Aphra Behn’s The Rover

 Aphra Behn’s Feminism in The Rover

One of the first professional female playwrights, Aphra Behn often dramatized love, gender, and power. The Rover, though a Restoration comedy, falls within the same theoretical space: its clever wordplay and satire touches on issues of female agency, marriage, and independence. For this blog, we chose three questions that can potentially be indicative of Behn's opinions on women and their place in society, as seen in the representation of The Rover.

1) Angellica’s View on Financial Negotiations and Prostitution: Do I Agree?

In The Rover, Angellica Bianca is a Venetian courtesan who treats marriage as another form of prostitution. She would say that the pact on money made before marriage is not far from her profession. Angellica's perspective lies within her understanding of herself as being sold for beauty and wealth.

I actually tend to concur with Angellica only partially, but then it has to be put in perspective. Marriage in the Restoration era is basically a matter of economical consideration, especially on the part of women. Women lacked access to limited means of self-sufficiency; marriage, therefore, became a social contract in which women were traded for security, status, and wealth.

Yet marriage is different from prostitution. That is, generally speaking, marriage is looked at as an institution with something of social respectability. While I would be quite correct to term relationships in Angellica's situation transactional in character, I wouldn't compare marriage to prostitution absolutely. One more difference derives from societal expectations and personal commitments that bound the institution of marriage, something that was, in fact, missing in prostitution. Nevertheless, Angellica's cynicism lends itself to registering some harsh realities that many women had to undergo during the Restoration period.

2) Virginia Woolf’s Tribute to Aphra Behn: Do I Agree?

Virginia Woolf in her essay "A Room of One's Own" praises Aphra Behn as the pioneering voice for women's right to write and think for themselves and the power of artistic creation. Woolf feels that Behn earned women a right to say what they wanted because Behn's work for money became possible when women were expectedly home, and not in creative activities.

I am totally with Woolf's statement. The work in The Rover by Behn is bold and fearless: it boldly attacks subjects like love, lust, and female self-reliance during a time wherein women didn't have much freedom. In the case of The Rover, Hellena and Angellica are not objects of desire but active agents chasing desires, acting according to their choices. This act of defying patriarchal expectations mirrors Behn's own life, where she broke every boundary in order to be one of the first women to be able to make a living as a playwright.

This admiration on Woolf's part is totally deserved. Behn was indeed bold in order to depict women as multi-dimensional characters speaking their minds and acting according to desire. She was actually presenting a future model and prototype for generations of women writers, who could envision a world in which their voices mattered.

3) Which Female Character Best Represents Aphra Behn?

In The Rover, there are several strong female characters, but the one who most closely represents Aphra Behn is Hellena. . Indeed, Hellena is a woman of wit, independence, and ambition, much like Behn. She defies convention by being proactive not only in her pursuit of love but also by securing her own future for herself. Hellena is not even willing to allow her brother nor her suitors decide for her.

Even Behn's life was full of strong moves and independence. She is an intelligence informant. She traveled to unknown places and was composing plays and poems to challenge the mistress of good manners in life. The adventurous and unconventional style of Hellena lives like second nature to the life and philosophy of Behn. A woman belonging to the era when women were meant to be inactive and submissive, acts with agencies. This reflects her own resistance toward being silenced.

Behn’s Feminism in The Rover

The Rover can rightly be called nothing but a commentary: men verses women, the limits upon them, and how women may recover their autonomy. Angellica's prostitute view of marriage attacks its economic realities while Virginia Woolf's tribute speaks about how Behn paved the way for future women writers. Ultimately, Hellena's character best reflects the life and ideological beliefs of Behn herself, for in this play, she portrays a female who combats typical norms and takes charge of her own destiny. Behn's Feminism in The Rover