The Fair Jilt

Summary

The Fair Jilt; or, The Amours of Prince Tarquin and Miranda (1688) is a short prose history by Aphra Behn, set in Antwerp in the 1660s, when the Spanish Netherlands were governed by the Marquis of Castel Rodrigo. Behn opens with a short treatise on love: the passion "whose Aim is Virtue" ennobles, but in "ungovern'd Hearts" love "reigns more like a Fury from Hell". She then insists that her tale is no feigned story, that she witnessed much of it herself, having been sent to Antwerp by King Charles, and that Franciscan friars confirmed the rest. Miranda, a rich and beautiful orphan of eighteen, lives among the Beguines, a lay sisterhood whose members take only temporary vows and receive admirers freely. She collects lovers without committing herself until she sees a young Franciscan, Father Francisco, carrying the alms-box at Mass. Through her companion Cornelia we learn his story: born Prince Henrick of a German house, he lost his betrothed to his elder brother, survived the brother's attempt to have him murdered, and took the habit. Miranda bombards him with letters, then contrives to be alone with him at confession, declares her passion, and when he refuses her, cries rape. Francisco keeps silence about what passed in confession, is condemned to be burned, and lingers for more than two years in prison under repeated reprieves. Miranda meanwhile marries Prince Tarquin, a handsome stranger who claims descent from the last kings of Rome. Their magnificence consumes her fortune and that of her younger sister Alcidiana, whose guardianship Miranda controls. When Alcidiana chooses another guardian and demands her portion, Miranda persuades her besotted page Van Brune to poison her with mercury. Alcidiana survives, disfigured; Van Brune confesses and is hanged, and Miranda is made to stand beneath his gibbet with a rope about her neck. Tarquin, still entirely her slave, then tries to shoot Alcidiana outside the theatre, misses, and is taken after a desperate fight. He is condemned to be beheaded; Miranda, urged by the friars, at last confesses her crimes, and Francisco is freed with honour. On the scaffold the executioner's sword strikes too low; the crowd carries the wounded prince to a Jesuit house, where he recovers. Pardoned, he leaves Flanders, sends for Miranda, serves in the French army, and settles with her in Holland, where she is said to have repented. The tale is sensational, but its moral design is plain: Miranda's beauty, wit and pride make her a destroyer of better people, while Francisco shows innocence that can suffer without defending itself, and Tarquin shows how love without virtue can enslave a generous man.

Plot or Argument

• Two kinds of love and a claim of truth

  The narrator contrasts the fop, on whom love works no change, with the noble passion that aims at virtue, and promises to show love raging "like a Fury from Hell" in ungoverned hearts. She vouches for the story as eyewitness and gives her heroine the false name Miranda, while keeping Tarquin's real one.

• The Beguine and the alms-box

  Miranda, a Beguine of great fortune who answers to no confessor, falls in love at first sight with a young Cordelier friar. Her companion Cornelia tells his history: as Prince Henrick of Germany he lost his beloved to his elder brother, was ambushed by the brother's hired assassins, and fled to Flanders as a pilgrim to take vows.

• Letters, the sacristy, and the false cry

  Miranda sends daily letters through a simple lay-brother, then demands to make her confession to Father Francisco alone. When he resists her advances she puts out the candles, drags him into the confession chair and cries rape. Before the Provincial she performs a tearful accusation; Francisco forgives her, refuses to reveal the confession, and is condemned to be burned, reprieved week by week at the friars' petition.

• Prince Tarquin's marriage and the poisoned sister

  Miranda wins and marries the magnificent Prince Tarquin. Their display drains the fortune of her ward Alcidiana; when Alcidiana escapes to a merchant kinsman and demands her portion, Miranda seduces her page Van Brune into poisoning her. Alcidiana survives disfigured, Van Brune is hanged, and Miranda stands in diamonds and black velvet beneath his gibbet.

• The shot at the theatre and the scaffold

  Tarquin ambushes Alcidiana at the playhouse door, his bullets passing through her gown, and is captured after fighting through a crowd. Condemned to death, he refuses to renounce his wife. Miranda confesses everything, freeing Francisco, who then pleads for Tarquin. The executioner's stroke cuts into the shoulder instead of the neck, the crowd bears the living prince to the Jesuits, and pardons follow.

• Holland and a reported repentance

  Tarquin leaves Flanders vowing to give Miranda up but secretly sends for her. In Holland his father receives her, Tarquin regains his name in three campaigns with the French army, and the couple retire to the country, where Miranda is said to thank Heaven for the afflictions that reclaimed her. A final line reports Tarquin's recent death.

Characters

• Miranda, protagonist and "Fair Jilt"

  A beautiful, accomplished and wealthy Beguine of Antwerp, vain of her conquests and admiring rank above all; when thwarted she lies, seduces and plots murder, and repents only after ruining others.

• Father Francisco (Prince Henrick), falsely accused friar

  A German prince turned Franciscan after his brother stole his betrothed and tried to kill him; he resists Miranda, bears her false charge without breaking the seal of confession, and later intercedes for her husband.

• Prince Tarquin, husband

  A splendid foreigner whose title from the Roman kings was mocked by some as an impostor's claim; brave, liberal and good-natured, he becomes Miranda's instrument and nearly dies on the scaffold.

• Alcidiana, younger sister

  Miranda's ward and co-heiress, about fourteen at her sister's marriage, who survives a poisoning and an attempted shooting and finally seeks pardons for both her attackers.

• Van Brune, page

  A handsome youth infatuated with Miranda who poisons Alcidiana in hope of her favours, confesses at trial, and dies on the gibbet asking his mistress's pardon.

• Cornelia, companion

  A young Beguine who tells Miranda, and the reader, the story of Prince Henrick.

• The narrator, eyewitness reporter

  An Englishwoman sent to Antwerp by Charles II who claims to have seen much of the action and to have learned the rest from the friars.

Lessons

• A treatise on love made into a case

  Behn opens by distinguishing the passion whose aim is virtue and whose end is honour from love that rages in ungoverned hearts. Everything that follows tests that distinction: Miranda's desire seeks possession and turns to revenge when refused, while the same story contains steadfast love in Francisco's first attachment and in Tarquin's devotion. Students should read the preface as a thesis and ask whether the narrative proves it.

  • What does Behn mean by love "whose Aim is Virtue"? Which characters, if any, show it?
  • Why does she begin with the comic portrait of a fop before turning to Miranda?
  • At what point does Miranda's love become what Behn calls a Fury from Hell?

• Silence under false accusation

  Francisco answers Miranda's charge with a prayer that God forgive her and bring her to repentance, refuses to reveal what she said in confession even to save his life, and spends over two years in prison. Behn presents his patience as holiness, not weakness, and his innocence is vindicated only when the accuser herself confesses. The episode invites comparison with Joseph and with other innocents who suffered for refusing a seducer.

  • Why does Francisco refuse to defend himself fully at first? Is his silence admirable or imprudent?
  • Why does the city divide, with men of quality supporting Miranda and churchmen supporting the friar?
  • What does Francisco's later intercession for Tarquin show about his character?

• A good man enslaved

  Tarquin is described as liberal, good-natured, brave and inoffensive, yet he consents to Miranda's schemes and finally tries to murder her sister himself. Behn keeps his attractive qualities in view to show how a passion untethered from virtue can turn a generous man into an instrument of evil. Even after his near-execution he cannot renounce her.

  • Does Behn want us to admire Tarquin, pity him, or condemn him? Cite the scaffold scene.
  • Tarquin says the only satisfaction left him is that he dies in serving Miranda. What has love become for him?
  • Compare Tarquin's crime with Van Brune's. Why do the crowd and the court treat them so differently?

• An eyewitness who may be romancing

  Behn claims every circumstance is truth and names real persons and places, including the Spanish governor and her own mission for Charles II. Yet scholars have long doubted parts of the tale, and her editor Montague Summers argued that she blended fact and invention with a novelist's art. The story is a good place to study how early English fiction borrowed the authority of history and reportage.

  • List the details Behn offers to make the story seem factual. Which could a reader in 1688 have checked?
  • Why might she hide the heroine's real name but keep Tarquin's?
  • How does the claim of truth change the way we judge the moral of the story?

Context

Antwerp in the 1660s belonged to the Spanish Netherlands, a Catholic territory governed for Spain; the Marquis of Castel Rodrigo held the governorship from 1664 to 1668. Beguines were communities of laywomen who lived under a rule without perpetual vows, and the Cordeliers were Observant Franciscans. Behn was sent to Antwerp in 1666 to gather intelligence for the English government during the Second Anglo-Dutch War, and the tale draws on that stay.

Composition

The Fair Jilt was licensed on 17 April 1688 and printed for Will. Canning with a dedication to the Tory writer Henry Neville Payne; the first edition called it The History of Prince Tarquin and Miranda, with the half-title The Fair Hypocrite. Montague Summers noted that a work advertised in 1678 as The Amorous Convert, "a true Relation of what happened in Holland", may have been an early sketch.

Reception

Reprinted in collections of Behn's histories and novels into the eighteenth century, the tale was later judged by Ernest Bernbaum to be largely invented, partly because history records no Roman royal line for its prince; Summers replied that the story was mainly true but artfully heightened. Modern scholarship values it as an early experiment in realistic, first-person reported fiction alongside Oroonoko.

Comparisons

• Oroonoko

  Published the same year, Oroonoko also rests on an eyewitness narrator and a royal hero whose story ends on a scaffold; but Oroonoko's nobility is beyond doubt while Tarquin's title is mocked, and Oroonoko dies where Tarquin is saved by a miscarried stroke.

• The Rover

  The Rover treats desire in a comic carnival of masks and swordplay; The Fair Jilt shows the same appetite for conquest in Miranda carried to perjury and attempted murder, with the stage's exits replaced by gibbet and scaffold.

• Measure for Measure

  Shakespeare's Vienna also turns on sexual accusation, a friar's habit and the abuse of a confessional trust, but there the powerful man is the hypocrite and the friar a disguised duke who sets things right, whereas Behn makes the accuser the predator and the true friar a patient victim.

• Phaedra

  Racine's Phaedra (1677) dramatizes the old story of a rejected woman whose false charge destroys the chaste young man she desired; Behn transposes it to Catholic Flanders, but her Hippolytus survives because the accuser at last confesses.

• Othello

  Both show a brave, generous man destroyed by his own trust in a manipulator; in Othello the deceiver works on a husband's jealousy, while Miranda works on Tarquin's adoration and leads him into crime rather than murderous suspicion.

• The Scarlet Letter

  Hawthorne's Dimmesdale keeps a guilty secret under the cloth while Behn's Francisco keeps an innocent one, the seal of confession; the comparison sharpens how each writer understands clerical silence and public shame.

Quotes

For Students

A reading companion for classical Christian high school students. See the student guide.

Reading Guide

Watch for

• The opening essay on love and the portrait of the fop. Behn states the thesis the whole story will test.
• Behn's claims to be an eyewitness and her account of the Beguines. Notice how carefully she explains Catholic institutions to English readers.
• The sacristy scene, Miranda's accusation before the Provincial, and Francisco's brief reply.
• Miranda under the gibbet in diamonds and black velvet, and Van Brune asking her pardon before he dies.
• Tarquin's execution and its failure. Watch how the crowd's sympathy decides what happens next.

Key terms and names

Beguines

Communities of laywomen in the Low Countries who lived under a rule and a superior but without perpetual vows, and could leave to marry.

Cordeliers

Observant Franciscan friars, named in France for the knotted cord they wore; Father Francisco belongs to this order.

Seal of confession

The obligation of a priest never to reveal what a penitent says in confession, which Francisco keeps even when it could save him.

Provincial

The superior of a religious order in a region, before whom Miranda makes her accusation.

Jilt

A woman who encourages lovers and then casts them off; Behn's title also suggests deception more broadly.

True history

A label used by seventeenth-century prose writers to present fiction as fact, often backed by claims of eyewitness testimony.

Spanish Netherlands

The Catholic southern Low Countries, including Antwerp and Brussels, ruled by Spain in Behn's day through a governor.

Seminar Questions

1. Comprehension Who is Father Francisco, and how does Cornelia explain his becoming a friar?
2. Comprehension How does Miranda bring about Francisco's arrest, and why does he not defend himself fully?
3. Comprehension Why does Miranda want her sister dead, and what happens to Van Brune and to Tarquin when they act for her?
4. Interpretation Behn calls Tarquin brave, liberal and good-natured. How can such a man attempt murder, and does the story excuse him?
5. Interpretation The city divides over Francisco, the courtiers for Miranda and the clergy for the friar. What does this reveal about how reputation and justice worked in the story's world?
6. Interpretation Is Miranda's repentance at the end convincing, given how it is reported? What does Behn gain by leaving it as hearsay?
7. Big Question Can beauty, wit and charm make wrongdoing more dangerous, and what protects a person from being enslaved by admiration for someone else?

Faith Connections

• Genesis 39:7-20 (Scripture)

  Potiphar's wife accuses Joseph of assault after he refuses her, and he goes to prison without vindication. Francisco's refusal, the false cry and his long imprisonment follow the same pattern, and Joseph's eventual vindication parallels the friar's release.

• James 1:14-15 (Scripture)

  James traces desire conceiving sin and sin bringing forth death. Miranda's course from an unchecked glance in church to perjury, poisoning and a near-execution is an almost diagrammatic narrative of the passage.

• Proverbs 31:30 (Scripture)

  Favour is deceitful and beauty is vain. Behn dwells on Miranda's beauty at every stage, even beneath the gibbet, and shows how admiration for it blinds the city and her husband to her character.

• Augustine, City of God XIV.28 (Church Fathers)

  Augustine describes two cities formed by two loves, the love of God and the love of self. Behn's opening contrast between love aimed at virtue and love that rages like a Fury maps closely onto his distinction.

Logic and Rhetoric

Central argument: Love that aims at virtue and honour ennobles those it touches; love that seeks only possession and self-glory turns, when thwarted, to revenge and crime; Miranda's passion is of the second kind and destroys the friar's liberty, the page's life, her sister's beauty and nearly her husband's life; therefore beauty and rank without governed desire are not admirable but dangerous, and only repentance, brought about through suffering, can reclaim such a soul.

Rhetorical device: claim of eyewitness authority. Near the start Behn declares that every circumstance is truth and that she saw a great part of the action, later adding that Tarquin arrived about the time she was sent to Antwerp by King Charles, so that the narrator's own history guarantees the tale.

Debate: Resolved: Prince Tarquin deserves more blame than Miranda for the attempt on Alcidiana's life.

Writing Prompts

Essay: Behn opens by distinguishing love whose aim is virtue from love that reigns like a Fury from Hell. Argue whether the story's characters bear out this distinction, using Miranda, Francisco and Tarquin as your three cases.

Comparison with Oroonoko: Both The Fair Jilt and Oroonoko claim to be true histories told by an eyewitness and end with a public execution. Compare how Behn uses her own presence as narrator in each, and argue which tale makes more effective use of that authority.

Medical Lens

Medicine enters through crime and punishment. The poisoning of Alcidiana gives a lay description of mercury poisoning, with doctors, an apothecary's sales record and antidotes; the botched beheading records a sword wound to the shoulder treated by surgeons; and Behn twice reports the power of fear and expectation over the body, in Tarquin's insensibility at the stroke and in an old officer who dies of fright. These are narrative reports from a seventeenth-century observer, not clinical cases.

• The poisoning of Alcidiana

  After drinking wine with roasted apples laced by Van Brune, Alcidiana swells, her face blackens and her eyes start; doctors identify mercury, an apothecary testifies to the purchase, and antidotes save her life at the cost of her hair and complexion.

  Pharmacology Poisons Physicians Doctors
• The scaffold and the Jesuit house

  The executioner's back-stroke cuts Tarquin into the shoulder-bone instead of severing the neck; the headsman tries to finish with a rope device before the crowd carries the prince away, and surgeons dress the wound without promising recovery.

  Surgery Pain
• After the failed beheading

  Tarquin reports that, expecting death at a signal, he felt no pain and remembered nothing until he woke as from a dreamless sleep.

  Mind Body Pain
• The scaffold uproar

  One elderly officer on the scaffold dies of fear and amazement at the confusion; the other has to be let blood.

  Bloodletting Mind Body
• Cornelia's story of Prince Henrick

  Left for dead by his brother's hired men, Henrick is found by a forester who dresses his wounds in secret at his lodge before the prince flees to Flanders.

  Surgery

Creative Prompts

• Dialogue

  Write the conversation in prison in which Father Francisco persuades Miranda to sign her confession, drawing on Behn's report that his persuasions moved her more than all the others.

• Fiction

  Retell the sacristy scene from the point of view of the simple lay-brother who carried Miranda's letters and is outside the door when she cries for help.

• Essay

  Behn says she gives Miranda a false name for the sake of her relations but keeps Tarquin's because it is too illustrious to conceal. Explain what this choice suggests about her purposes as a writer.

• Classroom

  Set the tale's opening thesis about two kinds of love beside its ending, and have students chart each major character's love by its aim and its fruit, citing one scene for each.

Further Reading

• Oroonoko; or, The Royal Slave, Aphra Behn

  Behn's other eyewitness history of 1688.

• The Rover, Aphra Behn

• The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. V, Montague Summers (ed.)

  Source of the attached text and its introduction.

• Phaedra, Jean Racine

  The classic tale of a false accusation after rejected desire.

• The Secret Life of Aphra Behn, Janet Todd

• Reconstructing Aphra: A Social Biography of Aphra Behn, Angeline Goreau