Muddy Allegiance and Shiny Booty: Aphra Behn's Anglo-Dutch Politics

Muddy Allegiance and Shiny Booty: Aphra Behn's Anglo-Dutch Politics Rebecca S. Wolsk Over the past twenty-five years, revisionist studies ofAphra Behn have illuminated the political subtexts and endeavours in her work. Several scholars have reconciled herToryismwith herfeminism, on behalfofmodern readers, who mayfind that type ofpoliticaljuxtaposition harder to comprehend than Behn's contemporaries might have. In the 1990s, Ros Ballaster and Toni Bowers drew on the work of Susan Staves to illuminate how Behn's amatory fictions register contemporary anxiety about the credibility and endurance of oatiSs of allegiance. More recently, surveys byJanet Todd and Derek Hughes have further contextualized Behn within keyRestoration moments (the Popish Plot, the emergence ofWhigandTorypartisanship during the Exclusion crisis, and the Glorious Revolution). As efforts to understand Behn's beliefs and constraints move forward, Behn scholarship must better acknowledge die significance ofdie Low Countries in herwork and die importance ofthatregion to die murkypolitical waters thatshe and her contemporaries navigated.1 1 See Ros Ballaster, Seductive Forms: Women's Amatory Fiction from 1684 to 1740 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992), esp. 78-79; Susan Staves, Players'Scepters:Fictions ofAuthority in the Restoration (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1979); Toni O'Shaughnessy Bowers, "Sex, Lies, and Invisibility: Amatory Fictìon from die Restoradon to Mid-Century," The Columbia History oftheBritishNovel, ed.John Richetti (NewYork: Columbia UniversityPress, EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY FICTION, Volume 17, Number !,October 2004 2 EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY FICTION Before the Protestant Dutch stadholder William III replaced his Cadiolic uncle and fatiher-in-lawJames II as king of England during the winter of 1688-89, England and die Dutch United Provinces fought against each other in three wars (1652-54, 1665-67, and 1672-74). Revisionist critics, who otherwise contextualize the "political Behn" so astutely, have overlooked the contemporary importance ofthe Dutch settings and the Dutch protagonist, Octavio, in Behn's uhree-part novel Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister. Love-Letterscriticism marginalizes Octavio because he is seen as a relatively apolitical, amatory saint in contrast to the historically based, transgressive characters ofSilvia, Philander, and Caesario. In repoliticizing Octavio, his hodgepodge ofcontradictory characteristics (that is, aristocratic republican, "papist" Dutchman) simultaneously activates and disproves Restoration-era "Hollandophobia." This complex deployment of anti-Dutch tropes supported Behn's overarching effort to titillate and Tory-fy her readers.2 Octavio's aspect as rivalrous suitor bears provocative similarities to suitor pairings in her more overtly Hollandophobic texts: TheDutch Lover, and die untitled epistolary tale ofVanderAlbert and Van Bruin from her posdiumously published memoirs.3 In Oroonoko, allusions to 1994), 63-67; Derek Hughes, The Theatre ofAphra Behn (NewYork: Palgrave, 2001);Janet Todd, The Secret Life ofAphra Behn (London: Pandora, 2000). Todd recommended die study of Behn's relationship to France and the Low Countries during the 1999 International Conference on Behn. See "The Roundtable Discussion," Aphra Behn (1640-1689): Identity, AUerity, Ambiguity, ed. Mary Ann O'Donnell, Bernard Dhuicq, and Guyonne Leduc (Paris: L'Harmattan, 2000).Jacqueline Pearson has recendy highlighted Behn's striking interest in Europe, aligning it widi her Toryism in "Dutch Lovers and Odier Europeans in Aphra Behn's Comedies" (paper presented at die Colloque International at die Sorbonne, Paris, France.July 2003), 1. 1 must üiankjacqueline Pearson for sharing diis conference paperwidi me prior to publication. Forafictionalized portrait of Behn diat emphasizes her Anglo-Dutch context, see Jane Stevenson, The Shadow King (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2003). 2 Simon Schama uses die term "Hollandophobia" in The Embarrassment of Riches: An Interpretation ofDutch Culture in the Golden Age (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1987). For foundational discussions ofdiis dual purpose, see Ballaster, SeductiveForms, 29, 69-84, 1 13, and William B. Warner, "Licensed by the Market: Behn's Love Letters as Serial Entertainment ," Licensing Entertainment: The Elevation ofNovel Reading in Britain, 1684-1750 (Berkeley: University ofCalifornia Press, 1998), 45-87. 3 TheVanderAlbert/Van Bruin narrative appears wiuiin die Antwerp section of TheHistory oftheLifeandMemoirsofMrs. Behn. Written by OneoftheFairSex, in AUtheHistories andNovels Written by theLateIngeniousMrs. Behn, Entire in One Volume, 4di ed. (London: R. Wellington, 1699), http://dewey.Iibrary.upenn.edu/sceti/printedbooksNew/index.cfm? TexuT>=behn_works&PagePosition=3 (accessed 24August 2004), xv-xxx. References are to diis edition. Critics have cautiously attributed die Antwerp section ofdie memoirs to...

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