Aphra Behn's
poem The
Golden Age suggests the preference for a world in which procreation is achieved without the aids of men, suggesting that there is something more pure and less violent in conception that occurs without the use of the penis. Behn's golden age seems to be a decidedly feminine worldview in which man—not mankind, mind you, but literally the
male of the species—is blamed for the lacking of a current golden age. The
penis is, of course, the symbolic figure of the male's domination over woman. It is the penis which grows hard and powerful, roughly penetrating the softness of the woman. It is the penis that is the tool by which the rude rapes the on virgin Earth would be made.
Elsewhere in the poem, Behn attacks other so-called masculine traits that have left the world in such a sad and sorry place. The male propensity to decide arguments through war is addressed. War could certainly be seen as the way in which men attempt to rape each other, once again symbolizing the penis as an instrument of terror and violence. Behn also inculcates that
honor is a male invention used to tyrannize and, indeed, to shame women for their feelings of sexuality in lines cursing honor for damning
woman to the sin of shame. The desire for a world in which reproduction is made possible without the aids of men is a call for equality among the sexes.
It is quite clear that this poem is an expression of a singularly feminine wish for the penis to remain forever soft and harmless, and pointedly unable to ejaculate its spiteful venoms. Behn's vision of a golden age envisions a world of never-ending pleasure that doesn't have as side effects both an ongoing fear and an unchanging hierarchy between the sexes.
More summaries about the The Golden Age