Skip to main content

The Jury's Still Out on Aphra Behn

 Between Oroonoko and The Fair Jilt, I'm entirely puzzled by Aphra Behn as an author. In an entirely Swiftian manner, I simply cannot decipher if her writing is meant to be a commentary on unsatisfactory happenings or if she is actually racist and sexist. If you've read my previous blog on Behn, I further explained this situation in relation to The Fair Jilt and the different lenses it can be viewed through. Where Oroonoko is concerned, she could either be explaining the issue of the noble savage concept or genuinely have a type of savior complex by inserting herself into the narrative and humanizing a brutal story. I would be very interested to read different analyses of her works to see if there is an answer hiding in all of this.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Fair Jilt: Feminism or Misogyny?

 Aphra Behn's The Fair Jilt details young, beautiful Miranda's exploits as she ruins people around her to fit her fancy. At the beginning of the work, Miranda is portrayed as a frivolous girl with simply far too many options to settle down. Cupid supposedly curses her to fall in love with someone she simply cannot have as a punishment. However, this "punishment" barely phases her. She puts in some work and is still kindly denied, so she ruins Henrick's life. He remains composed and does not even attempt to rectify is wrongful imprisonment. When Van Brune is put to death because of her, he is apologetic for failing his assassination rather than devastated that he was about to die. No matter what Miranda did, Prince Tarquin stayed at her side. Miranda was constantly in the wrong, and no one ever seemed to hold it against her. Was she entirely wrong, though? Truthfully, she did not force anyone's fate except for the friar. Was she a ruthless gold digger or a fem...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Mini Wheats

Hello, class! I hope that this finds you well, if it finds you at all, that is. I just wanted to take a moment to give you all a review on our time in this class. No, I will not be discussing course content, but would you honestly expect anything else? I will now proceed to detail some of my favorite moments of our time together. Firstly, remember how crazy we all got fighting over a single word in "Rockabye Baby"? And our dramatic readings were to die for. We had a short-lived panic when we realized we all had different versions of the textbook. We sat around the big table for the first time and bonded over crickets, kelp, and small dogs in Yalta. We bonded even more when a few of the nobler student *hem hem* had some very intelligent things to say about The Princess Diaries . We were all so sad when Walter left for D.C. and so excited/begrudged when he fixed the projector. We fawned over Austin's dance video. Aubrey drank probably a million iced coffees. Dr. Reed, prefe...
3 comments
Read more

Cotton-Eyed Bartleby

Herman Melville's "Bartleby the Scrivener" is secretly about Cotton-Eyed Joe. We often talk about how poems resemble songs, so why can't the plots of short stories do the same? In the case of "Bartleby", I think that he as a person can easily be likened to our dear old pal CE Joe. We don't know where he came from, we don't know where he went (in the biblical sense). He has an air of mystery about him. He messes with the narrator's personal life. I know that this is silly, but I think it's fun to relate things that you don't necessarily enjoy to things that you do. If anyone can think of other parallels between the two, please feel free to comment them below.
Post a Comment
Read more