WOMEN’S FREEDOM IN APHRA BEHN’S “THE ROVER”
Name-Daya Vaghani
Paper-Literature of Elizabethan and Restoration Periods
Roll no-07
Enrollment no-3069206420200017
Email id- dayavaghani2969@gmail.com
Batch-2020-22 (MA Sem-1)
Submitted to- S. B. Gardi Department of English,
Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University
WOMEN’S FREEDOM IN APHRA BEHN’S “THE ROVER”
Introduction:
One of the greatest dramatists of the restoration period, Aphra Behn was the first professional woman writer. She was the first woman to earn her bread through her pen. The Rover being one of her greatest plays also has a deep connection with her own life. Story of Aphra Behn’s early life is differently told by different people. One of the stories about her life tells that like the protagonist of her play in the Rover namely “Hellena” she was also tailor made to be a nun. In a way it can also be said that while writing the rover, in the name of Hellena she was trying to write the story of her own life as to how she broke the shackles, abandoned nunnery and became a secret agent for the king.
Aphra Behn:
Aphra Behn, (born 1640 Harbledown, Kent, England—died April 16, 1689, London), English dramatist, fiction writer, and poet who was the first Englishwoman known to earn her living by writing.
The play set up in Naples, Italy, premiered to such a great success in 1677 that Behn was encouraged to write a sequel of the same. The play is an extraordinary popular example of restoration comedy. Behn turned to writing after the king refused to pay her expenses and this play gave her a fair income due to its popularity and extended run in the theatres.
The rover undoubtedly contains some powerful female characters in the two sisters Florinda and Hellena. Both Hellena and Florinda since the very first scene is seen defying their patriarchal gods and are shown aware of what they want and the way to achieve it. Since the very first scene of the play both the sisters are shown to contain a kind of strongness which helps them pass their way through their brothers to their ultimate aim which in Hellena’s case is leaving nunnery (which she was designed to become as stated earlier) and in Florinda’s case was to marry a man of her choice, Belville, defying both, her father and her brother to do the same. Both the sisters are not ready to accept the kind of life their father and brother have assigned to them and are very much ready to disobey their parental (and fraternal) commands. The sort of rebellion instincts which are shown to be present in Florinda and Hellena is out of the ordinary for the female characters in the seventeenth century theatre.
The play also proposes a kind of change in the way women speak or spoke in the seventeenth century drama. Behn distinguishes her female characters by giving them very witty and bawdy lines. The “chaste” women are seen doing repartee with their male counterparts which is totally opposite to the structure which was being carried throughout the seventeenth century drama.
Another very important difference which is seen in Behn’s female characters is that not only they are shown to be knowing their destinies but they are also seen taking initiative to get what they wish for. This demonstrated motivation to advance the plot means that the female character take a higher degree of agency and authority in The Rover than the male cavaliers and courtesans. Consider Hellena as the prime example of this agency. From the very beginning of the play, she is portrayed as a woman with confidence and drive. her leadership and bold defiance as well as her ability to manipulate others, are all put on display when she manages to convince Callis to allow both her and her sister Florinda to attend the carnival, despite being ordered by her brother to be locked up in her room for the evening. Not only does Hellena actively disobeys her brother’s orders but she also convinces her sister Florinda to join in rebelling against the restrictive commands of their brother.
Hellena is perhaps the strongest of all female characters present in the Rover with all the boldness and wit she possesses but the kind of women “strongness” which Behn is trying to propose is also visible in the way Lucetta designs and executes the clever albeit to cheat Blunt out of his possessions. Like Hellena, Lucetta also knows what she wants, she knows how to get it and most importantly she actively pursues that which she desires. The men of “The Rover”, on the contrary take more of a back seat. They are shown to be easily manipulated and cheated by the female characters of the play very often. Consider Belvile for example who spends time lamenting for his predicament. Although later he is shown very actively working for a future with Florinda, but it is Florinda and not him who takes the initiative. She is the one who largely designs the plan which leads to their marriage.
Evaluating Women's Social and Sexual Options:
Each woman begins the play bound one of the three fates: Florinda to marriage, Hellena to the nunnery, and Angellica Bianca to well-paid prostitution. Through Carnival, however, these women abandon their prescribed positions with disguises to “be mad as the rest, and take all innocent freedoms,” including to “outwit twenty brothers”. The masquerade serves multiple purposes. First, disguise equalizes the class distinctions, and…even [satirizing] the difference between the categories available to women” When lost in the festivities, the ladies join all that “are, or would have you think they’re courtesans,” the most sexually liberated women. Their initial costumes as gypsies allow them to approach men in a feminized, desirous way. Gypsies already occupy the role of outcast on the liminal edge of society; by taking on their looks, Florinda and Hellena put themselves and their sexuality outside the confines of cultural expectation. Their decision implies Behn’s opinion that her peers should seek to escape the restrictions that define them.
Hellena and Angellica also take on the appearances of men during the play. Such costumes permit them to alter their lovers’ choices and lives. “Dressed in man’s clothes,” Hellena can punish Willmore for his infidelity with “something does to vex him” She interferes. in a meeting of Willmore and Angellica by informing the courtesan of “a young English gentleman” who wooed another woman and then “paid his broken vows to you”. Seeking revenge an act later, Angellica Bianca dons “a masking habit and vizard” and threatens Willmore with a pistol. Her choice of weapon—guns were used almost exclusively by men during Behn’s time—is “symbolic of her attempt to usurp phallic control” of her own sexual desires. Instead of feminizing her lust, Angellica masculinizes herself. By masquerading as men, both women demonstrate how ladies may take ownership of rights associated only male Cavaliers, romance, justice, and sexuality.
The “obligatory happy ending” of The Rover reveals the unfairness of the libertine system and the demand—indeed, the unquestioned assumption—that women would fit into the socially set role of prostitute or wife. Florinda and Hellena’s attempts to challenge their brother’s arrangements are successful; the former marries her lover and the latter escapes a future as “handmaid to lazars and cripples” in the nunnery. However, their enterprising boldness in chasing men leads them into the same wifely duties of most women. Their challenge to “the repression of their autonomy and …desires” still leads to the hierarchical man-woman relationship of Puritan wedlock.
Angellica’s attempt to unite her sexuality with true love fails. She is initially immune to “the general disease of [the female] sex…that of being in love”. She can sleep with whomever she wants and has found a way around Behn’s observation that women need reliable male support. However, her life lacks the romantic passion of the hedonistic lifestyle. Moreover, Angellica’s sexual liberation, for which lovers must pay to experience, contributes to her inability to snag Willmore’s long-term affection. His lust could have been satiated with her portrait since someone else would “have the thousand crowns to give for the original”. Her relegation back to courtesan shows how transgressive, premarital sex and proper marriage cannot mix. As a sexual female, Angellica has no place in world when in the throes of libertine love: she can be neither indifferent courtesan nor devoted wife.
Portrayal of Restoration Women
Florinda’s character encompasses the Restoration woman’s struggle to gain agency in marriage. Before arriving at carnival, Florinda is trapped in the midst of a battle between following her own desire and the desires of her family. She wants to marry the English colonel Belvile, but must obey the patriarchal orders of her father and brother to marry who they see fit for her.
With Florinda’s sister Hellena, Behn exposes the struggle of self-identification, specifically in terms of faith. Hellena has been set on the path to become a nun, and as she ventures off to carnival with her sister, the masquerade is a tool for her to free herself from societal restraints and experience real love. As noted earlier, the Church of England was very influential during the Restoration. Behn incorporated religion into The Rover, but she presented a critical view of church customs by portraying such strong libertine ideals from a devout character like Hellena. In the first scene Hellena tells Florinda that she would like to see her and Belvile together.
Hellena’s libertine values are very apparent when she meets Wilmore. Their courtship begins immediately and she tells him that vowing to die a maid is “foolish”. Wilmore and Hellena are both looking for an escape at carnival. When he arrives on shore, Wilmore tells the cavaliers that his “business ashore was only to enjoy [him]self a little this carnival” hinting that he is looking for female companionship to occupy his time on the island. Hellena’s feelings of oppression, curiosity and yearning for male companionship connect the libertine elements of these two characters together.
Despite their increasing agency in choosing a marriage partner, women in the Restoration were nonetheless valued as commodities. Angellica Bianca is an example of this as her struggles stemmed from social perspectives of value within the marketplace. The Staves article mentions that Behn was intrigued by the “’value’ of women in her society and experiment[ed] with dividing and isolating elements of conventional female value” . In her profession, Angellica usually takes on the dominant role in choosing a mate.
Angellica’s role reflects a need for representation and agency for women during the Restoration. She wears no mask, unlike Florinda and Hellena when they go to carnival, and has a reputation outside of carnival based on her profession.
Though each of these women was a valuable social commodity in their respective situations, Florinda began with no sense of agency, and the power shift in her patriarchal environment gave her more agency to choose who she would marry. Hellena began with the same level of agency as her sister, being forced into a life as a nun, but the shift in power allowed her to take on a new identity with a man which in turn gave her more agency in her devotion. Angellica, on the other hand lost power by falling in love. It left her vulnerable and decreased her level of agency which lowered her social value and self-worth.
Conclusion:
Through Florinda, Hellena, and Angellica, Behn was able to bring to life some of the ideals of the Restoration while also critiquing popular movements within the era. Each of these characters endures a social struggle that fits into a bigger picture for the time. Marriage, self-identity and social representation are all topics that women of the Restoration were faced with and characterized what it meant to be a woman during that time. Behn’s execution of these elements makes The Rover a critical part of the history of Restoration Theater.
Reference:
- Behn, Aphra. The Rover. Restoration Comedy. Ed. Trevor Griffiths and Simon Trussler. London: New Hern Books, 2005. 129–224.
“Portrayal of Restoration Women in The Rover.” Magnificata Journal of Undergraduate Nonfiction, 2014, commons.marymount.edu/magnificat/portrayal-of-restoration-women-in-the-rover.
- Staves, Susan. “Behn, Women, and Society.” The Cambridge Companion to Aphra Behn. By Derek Hughes and Janet M. Todd. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge UP, 2004. 12-28. Print.
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