Essay Questions

Aphra Behn positions herself as a "woman's woman". How does this come out in her writings?

In Selinda and Cloris, Behn unites two women in opposition of a philandering male lover. When Cloris tells Selinda to be wary of her former lover, Alexis, because he has betrayed her and will likely betray the next woman he is involved with as well. Rather than shooting the messenger, Selinda unites with Cloris. Thomen praise each other for their intelligence and wit, and vow to maintain their friendship, and not allow a man to come between them.

In Lady Morland at Tunbride, Behn herself is the speaker in the poem, and she tells her friend Carola that even though they are rivals for the same man, she remains an admirer of hers and cares very much about her. Because of their mutually caring relationship, she feels comfortable telling her that taking Behn's lover would not be beneficial to her, because he is too experienced, and a little jaded with love. Carola deserves someone for whom love and sex are newer, someone who is more innocent and less jaded. She tells Carola she needs a virgin who has never looked at anyone with love before, and that she needs someone who has a soul "as Great as you are Fair."

There are two different ways of interpreting The Disappointment. Which do you think Behn intends?

Behn is a champion of women and is also aware of the way in which men take what they want from women without asking. For this reason, it seems likely that she wrote the poem with every intention of it being interpreted as a poem about a rape, but was also aware that this was an extremely controversial subject, and so disguised the poem's events with an easily interpreted double meaning.

Another reason for assuming that her intention was for the poem to be interpreted as the story of a rape is that for the first thirteen stanzas, the story is told in the third person. In the last verse this changes abruptly, and the speaker identifies with Cloris and ends the poem understanding fully the "Nymph's resentment" which, because she is a woman, she can "well imagine". Behn gives the poem a specifically female perspective with this last verse, identifying not with the traditionally perceived victim, Lysander, but with Cloris.

Lastly, despite the fact that Behn regularly acknowledges in her poems that men can be philanderers and abuses of women's hearts, she generally presents love and sexual attraction as something that is positive and light-hearted. This is the only poem in which what is essentially love is seen to degenerate into something else that is darker somehow than even the usual level of lovesickness experienced by a jilted lover.