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Admired and Understood: The Poetry of Aphra Behn by M. L. Stapleton (review) - The Scriblerian and the Kit-Cats
- The Scriblerian and the Kit-Cats
- Volume 40, Numbers 1-2, Autumn 2007-2008
- pp. 172-173
- 10.1353/scb.2007.0079
- Review
- Additional Information
- Purchase/rental options available:
172 satire published at a time when satires were usually written by and for men. It is also an advice book, a handbook of anti-etiquette, and an energetic comedy of manners.’’ All these assertions— and assertions far outweigh demonstrations —are padded and repadded in 45 ingeniously tormenting pages. The expected conclusion comes at the beginning of the discussion: ‘‘Her work seems animated less by the impulse to expose women’s frailties than to lay bare the humourless and patronizing double standards which underpinned many contemporary assumptions about femininity.’’ In actuality, the work seems designed to expose sadistic qualities in human beings that emerge in situations of authority and power—that gothic fiction and the Marquis de Sade loom on the horizon hardly seems a mere accident of history. But sadism is neither exclusively male nor female, and while we might well agree that Collier ‘‘anticipates the fierce wit and social realism’’ of Burney and Austen, she fades in comparison. Ms. Craik’s tortured assertions and ingenious commonplaces speak for themselves: ‘‘Collier’s subject . . . is that women need more advice about how to torment others because of their relative powerlessness at home’’; ‘‘The Art explores the possibility that the everyday lives of all members of a household may improve if they treat one another with mutual respect’’; ‘‘Swift satirized proud, vain women in ‘A Beautiful Young Nymph Going to Bed’ where the superficially polished Corinna returns home from London’s red-light district . . . to pluck off her wig . . .’’ (Did Swift write two poems with the same title, one about a pitiful, exploited, abused, and downtrodden whore, the other about a ‘‘proud, vain woman’’?); and, finally, ‘‘Whereas a frivolous reader will merely enjoy Collier’s wit, mistaking her voice for those of the tormentors she lampoons , a more sympathetic reader will register her subtle and sometimes poignant defence of society’s most vulnerable groups.’’ Count me, I suppose, among the frivolous—although to Ms. Craik’s credit, her annotations are useful , her text seems accurate (although modernized perhaps more than was wise; the Broadview edition is preferable in this regard), and except for dating Pamela in 1749, and her odd usage, several times, of ‘‘unpick’’ where one suspects she meant, ‘‘unpack,’’ her facts and her writing are accurate. Melvyn New University of Florida M. L. STAPLETON. Admired and Understood : The Poetry of Aphra Behn. Newark : Delaware, 2004. Pp. 247. $49.50. The basic assertion of this study is that Behn aimed to be ‘‘admired and understood ,’’ particularly in her verse collection entitled Poems upon Several Occasions, published in 1684. Mr. Stapleton demonstrates the way Behn fashioned her poetic sensibility in conversation with other poets—particularly, Cowley, Creech, and Rochester. Drawing our attention to Behn’s creative engagement with the major philosophers and poets of her time is his most important contribution. The book provides at least three important correctives to received wisdom. Behn has been regarded as an important playwright, a significant novelist, and an incidental poet. Mr. Stapleton convincingly argues that Behn took most care with self-presentation and authorial subjectivity in her poetry. 173 If she relied on male models of poetic expression, it was less in the interest of imitation than in pursuit of education. Second, Mr. Stapleton makes a convincing case for the just esteem in which Cowley was held by his contemporaries , particularly for his Pindaric odes. Behn ‘‘studied Cowley to learn how the ancient Greek ode worked,’’ and Cowley’s experimentation and innovation with the form encouraged her to make the ode, rather than the less flexible heroic couplet, her favored vehicle of poetic expression. Cowley taught her, in Mr. Stapleton’s words, to ‘‘un-corset her verses.’’ Finally, in his discussion of Behn’s intellectual and personal reactions to Creech (and through him Theocritus, Horace, and Lucretius) and Rochester, Mr. Stapleton deepens our understanding of British libertinism and its philosophical seriousness . He points out that Behn ‘‘knew well that for a woman in Carolean culture to write The Rover or ‘The Disappointment ’ was the act of a libertine,’’ but he also emphasizes Behn’s deep engagement through Creech with the philosophy of Lucretius, and her equally considered judgment regarding Rochester ’s ‘‘corrosive’’ brand of...