Eros, Ethics, Identity: Royalist Feminism and the Politics of Desire in Aphra Behn's Love Letters

Abstract

In Love Letters Betw?een a Nobleman and His Sister (1684-87), Aphra Behn combines a story of sexual intrigue with one of political rebellion in ways that suggest that each elucidates the other. Just as Philander employs the conventions of Restoration amorous discourse to create a persona capable of seducing Sylvia, his sisterin-law, so Sylvia-once compromised and betrayed-induces the naive and trusting Octavio to squander his chances of worldly happiness in vain pursuit of the woman her artistry generates. Both Sylvia and Octavio construct new identities for themselves through resistance to a traditional, received definition of the self, one characterized by placement within a matrix of social, political, and familial obligations. The story of rebellion against this conception of selfhood in private life is embedded in a story of rebellion against it in public life: Love Letters is, among much else, a roman a clef in which Philander is meant to be recognized as Lord Grey of Werke, a supporter of the Duke of Monmouth implicated in the Rye House Plot, while Sylvia is meant to be recognized as Lady Henrietta Berkeley, Lord Grey's sister-in-law and lover. Begun shortly after the Tory offensive against the Popish Plot and completed after the defeat of Monmouth, Love Letters starts out in Volume 1 (1684) as an epistolary novel describing Sylvia's/