Aphra Behn, a remarkable author who “‘…earned… [women]…the right to speak their minds’”, who was not afraid to speak her mind herself as evident in her works, and was a writer that aided in paving the way for women’s rights through the literature world (The Norton Anthology 2308). A majority of Behn’s works serve to further the voice of women in the oppressed society in which they were living in and this work being examined is no exception to this. The Disappointment serves as a perfect satiric companion to John Wilmot’s satire The Imperfect Enjoyment, in which instead of the sympathy being placed on the “unfortunate” man who cannot perform, the consideration is retained on the woman’s feelings during this situation instead. This may not seem awe-inspiring, but for a time period when a gender whose side in not often portrayed, this is very significant. In the text, Behn is acting as a voice for the women of that era. She is giving women a platform to stand on to push against this male dominated society; thus providing power for the unheard. By using specific diction, meter, and so forth Behn’s work, The Disappointment, is a vessel in which she demonstrates and satires the patriarchal dominance over women in society. The creative use of diction that Behn puts forth in her work is extremely capturing to the reader. Furthermore, it brings forth another layer to observe in this work. When examining the last stanza, words such as bewitching, fury, and damned leap off the page. Examine first the word bewitching. This word in itself provides a negative connotation within the reader. Behn realized this and the word was not utilized unintentionally. Here Behn emphasized how during this time period the perspective of women consisted of... ... middle of paper ... ...er emphasize this. The situation being described is oftentimes just one that the man’s side of the story is portrayed, by offering a perspective that displays that women are actually people and have feelings also, Behn is creating a perspective that is frequently ignored. By creating a companion text to John Wilmot’s The Imperfect Enjoyment, Behn is placing a spotlight one the fact that man is not the only one with feelings to be taken into consideration, there are always two sides to a story and both must be heeded instead of one being tossed aside. Works Cited Behn, Aphra. “The Disappointment.” The Norton Anthology: English Literature. Ninth Edition. Stephen Greenblatt, eds. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2012. 2313. Print. The Norton Anthology: English Literature. Ninth Edition. Stephen Greenblatt, eds. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2012. 2308. Print.
Zeitz, Lisa M. and Thoms, Peter. “Power, Gender and Identity in Aphra Behn’s ‘The Disappointment’.” Restoration and Eighteenth Century. Spec. issue of Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900 37.3 (1997) : 501-16. JSTOR. Web. 10 Feb 2011.
Accordingly, I decided the purposes behind women 's resistance neither renamed sexual introduction parts nor overcame money related dependence. I recalled why their yearning for the trappings of progression could darken into a self-compelling consumerism. I evaluated how a conviction arrangement of feeling could end in sexual danger or a married woman 's troublesome twofold day. None of that, regardless, ought to cloud an era 's legacy. I comprehend prerequisites for a standard of female open work, another style of sexual expressiveness, the area of women into open space and political fights previously cornered by men all these pushed against ordinary restrictions even as they made new susceptibilities.
Abrams, M. H., ed. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. Vol I. 5th Ed. New York: W.W. Norton, 1986.
Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina; Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind; Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire. Upon first glance, these classics of literary legend appear to have nothing in common. However, looking closer, one concept unites these three works of art. At the center of each story stands a woman--an authentically portrayed woman. A woman with strengths, flaws, desires, memories, hopes, and dreams. Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, Mitchell’s Scarlett O’Hara, and Williams’ Blanche DuBois are beautiful, intelligent, sophisticated women: strong yet fragile, brazen yet subtle, carnal yet pure. Surviving literature that depicts women in such a realistic and moving fashion is still very rare today, and each piece of that unique genre must be treasured. But unlike those singular works, there lived one man who built a career of writing novels that explored the complex psyches of women. Somehow, with each novel, this author’s mind and heart act as a telescope gazing into an unforgettable portrait of a lady. Through the central female characters in his novels Lady Chatterley’s Lover and Sons and Lovers, D.H. Lawrence illuminates dimensions of a woman’s soul not often explored in literature.
Born in 1640, Aphra Behn broke gender stereotypes when she undertook a thrilling (if unrewarded) life as a spy for the Crown, but it was her scandalous career as an author which truly achieved many firsts for women. She was the first woman to support hereself financially by solely relying on the profession of writing, and many readers argue that Oroonoko--her passionate tale about the institution of slavery--was the first English novel. She was certainly one of the first female authors to write candidly about sexuality: in fact, she both broke new ground and challenged conceptions of patriarchal power when she wrote about women's empowerment through sexuality. In her poems "The Willing Mistress" (from her play The Dutch Lover, 1673) and "The Disappointment" (1680), Behn creates situations of bold sexual mischief in which female characters are aware of, comfortable with, and even thrive off their sexuality.
Greenblatt, Stephen, Deidre Lynch, and Jack Stillinger. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. New York: W.W. Norton, 2012. Print.
Pearson, Jacqueline, "Gender and Narrative in Behn's Fiction" in Janet Todd, ed., Aphra Behn (New York, 1999).
The Norton Anthology of English Literature, Volume 1c. New York: W.W. Norton & Co, 2006. Print. The.
Abrams, M.H., et al. ed. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. 6th ed. 2 Vols. New York: Norton, 1993.
Damrosch, David, et al., ed. The Longman Anthology of British Literature: Vol. B. Compact ed. New York: Longman - Addison Wesley Longman, 2000.
The Norton Anthology of English Literature. Eds. M. H. Abrams and Stephen Greenblatt. 7th ed. 2 vols. New York: Norton, 2000. 1:1041-42.
In both Alice Walker’s “The Color Purple” and Kate Chopin’s “The Awakening”, we see that there are two types of women who arise from the demands of these expectations. The first is the obedient woman, the one who has buckled and succumbed to become an empty, emotionless shell. In men’s eyes, this type of woman was a sort of “angel” perfect in that she did and acted exactly as what was expected of her. The second type of woman is the “rebel”, the woman who is willing to fight in order to keep her creativity and passion. Patriarchal silencing inspires a bond between those women who are forced into submission and/or those who are too submissive to maintain their individuality, and those women who are able and willing to fight for the ability to be unique.
This creates a despair, of hopelessness and of downheartedness. The woman, on multiple occasions, wrote down, “And what can one do?” This lets the reader know that women as a whole were very oppressed in ...
113- The Norton Anthology of English Literature. 6th ed. of the book. Vol.
Aphra Behn left a legacy of being not only a complex and enigmatic woman, but a poet, a playwright, a writer, a novelist, and a spy. A commoner who blended with the royalty and revolted against the societal norms with her lewd yet cunning writings, she exhibited the influence of more than just a writer of her time period and left her mark in the canon of English literature by creating her own genre of amatory. She was a feminist, an adventurist, an abolitionist and a civil rights advocate; she encompassed a figure of brilliance and intrigue and the writings she left behind from the seventeenth century only reiterate her ideology. An example of such is the short novel Oroonoko written in 1688 that explores slavery and the impact of civilization all intertwined into a tragic love story. Her works and the influences they cast prove Behn to be a dramatist worthy of the ranks of other famous British writers in this time period.