BI VISIBILITY DAY 2015 | Aphra Behn

Today, September 23rd, is Bi Visibility Day. The fact that many of you reading this mightn't know this is probably why this day needs to exist. (Also, look at how pretty our flag is, we need a day dedicated to waving it unashamedly.) We often refer to ourselves as the silent B within LGBT discourse (the silent T often practically invisible), as it is important to remember that bisexual, pansexual, Trans* people, and anybody else under the LGBT+ umbrella often face issues that are separate from each other, and from those experienced by Lesbian and Gay people. All too often LGBT is used as a synonym for Lesbian and Gay, and whilst bi people obviously experience homophobia, we also experience biphobia, often facing discrimination from both within and outside of the LGBT+ community. The fact is, whilst we are a part of LGBT+ history and culture as a whole, us bisexuals have our own history, experiences, and issues that should be treated with as much respect and understanding. If you want to find out more please visit the following links. Otherwise, we'll get right on to talking about the total bae that is Aphra Behn.

http://www.bivisibilityday.com/
http://www.bisexualweek.com/about/
http://www.glaad.org/bisexual/bierasure
http://robynochs.com/biphobia/
Evan Rachel Wood on being bisexual

First of all, you should know that Aphra Behn was a badass. Interest in her literary works has recently reached new heights within academia, and rightly so! You see, there's this misconception that only rich men were writing popular fiction and poetry back in the day, largely because academia has chosen to dismiss the popular labouring class and women writers of the period (I could get into this more deeply, but if I get into a discussion about sexism within academia we might be here a while...)

So cutting to the chase, we don't know much about Aphra Behn's early life. We know that she was baptised on the 14th December 1640, spent some of her youth in the West Indies, was married in 1664 but divorced not long after, and she was a British SPY in Antwerp,1766 (her codename was Astrea. We definitely need a film about this.) It was imprisonment for debt, that she got herself into because the King wouldn't pay for her to come home, so she had to borrow money, that led her to start writing for an income. She also had a lover at one point named John Hoyle who was openly bisexual.

Aphra Behn wrote novellas, poetry, and plays, and her best known work is Oroonoko, the story of an enslaved African prince, and an important text in the history of the modern British novel. A personal favourite poem of mine by Aphra Behn, that I'm sure you'll love, is called 'The Disappointment', in which a woman in left sexually unsatisfied due to her partner's premature ejaculation. In fact, with all of the excitement, he cums in his pants.

In vain th' enraged Youth assaid 
To call his fleeting Vigour back,
No motion 'twill from Motion take,
Excess of Love his Love betray'd ;
In vain he Toils, in vain Commands,
Th' Insensible fell weeping in his Hands.

Great stuff isn't it? You can read the full text HERE.

Aphra Behn was an early feminist icon, and argued fervently through her writings for a woman's right to sexual pleasure. She talked frankly about sex, including sex with other women (see below, and also The Dream), and about having multiple lovers (On Her Loving Two Equally)

To the Fair Clarinda, who made love to me, imagined more than woman

Fair lovely Maid, or if that Title be
Too weak, too Feminine for Nobler thee,
Permit a Name that more Approaches Truth:
And let me call thee, Lovely Charming Youth.
This last will justifie my soft complaint,
While that may serve to lessen my constraint;
And without Blushes I the Youth persue,
When so much beauteous Woman is in view.
Against thy Charms we struggle but in vain
With thy deluding Form thou giv'st us pain,
While the bright Nymph betrays us to the Swain.
In pity to our Sex sure thou wer't sent,
That we might Love, and yet be Innocent:
For sure no Crime with thee we can commit;
Or if we shou'd - thy Form excuses it.
For who, that gathers fairest Flowers believes
A Snake lies hid beneath the Fragrant Leaves.

Though beauteous Wonder of a different kind,
Soft Cloris with the dear Alexis join'd;
When e'er the Manly part of thee, wou'd plead
Though tempts us with the Image of the Maid,
While we the noblest Passions do extend
The Love to Hermes, Aphrodite the Friend.

If you want to find out more about Aphra Behn, you can do so at the following links:
http://www.poetry-archive.com/b/behn_aphra.html (includes links to more poems)
http://www.uark.edu/campus-resources/lbrothe/shoup1.html
http://www.sappho.com/poetry/a_behn.html
http://writersinspire.podcasts.ox.ac.uk/content/aphra-behn
https://dramadaily.wordpress.com/2009/12/20/before-gaga-there-was-behn-or-liz-duffy-adams-bisexual-bombshell/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vIWqH8CYKuM

Do you have a favourite bisexual writer? Let me know in the comments below :) Also, if you're doing anything today to celebrate Bi Visibility Day, let me know what you're up to!

#PigGate | Pigs in 18th Century Political Satire

Thomas Rowlandson, 'The Wonderful Pig, 1785

Following what was easily the best couple of hours I have ever spent on Twitter, where pig puns could never get old, and we wondered how Hameron and his crew down in Number 10 would deal with all of the embarrassment, I started to wonder if there was any hilarity of this kind in 18th Century political satire. Well it turns out they never went full Black Mirror, but there's still plenty of laughs to be found. 

The Learned Pig

The illustration at the top of this post depicts a phenomenon that occurred in London society in the 1780s. Pigs were trained for the purposes of entertainment to pick up cards with their mouths in order to spell words and answer arithmetical problems. The original Learned Pig was trained by a Scottish shoemaker named Samuel Bisset, who ran a travelling novelty show. In fact, according to Jan Bondeson "The Wonderful Pig soon became the leading light in Mr Bisset's troupe. It could kneel, bow, spell out names using cardboard letters, cast up accounts, and point out married and unmarried people in the audience." Naturally, satirists saw an opportunity here, and ran with it.

It became a bit of the in joke to compare a writer or politician to a learned pig, and even the then Prime Minister of Great Britain William Pitt was referred to as "the Wonderful pig", and was depicted in a caricature with the body of a pig. (I'm led to believe that The British Museum may have the image, but unfortunately as I write this the Collection Online search on their website isn't working.)

The 'Swinish Multitude'

The complete reversal of the above, where the masses are characterised as the pigs, is also present in eighteenth century literature. In Edmund Burke's 1790 Reflections on the Revolution in France, Burke wrote "along with its natural protectors and guardians, learning will be cast into the mire, and trodden down under the hoofs of a swinish multitude." Naturally, the idea that revolutionary supporters were an animalistic and dangerous mob that would destroy any notion of civilised society and education caused some outrage. For many this highlighted how the upper classes were completely out of touch with the issues facing the working class.

Burke's comments generated plenty of commentary and satire. Thomas Spence wrote a poem narrated by an anti-revolutionary simply called 'Burke's Address to the "Swinish Multitude"', which is littered with piggish puns.

YE vile SWINISH Herd, in the Sty of Taxation,

What would ye be after?—diſturbing the Nation?

Give over your grunting—Be off—To your Sty!

Nor dare to look out, if a KING paſſes by:

...

Do you think that a KING is no more than a Man?

Ye Brutiſh, Ye Swiniſh, irrational Clan?

I ſwear by his Office, his Right is divine,

To flog you, and [...]eed you, and treat you like Swine!

...

Then no more about MAN and his RIGHTS,

TOM PAINE, and a Rabble of Liberty Lights:

That you are but our "SWINE," if ye ever forget,

We'll throw you alive to the HORRIBLE PIT!

Get ye down! down! down!—Keep ye down!

(You can read the text in its entirety HERE)

His satire points out that this kind of language is designed to keep the lower classes down and remind them that they are a "lesser" than the men of nobility. And it struck me reading this poem how incredibly relevant it is to recent events. If the pigs are the working masses that are continually put down by an oppressive form of government, then #PigGate seems too perfectly crafted a satire to be true. To those of us who feel we are being continually fucked over by David Cameron and his party, we are that pig. 

Find out More:

Thomas Hood, 'The Lament of Toby the Learned Pig'

Christopher Machell, The Politics of Beastial Imagery in Satire, 1789-1820

Jan Bondeson, The Feejee Mermaid and Other Essays in Natural and Unnatural History

On Clarissa | Part 1, Background

'The Harlowe Family' by Joseph Highmore'

[CW: This novel contains rape as a main plot point, and so my posts about the novel may contain discussions about sexual violence within the narrative.]

Those of you who follow me elsewhere may know that I'm in the process of reading Samuel Richardson's 'Clarissa', the longest novel in English Literature. Those of you who know me personally may also know that despite three years of study as an undergraduate, I'm a pretty slow reader. Suffice to say, I still haven't finished reading it, and certainly won't finish it any time soon. And so I thought perhaps I'd dedicate a corner of my blog to my thoughts whilst reading the novel, whilst hopefully staying as spoiler free as possible.

I'm reading the Penguin Classics edition which is the first edition of the novel, although apparently not the longest (because apparently 1499 large pages with small font isn't big enough.) The novel was edited for future editions and a few more letters were added, and that edition is said to be closest to what Richardson intended. I'm reading the novel for my own personal enjoyment however, not for any scholarly work, so none of this really mattered to me. It's something to bear in mind though if you're buying a copy for yourself.

The blurb reads:

"In Clarissa, one of the greatest European novels and its author's triumph, Samuel Richardson had the luck or prescience to hit upon a story that became a myth to his own age, and remains so now.

How Clarissa, in resisting parental pressure to marry a loathsome man for money, falls prey to Lovelace, is raped and dies, is the bare outline of a story that blossomed in all directions under Richardson's hands. He was, self-confessedly and happily, 'a poor pruner'. Written in letters, the novel contains all the urgency and tension of personal communications set down 'to the moment', compelling our confidence but also our distrust. Its rich ambiguities -- our sense of Clarissa's scrupulous virtue tinged with intimations of her capacity for self-deception in matters of sex; the wicked and amusing faces of Lovelace, who must be easily the most charming villain in English literature -- give the story extraordinary psychological momentum. In that fatally attracted pair, Richardson created lovers that haunt the imagination as Romeo and Juliet do, or Tristan and Isolde.

This Penguin Classic makes the first edition of Clarissa available for the first time since it appeared in 1747-8. The editor, Angus Ross, has provided an excellent introduction and notes."

For those who've suffered through Richardson's earlier novel Pamela, and are put off from reading Clarissa because of the similarities between them, I can assure you that they are vastly different novels beyond the basic premise.

So what's similar? Well both are epistolary novels about a young girl being pursued by a sexual predator. The bulk of Pamela's letters are to her parents, whilst Clarissa's are mostly to her best friend Anna Howe. The main difference in plot is that Pamela ends up falling in love with and marrying her attempted rapist (?!?!?!?! I know), whilst Clarissa is unable to tame the beast, and is raped, later dying of venereal disease. Both are bloody awful outcomes, but barely 200 pages in Clarissa is already a far more satisfying read. That's mostly down to Clarissa being a far more realistic female character, rather than a caricature of what an eighteenth century man might think a virtuous woman should be. Her friendship with Anna is charming too (and I'd argue very gay, but let's save that for another time), and Anna is fast becoming one of my favourite female characters in literature. She's Moll Flanders if she was born into a wealthy family and didn't have to resort to crime. She's passionate, demands to be heard, and loves her best friend dearly, so much so I'm convinced she'd kill for her (silently wishing she chops Lovelace up with an axe at the end.) In fact if anyone wants to write a fan fic where Anna Howe is a vampire slayer, I will read that in a heart beat. (Send me all your Clarissa/Anna slash fic as well.)

Both novels, like most novels of the period, were published with the claim that they are true stories, notice how the title page of Clarissa says it's from the EDITOR of Pamela, not the author. They also claim to be published for moral guidance rather than for raw entertainment, so all this must be taken into account when we read the novel, as contemporaries wouldn't have the wealth of information surrounding it as we have today. Perhaps for that reason I should leave it there.

If you're going to be reading along with me, let me know in the comments below. If not, you can read my posts so you can talk about the novel and pretend you know all about it without actually having to read the whole thing (I wouldn't judge.) Also, I promise to blog more frequently from now on! So until then, bye for now :)