"All women together ought to let flowers fall upon the tomb of Aphra Behn, for it was she who earned them the right to speak their minds."

-Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own

The 18th century saw the birth of the English novel, with the invention of the printing press and the creation of new prose formats making reading material much more accessible to the public. While poetry and drama required a certain education in order to write them (knowledge of Latin, Greek, the forms, etc.), the new form of the novel could be written by anyone -- including women. However, the accessible nature of the novel, cheaply mass-produced and available to all, immediately caused it to be labeled a debased format to publish in -- the concept that anyone could write fictions and publish their blasphemous lies for money devalued the form immediately. Those without elite educations were allowed to write novels, and they published stories about servant girls and the working class! The gasps of horror from the noble and educated could be heard around the country -- the stories of common people were being told! Elite disdain for the novel form did not prevent its mass consumption, though; the rise of narratives such as the spiritual autobiography (think Pilgrim's Progress), travel narrative, criminal biography, and conduct books soon lent legitimacy to the novel as reading material and saw the form embraced by the public.

The revolutionary fact that stories written by women and about women were becoming popularly read and distributed could not be celebrated with all of the fanfare it deserved in 18th century England, unfortunately. The novel creations authored by women were seen as extensions of their bodies, and as their words were embraced by the public, so were they. Those who wrote and published were whores selling their bodies (through their sexy, sexy words) on the popular market. As mistresses of the private domestic space, a literary foray into public space was also considered unfeminine and made one mentally unstable. Not only that, but the sluttish pursuit of novel-writing and reading made one not a virgin -- being mentally penetrated by something other than patriarchal ideals was thought to just corrupt all purity and innocence.

This didn't stop women from writing and reading, however. The power of having [author]ity and being able to take up space was worth societal reprimands. While men were doing their best to slander female authors, women were discovering that to take up a pen is power -- to say, "these are my words and my thoughts and they are worth reading" asserted that the words mattered, and so did the people who wrote them. Taking control of their own narrative in the face of criticism and pushback was an absolutely subversive act -- in this time, women were essentially property with few legal rights and recognitions. If a woman murdered her husband, she was charged with treason, not murder, for in killing her husband she had killed her lord. The punishment for this was being burned alive, by the way. For women to claim that their stories mattered, that their voice mattered, in this time was incendiary and profound.

Not only were women writing stories, they were writing stories with political messages embedded within them. Setting their stories in vaguely Italian countries so the government couldn't punish them, they critiqued the plight of women in England by having their heroines struggle with lack of legal representation, rogues swindling innocent maidens of their virtue, and lack of influence in the public sphere. While women may have been unable to gain justice in their day-to-day lives, they ensured that their heroines received justice in the stories they wrote and shaped public discourse by bringing these narratives to light. For the women reading these novels, a consciousness of the female mind as something that could belong to a woman herself was opened up -- the idea that a woman could be mistress of her own mind, with her own thoughts and consciousness belonging only to herself was radical, and more importantly, meant that women deserved rights. Women, realized as critical thinkers and full members of society through the novel's recognition of a female narrative, became people who were worth something and deserved rights in society and law.

Writing novels also allowed women an opportunity to become financially independent of men, creating a career path for them. While before the most sure path towards financial stability was in finding a well off husband, women could now begin writing careers and provide for themselves as they published. Aphra Behn, the writer mentioned in the Virginia Woolf quote above, was the first woman who lived by the pen, writing scandalously sexy poetry, witty plays, and brilliant stories about murderesses and the role of women in society. Breaking convention by providing for herself through publishing her writings, she is a hero who established the concept of woman as author for us all. What Behn and other 18th century women did for women writers echoes through the centuries, showing us the power of the word to change the world.