'All women together ought to let flowers fall upon the tomb of Aphra Behn'

[douqi]

In university I took a course on twentieth century women's literature in English. One of the books we read for that was Virginia Woolf's A Room of Her Own. In it, as part of constructing a critical historical account of women's writing in England, Woolf discusses the Restoration era writer Aphra Behn, one of the first women to earn her living by writing professionally.

At the time, our lecturer gave us a brief autobiographical sketch of Aphra Behn to contextualise the reference. What he did not tell us was that she wrote at least one genderfucked lesbian poem. Or that she may have been bi. I had to discover that for myself at my current great age. Thanks, Malaysian higher education.

Comments

[meikuree]

if someone made a venn diagram of historical women writers and lesbian relationships…

this has the same energy as schools that teach Emily Dickinson while leaving out her letters to Susan Gilbert.

somewhat similar but not, a friend studying English Lit in uni once told me about his thesis on Michael Field, the pseudonym for a pair of lesbian lovers who wrote poetry together. what he left out (understandably) was that they were also aunt and niece. 🙀❗️ their Wikipedia page also buries the lede.

[douqi]

I enjoy occasionally shocking people with the Michael Field fact.

I think it would be less bizarre if our lecturer hadn't been a South African man with self-consciously anarchic vibes who was clearly coming onto the course with the aim of 'shaking up' a group of Malaysian girls he perceived as being demure and sheltered. He also managed to avoid mentioning Vita Sackville-West, soomehow.

[lunarriviera]

oh my god Behn was SUCH a weirdo. not only was she a SPY ("Agent 160"!) but she lied all over the place about her life so we hardly know anything. also there was not only a 3-volume novel about sibling incest (well, he's her brother-in-law, but it was still shocking at the time) and a bizarre poem about male impotence. the more you find out about her, the more completely agog you become—

[douqi]

I was extremely intrigued by the sibling incest novel! I probably should start looking more into stuff from the Restoration Era and prior.

[halfcactus]

OOooo the poem is so good? Such vibes! I'm glad it found its way to you eventually!

[douqi]

I'm pleased but it also reminded me how woefully under-read I am!

[skuzzybunny]

Amazing find- i enjoyed reading through the poem, i know not much about either of them besides the one or two Woolf books I have read but for whatever reason (possibly 3rd hand socmed ramblings) I assumed inconsequentially there was something 🌈 there. Glad to see more explicit links

[douqi]

There is a surprising (at least to me initially) amount of lesbianism in early modern stuff, and (obviously less surprisingly) in modernist stuff (a female doctor even wrote RPF of theLadies of Llangollen, which has been recently reprinted in a nice bright pink volume). It's less prominent in Victorian literature (I think — still have a lot of reading to do), but lesbians do still show up here and there, and there's even a Welsh novel with a lesbian main character.