Aphra Behn
While you
may have been uncertain or afraid to explore female intimacy in the past,
The Secret Society of English Gentlewomen (with a little help from Aphra Behn)
can provide information to those who are interested. We feel that it's necessay
to observe and understand female bonds in order for us to form our own. In
the past, such an understanding has been denied us, as society has prevented
us from doing so by minimalizing the importance of female relationships and
keeping them hidden from the public eye. Through the works of Aphra Behn,
we begin to see such relationships written about openly and honestly. While
the rest of society fears
the
sexualized female relationship,
Aphra Behn explores it in her poem, 'To the Fair Clarinda, who made love to
me, imagin'd
more than woman." In this poem, Behn "offers one of the few instances
in which a women writer openly depicts female-female desire." [8]Unlike
Manley, however, she
does not use the sexualized model to demonstrate the influence of female relationships
on society and politics. Instead, she uses it to explore the sexual relationships
that continue to exist between women, despite society's attempts to ignore
or eradicate them. Although it may appear that her poem is using cliches regarding
lesbian relations, " . . .Behn invokes these cultural stereotypes of
lesbian desire, she does not do so uncritically. As she conjures the ways
in which libertine literature imagined women might make love, she also intimates
that these images are cultural constructs, the stuff of erotic fantasy, especially
of male fantasies about women." [9]
Therefore, she not only presents themes of lesbian desire, but exposes the hypocrisy of men who secretly fantasize about the very lesbian relationships that they are working to destroy. More importantly, her poem and the themes it presents demonstrate to you, British Gentlewomen, that female desire and intimacy is alive and well in modern society. Although your husbands may have tried to hide it from you (for fear you might leave them and your children in search of female fullfillment), through Behn's poem its clear to see how feminine desire is a bond that will not be broken.
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