Author: Ano Sensei
Format: Video
Genre: Early Modern, Gender Studies
Structure: Essay, Prose Extract
Related content:
Women and Gender in 17th-Century England. Mary Wroth, Aphra Behn & others
This video explores the world of early modern women's writing, from witch persecution and male anxiety over "unruly" women, to two of the most startling works of the century: Mary Wroth's Urania (1621), the first major prose fiction in English by a woman, filled with scenes of erotic violence and unabashed female sexuality, and Aphra Behn's Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister, the first epistolary novel in English, which challenges marriage, religious taboo, and social convention head-on.
I also look at the real-life scandal behind Behn's novel — the elopement of politician Ford Grey with his wife's sister, and the court case that followed.
In this video:
Part 1 — Male anxiety and the fear of "unruly" women
Part 2 — Mary Wroth's Urania and its erotic frankness
Part 3 — Aphra Behn, Love-Letters, and the real scandal behind the fiction
Suitable for A-level, IB, or undergraduate students studying early modern literature, women's writing, or Restoration fiction.
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0:00 Introduction
0:14 Women challenging men's roles
0:30 Ben Jonson & male anxiety
0:54 "The Womanish Man"
1:04 Women free-born
1:20 Transvestitism
1:52 Lady Macbeth
2:15 Witches
2:45 Eve in the Bible
3:08 "The common scum of women"
3:37 Decline of chivalry
4:50 Powerful women
5:11 Samuel Butler and misogyny
6:00 Mary Barker and the rejected lover
6:47 Aphra Behn and male impotence
7:45 Mary Wroth and Urania
8:34 The torture of Limena
10:22 Eroticism in Urania
10:45 Unabashed sexuality
11:08 Aphra Behn reprise
11:30 Behn's Love Letters
11:46 Authorship issues
12:30 Epistolary novel
12:40 Marriages made in heaven?
13:50 Plot
14:26 Extract [reading]
18:44 Analysis
19:55 Taboos
20:18 Incest
23:01 Scandal
24:17 Conclusion
24:43 Abraham Cowley
25:10 Further reading
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