Women's Cultural Function in the Rise of the English Novel

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This is a reconsideration of the origin of the English novel in terms of the image of women and the cultural function of women writers and actresses of the Restoration and eighteenth century England. It has been made clear that the image of women and actual women (authors and actresses) represent the social and cultural trend towards the creation of the novel form. The study has been mainly concerned with one representative woman writer of the Restoration, Aphra Behn, for several reasons. First, the fact that Behn was the first professional woman writer in the history of English Literature is closely connected to the generic cultural transformation. The foundations of the novel may be found in the struggle of Behn to establish and protect her identity in the unashamedly egotistical male culture of the time. Secondly, Behn's career as a writer seems to represent the shift of the dominant literary form from the drama to the novel. In her late years she wrote several prose romances including her famous novella Oroonoko. It is true that she was forced to venture into the field of lucrative romance writing by the union of the two licensed theatres in 1682. The merger of the theatres was a crushing blow to professional playwrights such as Behn who depended on the income from the playhouses. However, this shift brought about a substantial transformation of Behn's way of writing. She has found a better medium for the expression of the predicaments of women in the male-centered culture of the time. Especially, in her last romance, Oroonoko, we can witness the shifting cultural dynamism in the transition of the romance narrative in the first part to the realism of the second part. This is a definitive proof of women's cultural function that brought about the birth of the novel in the eighteenth century.