She produced Orinda as evidence that women could be good poets, and she said quaintly of Alexander the Great:
Nor will it from his Conquests derogate,
A Female Pen his Acts did celebrate.
There is nothing diffident about the attitude of Aphra Behn, the tough, audacious, fearless young widow who forced her way to dramatic success under the Restoration, and who was the first of our professional women writers. She has been rather unfairly treated by historians. It is true that her plays are as gross, in subject and speech, as any of her time: possibly her coarseness was the defect of the quality which enabled her to fight her lone hand in the Grub Street of the day. But there is a hearty straightforwardness about her which is lacking in some of the men of the Restoration, she had a gift for broad, strong characterization, she was honest, rough, kind, affectionate, not at all cynical, and she wrote English of an Elizabethan lustiness. She did not apologize, she counter-attacked. She was not allowed to forget her sex but she soundly thumped those who reminded her that her plays and poems were ‘writ by a woman’. Here is a passage from the Epistle to the Reader which introduces The Dutch Lover:
Indeed that day ’twas acted first, there comes me into the Pit, a long lither, phlegmatick, white, ill-favour’d wretched Fop, an officer in Masquerade newly transported with a Scarf and Feather out of France, a sorry Animal that has nought else to shield it from the uttermost contempt of all Mankind, but that respect which we afford to Rats and Toads, which though we do not well allow to live, yet when considered as parts of God’s Creation, we make honourable mention of them. A thing, Reader—but no more of such a Smelt: This thing, I tell ye, opening that which serves it for a mouth, out issued such a noise as this to those that sate about it, that they were to expect a usefull Play, God damn him, for it was a woman’s.... I would not for a world be taken arguing with such a propertie as this; but if I thought there were a man of such tolerable parts, who could upon mature deliberation distinguish well his right hand from his left, and justly state the difference between the number of sixteen and two, yet had this prejudice upon him; I would take a little pains to make him know how much he errs. For waving the examination why women having equal education with men, were not as capable of knowledge, of whatsoever sort as well as they: I’ll only say as I have to such and before, that Plays have no great room for that which is men’s great advantage over women, that is Learning; we all know that the immortal Shakespeare’s Plays (who was not guilty of much more of this than often falls to women’s share) have better pleas’d the World than Johnson’s works, though by the way ’tis said the Benjamin was no such Rabbi neither, for I am inform’d that his Learning was but Grammar high (sufficient indeed to rob poor Salust of his best orations); and it hath been observ’d that they are apt to admire him most confoundedly, who have just such a scantling of it as he had.... Then for their musty rules of Unity, and God knows what besides, if they meant anything, they are enough intelligible and as practicable by a woman.
This was in 1673. Forty years afterwards we get a side-light from the preface to Mary Monk’s poems, written after her death by her father Lord Molesworth. The preface takes the form of a dedication (fifty pages) to Carolina, Princess of Wales, who is greeted with this ambiguous salutation: ‘The true value, you have for Liberty, is so remarkable, that one wou’d wonder where your Royal Highness (who has been bred up in a part of Europe, but slenderly furnish’d with just notions of that great Blessing) cou’d have acquired it’. Lord Molesworth repeats with approval charges recently made against women—this was two hundred years ago and on the verge of the eighteenth century!
That the Natural Sweetness and Modesty which so well became their Sex, and so much recommended them to the Love and Esteem of the Men is (by many) exchanged for a Careless Indecent, Masculine Air [imitating] the Rakeish, Milder sort of Gentlemen in the Excess in Love of Gaming, Snuff-Taking, Habit, and a Modish Neglect of their Husbands, Children and Families.
As for his daughter’s verses, of the tone of which he is proud, he says affectingly:
We found most of them in her Scrittore after her death, written with her own Hand, little expecting, and as little desiring, the Publick shou’d have any Opportunity of either Applauding or Condemning them.
It might be possible to find some women writers of the age to whom Lord Molesworth’s strictures might be held, in part, to apply: Mrs. Centlivre, De la Rivière Manly, and Lady Mary Montagu. But it gives us a shock to hear them applied to the generality of early Georgian women, and they certainly would not apply to the poetesses (with whom we are specially concerned) of the rest of the century. Most of them were extremely severe and models of propriety, proud to display what learning they really had, but studious to exhibit a decorous modesty about publication.