Re-crafting the heroic, constructing a female hero: Margaret Cavendish and Aphra Behn
The development of women’s writing in English throughout the seventeenth century is quite extraordinary. In the field of drama, women participated not only as spectators or readers, but more and more as patronesses, as playwrights, and later on as actresses and even as managers. Yet some dramatic fo...
| Autor: | |
|---|---|
| Tipo de recurso: | artículo |
| Fecha de publicación: | 2007 |
| País: | España |
| Institución: | Universidad de Huelva (UHU) |
| Repositorio: | Arias Montano. Repositorio Institucional de la Universidad de Huelva |
| Idioma: | inglés |
| OAI Identifier: | oai:ariasmontano.uhu.es:10272/7621 |
| Acceso en línea: | http://hdl.handle.net/10272/7621 |
| Access Level: | acceso abierto |
| Palabra clave: | Literatura inglesa Literatura inglesa del Renacimiento Escritoras inglesas English Literature Women writers 17th-century English Literature Women playwrights Dramatic genres Heroic characters Margaret Cavendish Aphra Behn |
| Sumario: | The development of women’s writing in English throughout the seventeenth century is quite extraordinary. In the field of drama, women participated not only as spectators or readers, but more and more as patronesses, as playwrights, and later on as actresses and even as managers. Yet some dramatic forms proved more resilient than others to women’s coming to voice. Comedies were more flexible, as their conventions allowed for female characters – heroines – as mates and nearly equals to the young male hero. But tragedies required high-born, authoritative and powerful characters, and such defining traits seemed to be the prerogative of the male. The question, then, for these women playwrights, was to what extent one could bend dramatic conventions to accommodate women’s heroic behaviour. How can one construct a female hero and yet not masculinize her in the attempt? Is it possible to rethink the traits of the heroic to include, rather than exclude, women? This paper engages with the ensuing problems and conflicts by looking into the work of two women dramatists of the period: Margaret Cavendish and Aphra Behn. |
|---|