The Fair Clarinda – What is She; Male, Female, or Both?

Aphra Behn has been called a distinctive voice in literature.  She was prolific and an innovator.  She was shameless in her promotion of women.  “In her range and her dexterity, she approached the stature of the “unimitable Laureate” himself [John Dryden], who knew her and praised her repeatedly” (Damrosch 2126).  She was a woman before her time.

Her poem “To the Fair Clarinda, Who Made Love to Me, Imagined More than Woman” is an excellent example of what made her such an innovator.  The poem is about a subject that women did not discuss openly, much less, write about at the time.  “It is one of Behn’s more famous gender-reversing poems, “frequently anthologized” and for the most part seen as “a lesbian poem, a poem about female relationships, or about romantic relationships” according to Frangos (21)” (Temmerman 42).  Behn’s poem is filled with ambiguities that lead readers to think and question the sex and sexuality of its topic, Clarinda.

At first glance, “To the Fair Clarinda,” the reader is lead to believe that Clarinda is a woman, from her name, as well as the rest of Behn’s title.  But still, there are questions about Clarinda’s sex and sexuality.  Clarinda could be a woman or a hermaphrodite.  In her dissertation, “English Literature: Aspects of female passion and love in a selection of Aphra Behn’s poetry”, Dorine Temmerman discusses this thought.

“Over the years there has been discussion as to whether “the fair Clarinda” addressed in the poem is a woman or a hermaphrodite. Most scholars seem to be of the opinion that there is no doubt that this is merely a poem about the love between two women; Donoghue for example argues that it is simply a poem about lesbian love because of “her name” (Frangos 24) which “implies clarity” (Frangos 25), and the fact that “the title of the poem admits that Clarinda is a woman and not a hermaphrodite” (Frangos 21)” (43).

There is the thought that Clarinda is bisexual, which Temmerman also discusses.

“However, Frangos has proposed a counter-argument to this perhaps hasty conclusion, arguing that Donoghue “reads the title selectively, privileging the word woman over the rest of the phrase in which it appears and ignoring the rhetorical impact of both “more than” and “imagin’d” (21). Indeed the implication is made that Clarinda is, in the eyes of the speaker, “more than Woman” (my italics) which could suggest that Clarinda is bisexual” (43).

No matter what the reader believes of Clarinda’s sex or sexuality, Behn leaves it to the reader to figure it out.  Behn opens the poem by addressing Clarinda.

“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” (Behn 2135).

These few opening lines contain phrases that contradict themselves and create more ambiguity for the reader.  The narrator calls Clarinda a “fair lovely maiden”, but then states that this could be too weak or feminine of a description.  The narrator wants Clarinda to be seen as much more than a fair maiden.  The narrator confuses the reader even more by calling Clarinda “lovely charming youth.”  Temmerman writes, “This kind of terminology is just as ambiguous as the words “imagin’d more than Woman” for if the reader but lets his imagination have free play the “charming youth”, a gender-neutral term, can be interpreted as referring to either a young woman or a young man; or both” ( Temmerman 43).  If the reader thinks of Clarinda as both a young woman and a young man, the she could be considered a hermaphrodite.  Temmerman states another thought about Clarinda that she is not a hermaphrodite, but she has boyish features.  “On the other hand, Frangos point out that a common connotation of the word ‘youth’ is “a young man between boyhood and mature age” (25); in combination with the more feminine terms ‘fair’ and ‘lovely’ this again creates the suggestion that Clarinda has boyish features as well” (43).

Behn’s closing words of the poem do not clear up Clarinda’s sex either.  It just gives the reader more vague hints.  Behn writes, “Whene’er the manly part of thee would plead/Thou tempts us with the image of the maid,/While we the noblest passions do extend/The love to Hermes, Aphrodite the friend” (Behn 2135).  She references Hermes and Aphrodite who bore a child named Hermaphroditus that was both male and female.  This could lead the reader to think that Clarinda was a hermaphrodite.

“As Frangos argues, the speaker addresses Clarinda directly, i.e. in the second person as if Clarinda were right beside the speaker; and therefore she is referred to as you throughout the poem (23).

Since ‘you’ is also a gender-neutral pronoun in abstract terms, the confusion as to Clarinda’s gender is reinforced and the “hermaphroditic overtones of the poem” (Frangos 23) become more prolific” (Temmerman 43-44).

Clarinda may be female, male, or both.  Behn left it up to the reader to decide.  With this poem, she did lead the reader to think about socially acceptable relationships between women.  This poem is not a typical love poem between a man and a woman, but it is a poem about a sexual relationship between two women.

Works Cited

"Aphra Behn." The Longman Anthology of British Literature. Ed. David Damrosch and Kevin J. H. Dettmar. Vol. 1C. New York: Longman, 2010. 2125-126. Print.

Behn, Aphra. "To the Fair Clarinda, Who Made Love to Me, Imagined More than Woman." The Longman Anthology of British Literature. Ed. David Damrosch and Kevin J. H. Dettmar. Vol. 1C. New York: Longman, 2010. 2135. Print.

Temmerman, Dorine. English Literature: Aspects of Female Passion and Love in a Selection of Aphra Behn's Poetry. Diss. Universiteit Gent, 2010. N.p.: n.p., n.d. Universiteit Gent. Universiteit Gent. Web. 24 Feb. 2014. <http://lib.ugent.be/fulltxt/RUG01/001/457/830/RUG01-001457830_2011_0001_AC.pdf>.