Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-2lccl Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-28T08:37:03.455Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

9 - ‘The story of the heart’: Love-letters between a Noble-Man and his Sister

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 May 2006

By
Ros Ballaster
Edited by
Derek Hughes  and
Janet Todd
Derek Hughes
Affiliation:
University of Aberdeen
Janet Todd
Affiliation:
University of Glasgow
Get access

Summary

In the final stanza of Aphra Behn's pastoral poem, 'The Golden Age', the authenticity, integrity, and moral credit of the poem's nostalgic idealism is radically undermined by revealing the interest of its speaker:

But Sylvia when your Beauties fade,

When the fresh Roses on your Cheeks shall die,

Like Flowers that wither in the Shade,

Eternally they will forgotten lye,

And no kind Spring their sweetness will supply.

When Snow shall on those lovely Tresses lye

And your fair Eyes no more shall give us pain,

But shoot their pointless Darts in vain.

What will your duller honour signifie?

Go boast it then! and see what numerous Store

Of Lovers, will your Ruin'd Shrine Adore.

Then let us Sylvia yet be wise,

And the Gay hasty minutes prize:

The Sun and Spring receive but one short Light, /Once sett, a sleep brings an Eternal Night.

(i, p. 35)

The ideal of the economy of the ‘gift’, the language of pastoral ‘liberty’, is a ploy to get something for nothing. And the name Sylvia encourages us to connect this beloved with the beleaguered heroine Behn was writing about at the same time (‘The Golden Age’ was published in her Poems Upon Several Occasions of 1684), the recipient of the urgent love letters from her sister’s husband, who uses the precedent of the ‘golden age’ to seduce her into giving him the final favour as a gift to cement their love.

Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Companion to Aphra Behn , pp. 135 - 150
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2004

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×