Many people consider Aphra Behn to have been one of the first Bluestockings, if not the
first Bluestocking. Aphra Behn wrote "Oroonoko": or, "The Royal Slave", but
Behn was never credited as a writer. "Oroonoko" is a short work of prose fiction.
Behn was the first known professional female writer.
1 This genre of writing depicts New World
people as the "Noble Savages": a view more oriented
towards cultural anthropology. The viewpoint of cultural anthropology was soon replaced
during the "Enlightnment" by the racism of Immanuel Kant
2 (although his more astute follower, Johann
Gottfried Herder: 1744–1803, opposed the racism of Kant). Voltaire was yet another figure
of Enlightenment racism and Enlightenment genocide. 3
1
Woolf, Virginia; "A Room of One's Own"
2
Kant, Immanuel; Immanuel Kant pointedly opposed an anthropological
viewpoint, instead he is well known for his racism. Recommended
genocide of the indigenous Amerindian Iroquois.
3
Arouet, François-Marie; Nom de plume of Voltaire, in one of his
letters to Catherine the Great, he recommending genocide of all Ottomans.
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