Aphra Behn Statue in Canterbury, England

On Canterbury's High Street stands a statue of Aphra Behn, a woman who defied societal constraints and indelibly shaped the landscape of English literature as the first woman in England to achieve financial independence through her writing. Born in Canterbury in 1640, Behn went on to work as a playwright, poet, novelist, and even a spy during the Second Anglo-Dutch War. As the first female writer in England to make an independent career through writing, overcoming the 17th-century patriarchal barriers, Behn’s writing itself challenged the societal norms of the time. Her novel, "Oroonoko," crit

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