady Novelest” originally printed in the St. James Magazine another unnamed critic attempts to lower himself to toss a few complements the way of Behn. The critic says of her, “She worked hard; --she even knew what it was like to write for bread (354). It is interesting to note that the critic does not think that Behn knew what it was to write for bread, only what it was like. He states that some of her works have gained popularity, but only because her plays were too often inconsistent with her moral clime did they attract large numbers. Apparently Behn is to be relegated to the place of “shock artist.” For this critic it is not that she had anything important to say, it is only that she said it obscenely. He does gloss a few backhanded complements her way in his article. Of her novels, he states that “They were not long-continued stories, with mysterious plots slowly evolved; but short, smart, satirical sketches, or simple tales of rustic virtue rewarded.(356) So apparently the reader is to believe that her novels were simple tales of rustic virtue, that also contained wanton women in indecent situations. Perhaps now is a good place to look at some of the “simple tales” more closely.

In a poem titled “On a Juniper Tree, cut down to make Busks,” published in Poems on Several Occasions in 1684, Behn examines the question of social and sexual identity by adopting the persona of a tree. The speaker is thus able to view human activity completely objectively. The tree is anthropomorphic in that it thinks and “feels” as a human would, so it becomes nature personified. The dramatic situation of the poem is a tree who provides shelter for, and to some extent participates in, a sexual encounter between a man and a woman. Behn conflates the sexuality of the tree from the first lines.

Whilst happy I Triumphant stood, The Pride and Glory of

the Wood; / My Aromatick Boughs and Fruit, Did with

all other Trees dispute.(L1,2).

By reinforcing the obviously phallic nature of the tree, alongside the life-giving feminine properties of the fruit, Behn purposely makes the tree a hermaphroditic observer of the interactions to come. The reader is to infer that everything that follows within the poem will not be filtered through a male or female perspective, assuming of course that Behn is a master of negative capability. The triumphant declaration of the tree is understood fully with a brief understanding of the kind of tree that it is. The Juniper-tree is self sufficient: evergreen, growing without dependence of man and needing no special attention by the sun. In an article in Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900, Elizabeth Young states that while it seems that Behn “is conjuring a traditional masculine pastoral persona: the speaker is a being that understands its place in the natural world, that values itself, that cultivates a witty and urbane detachment from the countryside even as it revels in its position there,” the masculinity of the persona is complicated by the fact that it must relinquish its feminine, “virginal” seeds to another being reluctantly (Young 4).

The role of the tree is at first conventionally pastoral as well. Nature contrives with the lovers to accomplish the seduction of the woman. Behn takes this traditional role of nature and skews it. The tree leaves its detached position of the observer and becomes a participant in the lovers’ intercourse. The tree actually steals kisses from the female while the man is otherwise occupied in lines 7-9:

…And every aiding bough I bent. / So low, as sometimes had the

Bliss. To rob the Shepard of a Kiss, / Whilst he in Pleasures far

above the Sense of that Degree of Love: /Permitted every stealth

I made, unjealous of his rival shade.

The interaction between the pastoral setting and the lovers is personified here. The tree itself participates in, and derives enjoyment of the intercourse. In an absurd way the tree comes to represent the complete question of sexual identity by representing an hermaphroditic participant in a ménage-a-trois. The tree alternates between the erotic role as voyeur, and a physical participant in the act, such as in the line: “The shepardess my bark carest,/ Whilst he my root, loves pillow, kissed.” In the previously mentioned article cites that “the hermaphroditic imagery of the tree as love’s root and love’s pillow emphasizes and augments the eroticism of the poem and breaks down the traditional binary opposition of love (young 5). The tree goes on to lament the loss of the couples after they take their leave from the tree. The tree realizes that it will never have such a fulfilling experience agin, as it has had with the lovers and wishes instead for death. The female lover cuts the tree down, and it is turned into “Busks”. According to Kissing the Rod: An Anthology of Seventeenth Century Woman’s Verse, a busk is piece of wood or other material put down the front of a corset to support and shape it. The juniper tree takes the final, intimate position, of close association with the woman’s body. Part of the beauty of the woman would be determined by the shape that the busk provides, and it also is allowed access to the private body of the woman. Once again its role is sexually ambiguous in that it not only guards the genitalia of the woman, but is intimately in contact with it.

Not all of Behn’s poems adopted a sexually ambiguous persona in order to question the role of sexual identity. In some poems she simply wrote the poem from one genders perspective, and then rewrote it from another. This gives us a clear path of investigation into a precursor of gender studies offered by the author herself. The poem known generally as The Willing Mistress was first published with the title song in a volume of poetry titled Covent Garden Drolery, in 1672, in which Behn published four poems. While Behn is listed as one of the editors of the book, she was not listed as the author of her poems until a later edition (Duyfhuizen 64). The poem reads as a traditional pastoral seduction, with the exception that there is no vocal seduction. The speaker, a man, used only his “body language” to persuade the mistress into submission. The fact that the woman seems completely willing to accept his advances reads as more of a boast on the speakers part, than of a condemnation of a wonton woman. Of special interest is the speakers description of himself during the “seduction”. In the first line of the third and final stanzas, the speaker claims that his “…greedy eyes no ayds requir’d,/ To tell their amorous tale:/ . This is important because Behn rewrote the poem as part of a play titled The Dutch Lover the following year. In this later version the speaker is a woman, and she speaks the same line almost verbatim except for the replacement of “Charming” for greedy. Behn silently examines the question of the subjectivity of the speaker as it relates to perception (64). Also of interest is the fact that when the female speaker states that his eyes required no aid, the reader can rely on the information since she is speaking from her own experience. But, when the man makes the same statement, it is only inferred on his part that his eyes required no aid, since we are not given, nor does the speaker ask for, the woman’s response. This theme is played on several times in the play, for instance; when the The woman states that “ ‘Twas easy to prevail” in line 20 it is her eagerness and ready acceptance of the act that is read, but when the male persona speaks the same line it is glossed as merely so much machismo and boasting. It is interesting to note that while not much attention was given to the poem in its first edition, being originally unsigned by the poet, it was scorned for being too bawdy and immodest when the speaker’s gender was switched and the author was made known.

Behn’s work, or at least the representative work discussed herein, is far from the collection of simple tales that we were told to expect in 1863. Nor are they to unclean for us to even consider as at least one critic thought in 1872. They are complex investigations into the act of writing. They question gender roles and beg to be taken objectively without the gender of the poet or the speaker influencing the opinions of the reader. Behn has been called the first feminist writer, in that she was the first one to actually enter the “workforce” of literature and write on her own terms. To say that woman writers today owe her something is an understatement. In A Room of One's Own Virginia Woolf wrote that all women should "let flowers fall upon the tomb of Aphra Behn, for it was she who earned them the right to speak their minds."

Behn, Aphra, “On a Juniper Tree, Cit Down to make Busks.” In The Works of Aphra Behn, ed. Montague Summers, 6 vols. New York, Phaeton, 1967.

Behn, Aphra, “The Dutch Lover” In The Works of Aphra Behn, ed. Montague Summers, 6 vols. New York, Phaeton, 1967.

Duyfhuizen, Bernard. “That Which I Dare not Name”. ELH, vol. 57, no.1 (Spring 1991), 63-82.

England’s First Lady Novelist.” St. James Magazine, Vol. VII, April-July, 1863,pp351-58. Reprinted in Literature Criticism from 1400-1800, vol. 1

Greer, Gerome et al. Kissing the Rod: An Anthology of Seventeenth Century Woman’s Verse,I New York, Farrar Straus Giroux, 1988.

“Literary Garbage.” The Saturday Review, London Vol.33, No. 848, January 27, 1872. pp. 109/10. Reprinted in Literature Criticism from 1400-1800.

Young, Elizabeth. “ Aphra Behn, Gender, and Pastoral.” Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900, Vol. 33, No. 3 (Summer 1993), 523-545.