The house, the city, and the colony in the works of Aphra Behn: Gendered spaces and the freedoms and dangers they afford

Abstract

In Behn’s works the house affords no security for women, as men may force their way in, or relatives collude in the sexual violation of women. However, men, too, are threatened and cuckolded in their own houses. Not even convents are safe spaces for either sex. Outdoor spaces promise freedom from supervision but harbor threats to both women’s and men’s honor. The Whig inhabitants of the City of London are ridiculed, but female characters dabbling in politics are no more likeable, though Behn sympathizes with women claiming a right to public visibility. The racialized colonial space offers upward social mobility to Englishmen and –women, and to the latter also the freedom to partake in pastimes and occupations traditionally connoted as male.