Re-crafting the heroic, constructing a female hero: Margaret Cavendish and Aphra Behn

Abstract

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.