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The plot of Aphra Behn's The History of the Nun; or the Fair Vow-Breaker (1689) is sensational-a former nun named Isabella unintentionally commits bigamy by marrying a second husband while the first is still alive. When she discovers her mistake, she murders both husbands by smothering the first, sewing the sack containing the corpse of the dead husband to the living husband's clothing, and encouraging the live husband to throw the corpse into a river, where he drowns. The bigamous wife freely confesses to the murders of "two husbands (both beloved) in one night" 1 and is beheaded, to the dismay of the town. The plotline makes it easy to understand why this story was so fascinating to writers and audiences and thus so frequently rewritten in the long eighteenth century. Between 1694 and 1757, there were at least five adaptations. 2 Modern critics have focused on Thomas Southerne's play, The Fatal Marriage: or, the Innocent Adultery (1694), David Garrick's 1757 revision of Southerne's play into the tragedy Isabella: or, the Fatal Marriage, and Jane Barker's short fictional excerpt, "Philinda's Story out of the Book" in The Lining of the PatchWork Screen (1726). 3 My research has unearthed two previously unknown texts, both moral fables in periodicals, the first in The Universal Spectator, under the heading "Sure, of all Ills, Domestic are the Worst!" (ca. 1728) 4 and the second in The Gentleman's Magazine, which condensed the Universal Spectator version in 1731 as "Matrimonial Murders." 5 Several critics have commented at length on the heroine's ability in Behn's novella to inspire both horror and sympathy from readers (sometimes simultaneously). 6 But despite these analyses, the possibilities of what the adaptations can reveal about the original text has not yet been fully explored. This essay uses adaptation theory in order to demonstrate that the problem of female sexual desire is always at stake in the adaptations-the way the protagonist struggles with desire, and the social implications of expressing desire-and each version's method of depicting the heavy burdens associated with that desire. In all of the versions, the heroines' desires and responses are
The plot of Aphra Behn's The History of the Nun; or the Fair Vow-Breaker (1689) is sensational-a former nun named Isabella unintentionally commits bigamy by marrying a second husband while the first is still alive. When she discovers her mistake, she murders both husbands by smothering the first, sewing the sack containing the corpse of the dead husband to the living husband's clothing, and encouraging the live husband to throw the corpse into a river, where he drowns. The bigamous wife freely confesses to the murders of "two husbands (both beloved) in one night" 1 and is beheaded, to the dismay of the town. The plotline makes it easy to understand why this story was so fascinating to writers and audiences and thus so frequently rewritten in the long eighteenth century. Between 1694 and 1757, there were at least five adaptations. 2 Modern critics have focused on Thomas Southerne's play, The Fatal Marriage: or, the Innocent Adultery (1694), David Garrick's 1757 revision of Southerne's play into the tragedy Isabella: or, the Fatal Marriage, and Jane Barker's short fictional excerpt, "Philinda's Story out of the Book" in The Lining of the PatchWork Screen (1726). 3 My research has unearthed two previously unknown texts, both moral fables in periodicals, the first in The Universal Spectator, under the heading "Sure, of all Ills, Domestic are the Worst!" (ca. 1728) 4 and the second in The Gentleman's Magazine, which condensed the Universal Spectator version in 1731 as "Matrimonial Murders." 5 Several critics have commented at length on the heroine's ability in Behn's novella to inspire both horror and sympathy from readers (sometimes simultaneously). 6 But despite these analyses, the possibilities of what the adaptations can reveal about the original text has not yet been fully explored. This essay uses adaptation theory in order to demonstrate that the problem of female sexual desire is always at stake in the adaptations-the way the protagonist struggles with desire, and the social implications of expressing desire-and each version's method of depicting the heavy burdens associated with that desire. In all of the versions, the heroines' desires and responses are
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