I know that Aphra Behn wrote some bawdy comedies, and that’s what I was hoping The Fair Jilt would be. However, this prose work from 1688, which I read for my Classics Club list, is anything but funny.
Behn starts out with a long dissertation about foppishness, although it’s hard to say what that has to do with her story. She does not approve. Then she tells a story about a very beautiful woman named Miranda. She seems to like to pose her prose writing as if she is telling a true story with the names changed, as she did with Oroonoko.
Miranda starts out her career by flirting with all the men but never granting them favor. She lives in a sort of convent in Antwerp for women who have not made vows, but it seems to be full of her suitors. It is this kind of female aggression in her characters that has gotten Behn praise from feminists, but I’m not sure they understand her message. (Of course, she earns it for being a woman writer in the 17th century, as well as a spy.)
Miranda, who is as wealthy as she is beautiful, is living a gay and carefree life until she meets a beautiful young friar who is a prince with an unhappy past. She falls madly in love with him, but he is not interested. This fact enrages her and things go from bad to worse—for him.
Her continued career gets deeper into depravity after she marries handsome Prince Tarquin, even though he adores her. Her crimes include taking her husband’s ward’s fortune, lying, and incitement to murder.
So, you can imagine what a jolly tale this is. It even includes a man living after he is halfway decapitated. The biggest disappointment of this very unfunny work is that Miranda has a better fate than she deserves.
What? Me Read? 
It sounds painfully bad. Sorry about your disappointment.
Well, it’s old, and we don’t have the same sense of a novel or of morals than then. The cover says it’s the first novel written by a woman, but I think it’s not really considered a novel. Although the first “novel” in the world predates it by about four centuries, The Tale of Genji (which is also written by a woman, so there you go), the modern novel form as we know it was just evolving in the 17th century, when this was written. This reads more like an essay with a story attached to it.
Cool explanation, that gives perspective. I didn’t know that the author was a woman. I have heard about The Tale of Genji but it intimidates me in terms of length and being so removed that I don’t know if I will enjoy it at all.
It is basically a story about a guy who goes around seducing women. I didn’t like it.
That’s not a likable topic for us women, LOL.
Nope! Lots of crying going on in that novel.
And I missed the obvious, the image said “First English novel written by a woman”, silly me!
I forgot that, too!