Last years

In 1688, in the year before her death, she published A Discovery of New Worlds, a translation of a French popularisation of astronomy, Entretiens sur la pluralité des mondes, by Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle, written as a novel in a form similar to her own work, but with her new, religiously oriented preface.

In all she would write and stage 19 plays, contribute to more, and become one of the first prolific, high-profile female dramatists in Britain. During the 1670s and 1680s she was one of the most productive playwrights in Britain, second only to Poet Laureate John Dryden.

In her last four years, Behn's health began to fail, beset by poverty and debt, but she continued to write ferociously, though it became increasingly hard for her to hold a pen. In her final days, she wrote the translation of the final book of Abraham Cowley’s Six Books of Plants. She died on 16 April 1689, and was buried in the East Cloister Westminster Abbey. The inscription on her tombstone reads: "Here lies a Proof that Wit can never be Defence enough against Mortality." She was quoted as stating that she had led a "life dedicated to pleasure and poetry."

Behn was mocked for her bawdy works and for writing in a masculine style, but she did also have widespread support. Authors such as Dryden, Thomas Otway, Nahum Tate, Jacob Tonson, Nathaniel Lee andThomas Creech celebrated her work.

Behn is now regarded as a key dramatist of the seventeenth-century theatre, and her prose work is critically acknowledged as having been important to the development of the English novel. She is perhaps best known to modern audiences for her short novel Oroonoko (1688), the tale of an enslaved African prince. It is notable for its exploration of slavery, race, and gender.

Behn was immensely prolific, adapting plays, writing fiction and poetry, and translating works from French and Latin. She caused scandal in some of her chosen subject matter, often alluding to sexual desire. She was aware, and stated that, the works would not have caused problems if they had been written by a man. Behn's work frequently takes homoerotic themes, featuring same-sex love between men. One of her best known poems, "The Disappointment", is the story of a sexual encounter told from a woman's point of view that may be interpreted as a work about male impotence.

Virginia Woolf wrote, in A Room of One's Own:

All women together, ought to let flowers fall upon the grave of Aphra Behn... for it was she who earned them the right to speak their minds... Behn proved that money could be made by writing at the sacrifice, perhaps, of certain agreeable qualities; and so by degrees writing became not merely a sign of folly and a distracted mind but was of practical importance.

Following the death of Behn, new female dramatists such as 'Ariadne', Delarivier Manley, Mary Fix, Susanna Centlivre and Catherine Trotteracknowledged Behn as their most vital predecessor, who opened up public space for women writers. During the 19th century, both the writer and her works were ignored or dismissed as indecent. Victorian-era novelist and critic Julia Kavanagh wrote that, "the disgrace of Aphra Behn is that, instead of raising man to woman's moral standard, [she] sank woman to the level of man's coarseness". Nineteenth century commentator John Doranwrote that her work wallowed in the moral morass.

In the 20th century, however, Behn's fame underwent a revival. Montague Summers,an author of scholarly works on the English drama of the 17th century, published a six-volume collection of her work, in hopes of rehabilitating her reputation. Felix Schelling wrote in The Cambridge History of English Literature, that she was "a very gifted woman, compelled to write for bread in an age in which literature... catered habitually to the lowest and most depraved of human inclinations," and that, "Her success depended upon her ability to write like a man." Edmund Gosse remarked that she was, "...the George Sand of the Restoration".

Behn is now regarded as a key English playwright and a major figure in Restoration theatre. George Woodcock regarded Behn as an important influence on the development of the novel, stating "It is as a founder of the school of realistic novel-writing that Mrs. Behn is perhaps most important." Authors such as Janet Todd detail Behn's unique exploration of race, gender and sexual agency. However, criticHarold Bloom calls Behn a "fourth-rate playwright" and cites the current appearance of her work as set texts in American schools as a case of "dumbing down."

Todd argues that, in addition to patriarchal prejudice, Behn suffered for her dismissal of any liberal agenda. Going against the tide of the times, she believed in the divine right of kings and aristocratic hierarchies. Todd writes that Behn was contemptuous of democracy and the common man in the street, not expressly interested in human rights — for women or slaves or anyone else — and that, because she did not support any kind of a liberal agenda, her causes were not cheered by the progressives. She does not easily fit into any mould of proto-feminism. She had come into adulthood, following the English Civil War, under harsh the puritan rule of the Restoration, and regarded political populism as the sign of moral collapse and the triumph of venality.

Ironically, the current revival of her reputation rides on the work Oroonoko (1668), a story that is taken to promote modern, progressive views on gender, race and class. Todd maintains that the fiction has been co-opted by modern interests and that such views are not views that Behn clearly expressed. Her reputation is not helped by the fact that almost nothing is known of her first 27 years; and while she was a pioneer, she also faced debt for much of her life and was a propagandist and writer for hire. She was ambitious, desiring fame and literary prestige, which for a woman of the time and in times since, is often regarded as suspect.

Works

Plays

The Forced Marriage (1670)

The Amorous Prince (1671)

The Dutch Lover (1673)

Abdelazer (1676)

The Town Fop (1676)

The Rover, Part 1 (1677) and Part 2 (1681)

Sir Patient Fancy (1678)

The Feigned Courtesans (1679)

The Young King (1679)

The False Count (1681)