SOURCE: "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity: Utopian Longings in Behn's Lyric Poetry," in Rereading Aphra Behn: History, Theory, and Criticism, edited by Heidi Hutner, University Press of Virginia, 1993, pp. 273-300.

An American critic and educator, Gardiner has published a study on the verse of English poet and dramatist Ben Jonson and has also contributed essays to several publications devoted to feminist criticism and scholarship. In the following essay, she states that Behn expressed in her verse a desire for the liberation of women from repressive social and political norms.

Aphra Behn was a poet of astonishing range and accomplishment. In her own time she was praised primarily as a poet, and she hoped that posterity would place her with "Sappho and Orinda" in a female lineage of poetry and in the ageless pantheon of fame. She awed men with her talent and fluency and inspired other women to write. Her...