In her book A Room of One’s Own, Virginia Woolf praises her and says “All women together ought to let flowers fall upon the tomb of Aphra Behn, for it was she who earned them the right to speak their minds.” Behn depicts the correlation between racial and gender oppression, female subjectivity, and female political and sexual agency in her writings and her consideration of gender and frank expression of sexuality made her as a target for male author’s critiques. Her later works were Oroonoko (1688) and The Widow Ranter (1689) which emphasized on political pragmatism. A poem on Several Occasions (1684) was a poem by her that investigates the sexual relationship between men and women in pastoral setting. Her first play was a successful tragicomedy in the name of The Forced Marriage (1670), following with The Dutch Lover (1673) which was not received well Abdelazar (1676) and The Rover (1677) was the other appreciated plays by Behn, which were performed before Charles II. Behn was a well-educated person and access to high-ranking officials in the court of Charles II, may access a higher-class status, and is one of pioneer women who earn her live through authorship and her works were under a great influence of William Shakespeare. She was, as inserted in The Age of Milton, “The first recognized professional woman writer in English, Behn was popular during her career, and her plays and poems represented the Restoration ideals of political expediency and sexual frankness” (25). Here we have the geometrical foundation of representation: a fetishist subject is required to cut out the tableau.Īphra Behn, born on Jand died on April 16, 1689, was one of the main playwrights, poets, and fictionists of Restoration era. In the theater things are always seen from somewhere. Keywords: oroonoko narrator analysis, oroonoko behn analysis

Oroonoko novel