In the following excerpt, Kramer examines the interplay between Jane's concern for equality and her urges to submit or rebel. The fact is that the motivating forces of Jane Eyre's personality are not sexual concepts at all but personal concepts. She reacts as she does to erotic situations not...

Oroonoko cannot be classified as fact or fiction, realism or romance. In the still unshaped field of prose narrative – where a "history" could mean any story, true or false – Behn combines the attractions of three older forms. First, she presents the work as a memoir. According...