Aphra Behn’s “jour-ney from popularity to obscurity,”7 continued well into the twentieth century until there came Montague Summers to edit her work in 1915 to open the door for many others to read them and thus to write about her life and literature.8

She was perhaps, the first profess-ional woman writer to live by her pen4 With her beginnings, she was the sole recepient of early biographical and critical atttention.5 Jane Spencer writes: “the reputation of Aphra Behn’s pen certainly was great at the time that Oroonoko was written.”6 However, strangely enough, afterwards, critical studies ignored her literary production. Behn sets an axample to be followed by other women novelists to write in a new field and to fight against strongly built unjust politico-socio-economic institution.Īphra Johnson Behn (1640-1689), known as Aphra or Afra Behn,3 was an English woman writer from the Restora-tion period (1640-1684). Oroonoko is anti-slavery novel in which Mrs. Though, Behn’s work was immature for woman’s legal rights and social position, it is still true that it represents a social concern and a courageous stand in the history of woman’s literary writing her writing inspired many literary imitations afterwards.

Woolf writes: “Let flowers fall upon the tomb of Aphra Behn.”2 This statement reflects a celebration of, and an attribute to Aphra Behn as a pioneer woman writer. She remembers Aphra Behn and in a frank declaration, she pays homage to her as a brave woman writer who has been deprived of a veneration she deserves, for a long time. It discusses love and freedom as tools of anti-colonialism versus slavery, as a politico-socio-economic tool of colonialism.Įarly in the twentieth century, Virginia Woolf, an Eng-lish woman, novelist, and feminist writer of considerable amo-unt of serious literary production, and good reputation, shows a good gesture for Aphra Behn. This paper is a study of anti-colonialsim versus colonialism in Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko or, The Royal Slave (1688). The Sunday TelegraphĪphra Behn’s novel confronts the ownership of Africa by the British, the ownership of American land by European colonialists, and the ownership of women by men.

Aphra behn the royal slave