It's been quite a while since we had a Heroine of the Weekend post here! I love it, since I can take a deeper look at historical women I admire, and I can't believe we haven't featured Aphra Behn before. Her birthday was July 10, 1640, in Canterbury, and she was s fascinating (if somewhat enigmatic character!), a playwright, poet, translator, spy. She was one the first English women to earn her living with her writing, and was one of the most popular playwrights of the golden age of Restoration theater.
"All women together ought to let flowers fall upon the tomb of Aphra Behn..." Virginia Woolf
Behn's early life was quite obscure. Her father was (maybe) a barber, she was maybe engaged to a man named John Halse in 1657, she maybe traveled to Surinam. It's clear she was very intelligent, but unclear how she was educated. She married a man named Johan Behn (possibly Dutch or German) in 1664, but he soon died or they were separated soon after.
She was a staunch supporter of the Stuarts, attached to their court by 1666 (refusing to write a welcome poem to William III after the Glorious Revolution), and was sent as a spy to Antwerp by Charles II during the Second Anglo-Dutch War. Her code name was Astrea It was not financially rewarding, though, and she may have been sent to debtors' prison after her return (a warrant was issued for her arrest, but it's unclear if it was served). She started writing plays, hoping to capitalize on the craze for newly reopened theaters.
Her first play, a tragi-romance called The Forc'd Marriage, was performed by the Duke's Men in September 1670, and was a moderate success, but after her third play failed she falls off the record for a few years before returning to write comedies and poetry, as well as translating. Her most popular play, The Rover (still her most performed work today) debuted in 1676-77, and thereafter she became one of the best-known playwrights in England until her death in 1689. Her success led to frequent attacks. She was attacked for her private life (she had a long liaison with John Hoyle, a bisexual lawyer) and the morality of her plays, and she was accused of plagiarising The Rover. In the preface to Sir Patient Fancy she argued that she was being singled out because she was a woman, while male playwrights were free to live the most scandalous lives and write whatever plays they wanted.
(You can visit her tomb in Westminster Abbey, as I once did!)
Some good sources on her life:
Janet Todd, The Secret Life of Aphra Behn (1997)
Vita Sackville-West, Aphra Behn: The Incomparable Astrea (1927)
Germaine Greer, Slip-Shod Sibyls (1995)
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