Introduction:

Aphra Behn and Anais Nin broke ground in the writing of literature dealing with sexual topics. Aphra Behn wrote a number of poems which dealt with the issue of sexuality in sometimes explicit ways, while Nin is famous for her collections of erotica, Delta of Venus and Little Birds, written in the 1930`s but not published until the 1970`s. The efforts of these women were extremely daring, as they were evidence that women were able to write on a subject, and in a genre, which, while popular with many authors throughout history, was centred around male sexual experience.

These women wrote material belonging in the genre of sexual writing, often called either erotica or pornography. In any case, this genre deals primarily with sexual events. "(I)t has no other intention than to detail one sexual experience after another, and to break every possible taboo (Wilson 207)." Also, "(I)t needs to concentrate on erotic events with few distractions (Webb 97).", and with no awareness of "time, morality or worldly circumstance (Charney 28)." Nin`s and Behn`s writings encompass at least one of these elements. Nin`s erotica collections certainly embrace diverse and taboo expressions of sexuality, while Behn`s poetry includes visions of a sexual utopia where the distractions of the man-made world are abandoned in favour of a society of libertines, who live in a world where sex is always available.

These women, of course, lived in times in which other writers also experimented in the art of sexual writing. Behn lived during the Restoration, an era which was notable for its openness toward bawdy writing which did not exist in the previous reign of the Puritans. One aspect of the bawdy writing produced at the time was a result of the writer`s opinions of the true nature of romantic love: a cover for mere sexual desire (Goreau 53). The wits did not believe that romantic love should therefore be corrected; rather, men ought to have justification to have as many affairs with women as possible, while the women themselves were reduced to their basest sexuality. As the Earl of
 

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Rochester put it: "Since tis nature`s law to change/Constancy alone is strange ( "Against Constancy") ." Overall, sexual partners were depicted as easy to obtain and just as easy to get rid of. And since these works were written by men in a patriarchal environment, it was the women who were disposable. With that, women were seen in a completely sexual light, their personalities reduced to the aura of sex: "(L)ove`s chiefest magic lies / In women`s cunts, not in their eyes (Goreau 54, quote from Etheredge)."

Anais Nin, on the other hand, wrote her erotica after the Victorian period, which saw the greatest production of pornographic materials (Gorer 77), ironic considering the well-known prudery during this time. This material "distinguished" itself by emphasizing two particular fantasies: rape and flagellation (Webb 95), reflected in the titles such as Raped On The Railway, and Punishment in a Boarding-School for Young Ladies. Much of these rape fantasies were of men raping young virgins, and, befitting these very male fantasies, these women become "willing victims" at rapid speed (Webb 98). The women are seen entirely for their sexual uses. As well, the writing itself replaces all possible craft with numerous profanities, and crude (and cruel) situations, while focusing virtually exclusively upon the bodily functions.

The common thread throughout this brief history of sexual writing is the absence of "female" voice, both in the books themselves and in the authorship. Women are portrayed as sexual objects for man`s sexual desires, their autonomy is disturbed in many aggressive ways, and even their body parts are degraded as being all which define a person such as woman. Feminism demands that such problems be rectified by giving women a voice in all fields of life, including literature. Critical analysis of our authors, which will be discussed in more depth in the individual sections, aims specifically at their contention that women, if given the power to write about their sexuality, will give voice to the

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wrongs which men have committed in their writing, or at the very least, give voice to women`s own sexuality. Male writing on the sexual is seen as problematic because the action is seen entirely through the prism of the male, at the expense of the female, who seems to be presented merely as "an extension of the penis (Webb 118)". The work itself also present women as passive, and attractive in part due to their victim status, while men are persuaded to deny their capacity for caring (Lacombe 32). As well, certain sex acts depicted in sexual literature, such as fellatio, are said to carry a connotation of female subordination (Lacombe 61). Assuming that all these statements are true, the solution would be to express some sort of alternative to work which depicts only men who heartlessly treat women solely as sexual objects. This alternative depiction would present sexuality, and women, in a different fashion, and would preferably be expressed by a female. Such material would be unlike the wrongs which are committed by traditional pornography, which Gloria Steinem is quoted as saying celebrates power imbalance (Lacombe 28), a belief which other pornography opposition subscribe to. Behn and Nin have been praised for their deconstruction of such power games, their uniquely feminine approach to sexuality. Their writing supposedly makes women less of an object, and more of a subject; and the overall content does not put women in the same situations as in the Victorian pornographic literature, for example. Yet, while many praise these women for writing a new type of sexual writing, pornography opponents, such as Andrea Dworkin, say that pornography as a genre could never be different from what it is, since it is inherently about power plays, no matter how it is written. "It means the graphic depiction of women as vile whores (Dworkin 200)." "The fact that pornography is widely believed to be "depictions of the erotic" means only that the debasing of women is held to be the real pleasure of sex (Dworkin 201)." As far as Dworkin is concerned, any depiction of sex is harmful, because if it is erotic, then it must ultimately involve some act of sexual
 

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subordination, usually by the woman. So there are a few things which must be looked for: does the sexual literature written by Anais Nin and Aphra Behn subscribe to an alternative to male-oriented pornography? Does it depict women as individuals other than what Dworkin describes them as being, or in general, does it depict women as sexual subjects rather than objects? Or is it in fact similar to other sexual writing?